It was code-named Operation Fish, an audacious, top-secret World War II scheme to spirit Britain’s entire gold reserves across the U-boat-infested North Atlantic to Canada to keep them from falling into the hands of the Nazis. It would become the largest transfer of physical wealth in history, worth more than $200 billion today. If it […]
Bill Mont, who died on October 28, 2025, at the age of 96, was one of Halifax’s legendary characters. He would become best known as Nova Scotia’s “Flea Market King” during the 1970s and 1980s. But he was also one of the “characters” who helped me bring to life everyday life in Halifax during World […]
The Phelan Feud: The Bitter Struggle for Control of a Great Canadian Food Empire by Stephen Kimber will be released on June 6, 2024, by Barlow Books. It is now available for pre-order. Award-winning journalist Stephen Kimber takes readers behind the scenes of an epic family feud inside the Phelan clan—one of Canada’s wealthiest families—who […]
July 1976 He shouldn’t have been in this hellhole on a summer Sunday morning. He should have been home sleeping it off. So why was he standing here in his one, drizzle-dampened suit trying desperately not to let his brain process the smell of shit and salt that wafted up from the sewer outfall down […]
- 02/15/2020
- StephenKimber
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During my research for my 2009 book, IWK: A Century of Caring for Families (Nimbus), I interviewed Dr. John Crocker, a pediatric nephrologist at the Izaak Walton Killam Health Centre in Halifax. Dr. Crocker died on October 26, 2016 Dr. Crocker could be a cantankerous character — he eventually sued the hospital and the province for breach of […]
- 11/01/2016
- StephenKimber
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Bob Sutherland was disgusted. This wasn’t Rome or Berlin; this was Halifax. And it wasn’t Canadians fighting the enemy; it was Canadians fighting Canadians. He and some of the K of C centre staff had decided to take an early morning walk through the downtown to see for themselves what the riots had done. It […]
Jimmy Noade cradled the injured man in his arms. What was his name? Noade remembered him only as Walker. He was the Chief Officer aboard HMCS Otter and right now he was in bad shape, his body a limp rag, his voice a pale imitation of itself. For what seemed like days, Noade, Walker and […]
Flight 111: The Tragedy of the Swissair Crash By Stephen Kimber “Kimber…at his best…tightly drawn vignettes depicting the utter normality that is shattered for thousands by the disaster…gladden[s] the heart even as the tears well up. But for all the emotion Kimber doesn’t allow Flight 111 to descend into sentimentality.” The Globe and Mail “Deftly […]
Stephen Kimber will be the featured speaker Saturday, July 31, at the 2010 Port Medway Reader’s Festival in Port Medway on Nova Scotia’s south shore. Founded in 2002 by writers Cynthia Wine and Philip Slayton, the Festival is “an opportunity for readers to listen to and meet writers in an informal and friendly village setting. […]
"When, just 15 minutes into reading the book, I am in tears, then something’s got to be right. And I believe Stephen Kimber has done everything right in his captivating history of the extraordinary story of pediatric care that exists right here in Halifax and beyond… Kimber has given us a fully integrated account of […]
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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