As a longtime Halifax Mooseheads fan, I’ve spent some time this spring inside a downtown arena named after a bank watching our Quebec Major Junior Hockey League team compete for the Gilles Courteau trophy as their league’s best. The games on the ice have been excellent, but I often find myself drawn to what’s happening […]
- 05/19/2023
- StephenKimber
- No Comments
Let’s start with this… Defunding the police is, in many ways, about reinvesting in fundamental, and historically under-funded, community resources… [Our] last recommendations relate to municipal and police budgeting. One of these recommendations is that any funds diverted from the police budget going forward be redistributed through participatory budgeting processes. Defunding the Police: Defining the […]
- 05/05/2023
- StephenKimber
- 1 Comment
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, […]
- 04/07/2023
- StephenKimber
- 1 Comment
Let’s start with this scenario. A woman with a decades-long history of having been brutalized and controlled by her common-law partner — a history that was known or should have been known to the police — is coerced into helping her partner transport ammunition for his cache of largely illegally obtained weapons. Does the RCMP […]
- 02/17/2023
- StephenKimber
- 2 Comments
Last week’s seemingly out-of-sync release of an internal RCMP report into the shooting at the Onslow Firehall during April 2020’s mass shooting raises troubling questions. Some are more easily and satisfactorily answered than others. Let’s start with what happened on April 19, 2020, shortly after 10:20 a.m. outside the firehall located about 35 kilometres from […]
- 11/25/2022
- StephenKimber
- No Comments
There are still too many unanswered questions about what prompted the RCMP to charge Lisa Banfield, the common-law spouse of the Nova Scotia mass killer, for supplying him with ammunition a month before the deadly rampage. That’s one reason why Banfield’s decision to sue the federal and provincial governments for “malicious prosecution” — she says […]
- 11/11/2022
- StephenKimber
- No Comments
Last week, Examiner editor Tim Bousquet asked ‘What’s the point of the Mass Casualty Commission?’ In his column today, Stephen Kimber offers a (slightly) more hopeful take. He says it’s too soon to know. So… is it already too late for the Mass Casualty Commission’s final report to matter? Was its credibility irreparably shredded even […]
- 07/30/2022
- StephenKimber
- No Comments
Cross-examination isn’t the only valid — or always best — truth-seeking method of testing evidence. And, in light of last week’s controversy over Lisa Banfield’s appearance before the mass casualty commission, it’s worth asking whether the truth was all that was being sought. “We keep getting confronted by people who seem to have a perception […]
- 07/23/2022
- StephenKimber
- No Comments
The latest foundational document from the Mass Casualty Commission details everything the RCMP didn’t say in the days after the worst mass killing in Canadian history. It’s a long list. [Canadian Press:] Canadians would very much like to know how many people have died? [Chief Superintendent Supt. Chris Leather:] I can tell you that in […]
- 07/02/2022
- StephenKimber
- 2 Comments
Allowing two RCMP officers to testify in pre-recorded sessions without the direct involvement of lawyers for the families undermines the credibility of the commission. And that’s unfortunate for all of us. I have not watched every minute of every witnesses’ testimony at the Mass Casualty Commission. As I have with the commission’s 18-and-counting foundational documents […]
- 06/04/2022
- StephenKimber
- No Comments
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