Shocked and appalled stocking stuffer

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Shocked and appalled stocking stuffer

With the pre-holiday spate of comment-worthy local news and the upcoming holiday absence of venue to vent my inevitable shocked-and-appalled-at-it-all spleen, today’s column will be an assorted stocking stuffer. No charges in Home for Coloured Children investigation: I’m less shocked than I’d like. But winning convictions when allegations date back decades, involve children and include […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Whatever happened to Darrell?

How and why did avuncular, reasonable-man-trying-to-do-the-right-thing Opposition leader Darrell Dexter morph into prickly, why-should-I-answer-your-reasonable-question Premier Darrell Dexter? Last week, as the House of Assembly wrapped up its fall sitting, Dexter announced—not in the legislature where you might have expected it, but in a puffed up State-of-the-Province speech to an audience of 400 Chamber-of-Commerce types—that his […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Pat Connolly, R.I.P.

I didn’t go to journalism school. In a day when informal apprenticeship was the norm, I was lucky to learn my trade from its best practitioners: Nick Fillmore, the crusading editor of the feisty local alternative weekly, the 4th Estate; Harry Bruce, one of Canada’s finest magazine writers and essayists; and Pat Connolly, the legendary […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

The auditor general, the convention centre and the premier

One can understand Premier Darrell Dexter’s aggressive/defensive, head-in-the-convention-centre response to last week’s auditor general’s report. That report—which damned the shoddiness of the business case Trade Centre Ltd. concocted to justify a new convention centre—called on the government to launch an independent review of TCL’s numbers. Dexter was having none of it. TCL based its conclusions, […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Halifax International Security Forum: Making the World Safe for Peter MacKay

The idea for this past weekend’s fourth annual Halifax International Security Forum, Peter MacKay told the Globe and Mail, was born because our defence minister “got a little tired” of traveling to other global security conferences in places like Munich where the discussions were all “Europe-America, Europe-America.” Voila the Halifax Forum. MacKay’s “brainchild”—as another media […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Jamie Baillie offside… as usual

Forget the Byzantine balls-up the attempt to unionize Canada’s junior hockey players became—league-hired private investigators snooping on union staff, falsely (maybe) intimating one was a felon; union (dis)organizers scheduling, then canceling votes—and ask ourselves two simple questions: First, do run-of-the-litter junior hockey players, the ones least likely to lose millions in the next NHL lockout, […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Did you hear the one about the snap election?

When I was a fresh-faced young radio reporter in the days before journalists discovered ethics, we would occasionally—on slow days when news was in short supply—create our own.“Did you hear the rumour?” one reporter might say to another. “The premier is thinking of calling a snap election.” “Really?” the second reporter would reply. “We should […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Nice guy finishes first. Now what?

The race for HRM mayor really began on February 6, 2012, when former Liberal MP Mike Savage—surrounded by a fawning, hopeful who’s who of 300 of the city’s most influential business and political makers and breakers—declared he would challenge long-past-his-best-before-date incumbent Peter Kelly.The campaign effectively ended two-and-a-half weeks later when Kelly—already mired in myriad self-made […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Millie and that Ben and Jerry's tub… again

The question that truly, biblically passeth all understanding is why. Why would a 77-year-old senior citizen with five last names, a 40-year criminal history as long as both your arms and one of your legs, with two dead husbands—one of whom she was convicted of killing and the other seriously suspected—a woman who is now […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Darrell Dexter, Paul Guadet and the politics of partisanship

Perhaps Darrell Dexter’s prickly petulance last week was the result of too many too long nights reworking the on-again, off-again, can-we-have-more-please deal to save Port Hawkesbury’s NewPage paper mill. And the certainty he would be damned for saving it. Just as he would have been damned for having failed to save it. Or, more generally, […]

Stephen Kimber

Freelance