Last week, Nova Scotia’s 9,000 teachers decisively rejected a tentative contract with the provincial government. With their vote, the teachers instantly scuppered Stephen McNeil’s carefully crafted strategy to bring public sector unions to heel before introducing a see-we-did-it balanced budget in advance of the next provincial election. McNeil had begun strategically with the teachers, traditionally […]
Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
- 12/07/2015
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
Quick now, who was Gavin Rainnie? Rainnie Drive? Doesn’t tinkle any bells yet? How about that short street that skirts the northern base of Citadel Hill from the new Halifax Common roundabout at North Park and Cogswell to the corner of Brunswick and Duke, the one thousands of us pass through daily on our way […]
- 11/30/2015
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
There are still many unanswered questions about what Shandell McNamara calls “the most humiliating experience of my life.” McNamara, a 27-year-old mixed-race woman, went to the Fenwick Street Shoppers Drug Mart last Monday night to pick up a package. Instead, she was confronted by the associate-owner, who claimed the store had video footage showing her […]
- 11/23/2015
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
You wish he would stop. For his sake. But he doesn’t. Andrew Younger seems constitutionally incapable of not hurtling down the same, self-immolating highway to the hell of political oblivion paved over — and then over again — by gone-but-not-forgotten former NDP MLA Trevor Zinck. Less than a week after Younger was ceremoniously tossed from […]
- 11/16/2015
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
Premier Stephen McNeil was right to fire Andrew Younger. He was wrong to wait until the situation had degenerated into a soap-opera, he-said-he-did embarrassment. On Wednesday, Younger, the province’s environment minister, abused his parliamentary privilege to avoid testifying at the trial of a woman accused of assaulting him on Oct. 22, 2013, the day the Liberals […]
- 11/09/2015
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
On September 10, the CBC revealed details of what the Canada Revenue Agency describes as an offshore tax haven “sham” created and orchestrated by one of this country’s most respected tax accounting and auditing firms. According to court documents, KPMG in 1999 developed a “product” designed to “target” those with a net worth of $10 […]
- 11/05/2015
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- 2 Comments
Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
Vrege Armoyan describes the moment his 16-year marriage ended — it happened on Thursday, October 22, 2009 — as if it is unraveling before his eyes, in real time, instead of one in a series of unhappy personal-life footnotes, now nearly four years past. The story — in Vrege’s telling — begins six days earlier, […]
- 11/05/2015
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
Community Services Minister Joanne Bernard says she knows the province’s welfare system is “broken… None of the systems and none of the policies and the way we serve people has changed in many decades.” That’s why her government announced last week it is forking out up to $2 million to consultants to “vision,” “design,” “transform” […]
- 11/02/2015
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
The good news — as the late Gerald Ford so aptly put it in a different context after then U.S.-president Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974 — is that “our long national nightmare is over.” Or, to borrow a more triumphant, if cheekier chant from some social media commentators last week: “Dong Dong! The witch is […]
- 10/26/2015
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Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.
No matter the outcome of today’s federal election, it’s time for principled federal Conservatives to take back their party, or abandon it as a lost cause. I know, I know. Who am I, a left-of-centre progressive, to offer advice to those whose chosen party I’d almost certainly never vote for? In my defence, I grew […]
- 10/19/2015
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STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax and co-founder of its MFA in Creative Nonfiction Program, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of two novels and eight non-fiction books. Buy his books
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