The Home for Coloured Children: Time to Muzzle the Lawyers

For the lawyers, of course, it is about protecting the client, lessening liability, mitigating damages. In that context, perhaps, it makes lawyer sense to niggle over nouns, to parse phrases like “as if we were slaves” for literality, to offer up a bookkeeper’s balance sheet to contradict allegations of underfunding, to use all the lawyers’ […]

06/17/2013
sk15admin
2 Comments

Goodbye Peter, hello future

Peter Kelly’s final mayoralty meltdown announcement last week was not triggered by any of the many mis-governance issues that should have long since ended his political career. Ironically, the mayor was ultimately hoist on the petard of his own sloppy-and-perhaps-worse handling of the estate of a friend, a private matter unrelated to his duties as […]

Rocky Jones: The past and future of the Nova Scotia human rights' struggle

I wanted to ask Rocky Jones about his Wednesday lecture: “The Struggle for Human Rights in African Nova Scotian Communities, 1961-2011.” No problem. When? Not today. He’s on a panel at a national conference on public policy. Saturday, he’s in Truro, keynote speaker at an International Year for People of African Descent symposium. Then Ottawa […]

Profile of Rocky Jones

From the Halifax Daily News, November 20, 1995. 1960. Toronto. Rocky Jones’ tooth is killing him. He needs a dentist but, having just arrived in an unfamiliar city, he doesn’t know any. Someone suggests he see a “Dr. Best on Dundas Street.” But when Jones shows up for his appointment, he suddenly changes his mind. […]

What's race got to do with it?

I accept the argument. Those involved in the recent decision to provide a group of—white—residents in Lake Major with keys to an old logging road so they could avoid having to travel an extra 5.5 km through the—black—community of North Preston were providing a small but reasonable favour to those most inconvenienced by a local […]

Q&A with Stephen Kimber

When did you know you wanted to be a writer? I’m one of those lucky people who knew from the time I was seven or eight that I was going to spend my life as a writer of one sort or another. The process of coming to that conclusion, however, was anything but edifying. For […]

Reviews & Press

Reviews from critics “Canadian journalist STEPHEN KIMBER’s debut novel, Reparations ($19.95) is a hard-hitting and complex affair. This is a novel that pulls no punches and effectively weaves a tale with not only a crime at its core, but also a clever and fluid history of Africville, Nova Scotia, and the expropriation of African-Nova Scotian’s waterfront land. […]

Excerpt

From Reparations by Stephen Kimber 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 First Look Reader Reviews

HarperCollinsCanada’s First Look is a program to preview books in literary fiction, young adult fiction, suspense, biography, cookbooks and other genres, with readers who make a difference — you! Each month, HarperCollins will offer Advanced Reading Editions (ARE) of great books by fabulous authors that you will have the opportunity to review. Reviewers are selected […]

Halifax Herald review of Reparations

A tale of corrupt Halifax HALIFAX INTERNATIONAL WRITERS’ FESTIVAL By ROBERT MARTIN Halifax Chronicle-Herald April 2, 2006 You know you’re in for a juicy roman à clef when the author admits that he was inspired to write a book in order to put in all the libellous bits that had been cut out of a […]