The Happy Ending

“I hope one day you will be able to update the story with the happy ending that many justice-seeking people around the world are still working for.” — Gerardo Hernándezin a 2013 letter to the author This is the Epilogue to What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five by Stephen Kimber. The Epilogue will […]

Houston shunts problem issues beyond the next election. Let Future Tim worry about them

First, the good news. “The province will conduct a comprehensive review of the policing structure in Nova Scotia and potentially recommend changes for how policing services are delivered,” the Houston government announced late last month. The bad news? Wait for it. First, a little history. In December 2020, then-Liberal Justice Minister Mark Furey told reporters […]

The Mass Casualty Commission report meets the ‘somewhat surprised’

I was not surprised by the numbers of people who pronounced themselves “somewhat surprised” by the sweeping and consequential content of last week’s report of the Mass Casualty Commission. Many of those same people had spent much of the past three years dismissing, marginalizing and otherwise declaring the whole exercise a waste of time at best, […]

‘Saving lives is more important than business’

The government’s pre-emptive response to our latest COVID spike from many local restaurants, bars and small businesses — all of which are suffering financially — was encouraging. And should encourage the rest of us to do our part too. On Monday, the night before the government imposed a mandatory two-week closure of all bars and […]

Tara Thorne and the tweet that trumped 20 years of exemplary arts coverage

How do we balance Tara Thorne’s history of supporting artists and culture in Halifax with what even one of her supporters described as ‘a hurtful and very bad joke tweet’? These days, it seems, we don’t. I will confess off the top I don’t know the specifics of what freelance arts journalist Tara Thorne tweeted […]

George Boyd, Writer, Broadcaster, RIP

George Boyd, Canada’s first Black TV news anchor, featured prominently in Cities, a magazine I published in the late 1980s. Journalist Tim Carlson, who would himself go on to become a successful award-winning playwright, profiled George at the time Neptune Theatre produced the world premiere of his first produced play, Shine Boy. George himself wrote […]

From heroes to zeroes… the pandemic bottom line

For supermarkets, hero pay was always more about PR than rewarding employees’ above-and-beyond work. They’re ready to move on and step back. But the rest of us should take the opportunity to have the important conversation we need to have around a permanent guaranteed annual income. Long ago and far away — which is to […]

Healthcare lessons from Manitoba’s First Nations… and Cuba.

Manitoba’s First Nations reached out to Cuba even before COVID-19 because they need healthcare help. So do we. In February — before the coronavirus changed everything about everything for everybody — Jerry Daniels, the Grand Chief of the Southern Chiefs’ Organization, which represents 34 First Nations in Manitoba, led a delegation to Havana to meet […]

Who’s sorry now? Not the premier, not the justice minister, not the police

No one in authority seems willing to apologize for the decades of “disproportionate and negative” impact street checks have had on Nova Scotia’s black community. Worse, no one seems to committed to finally ending them once and for all. This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner April 22, 2019. Our question for today: why is it so […]

What would Andrew do? Jagmeet?

The SNC-Lavalin affair offered a stark choice for our prime minister. We know which door he chose. But what about the opposition leaders. Shouldn’t we know what they would have done with the same choice? This column first appeared in the Halifax Examiner March 11, 2019. There is an unanswered, barely whispered question at the heart-attack centre […]