In its traditional year-end orgy of page-filling lists of accomplished Canadians—young, old, corporate, literary—the Globe and Mail this year named Peter Munk, 83-year-old chair of “multinational mining giant” Barrick Gold Corp., a finalist in its nation-builder category. Though born into a well-to-do Budapest Jewish family in 1927, the Nazi occupation wiped out the Munk fortune. […]
- 01/10/2011
- StephenKimber
- 1 Comment
What became the “most important (educational) program ever” for Nova Scotia’s black and aboriginal communities began inauspiciously enough in a duck blind in the middle of the Nova Scotia nowhere. Dalhousie University’s Transition Year Program—a unique-for-its-time scheme to bring marginalized black and native students into the academic mainstream through a year-long process to “transition” them […]
- 11/15/2010
- StephenKimber
- 1 Comment
When did we realize we had finally entered the deeps of the news-challenged rat… er, dog days of summer? Was it when that story about the number of rats per city block in Halifax—75; You count ‘em, I’ll pass—made CBC Radio’s marquee World at Six news show last week? Or perhaps it was when we […]
- 08/09/2010
- StephenKimber
- No Comments
Nova Scotia’s black history is rich and remarkable—Birchtown, for example, was North America’s largest settlement of free blacks when it was founded in 1783—but that realty is rarely acknowledged. Now finally, that may be about to change… Shortly before 10 on the evening of March 31, 2006, residents along the Old Birchtown Road near Shelburne […]
- 02/25/2010
- StephenKimber
- 1 Comment
Today’s announcement (February 24, 2010) of an agreement between the Africville Genealogy Society and various governments will mark the culmination of a decades-long, sometimes seemingly endless and too often hopeless struggle. The deal—like almost anything to do with Africville—will be controversial. But as we consider what it means, it is worth looking back at how […]
So here is our question for today. Should the Charles Morris House—a down-at-the-heels, 240-year-old wooden structure that once served as the headquarters of Nova Scotia’s chief surveyor but today sits, forlorn, beached and abandoned in a downtown parking lot—be resurrected and spiffed up to serve as a living memorial to the man who is credited […]
- 01/29/2010
- StephenKimber
- 3 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
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