Dexter profile wins 2009 AJA

Stephen Kimber’s election-eve profile of the man who would become Nova Scotia’s first ever New Democratic Party premier won the Gold Award for Best Feature at the 2009 Atlantic Journalism Awards. AJA presentation The story, "Who is Darrell Dexter?", appeared in the June 3, 2009 edition of The Coast, Halifax’s alternative weekly. Coast writers were […]

Pay for performance? What a concept

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is proposing legislation—delightfully entitled the “Excellent Care for All” bill—to connect the salaries and bonuses of provincial hospital chief executive officers with their on-the-job performance. We’re not talking here simply about how well the CEOs manage to shave operating room costs or slash vital support jobs to meet too-small budgets, but […]

Eclectic Economic Council good; appointments stonewalling not so much

So Liberal leader Stephen McNeil has his knickers in a righteous knot because Darrell Dexter’s new 19-member economic advisory council includes a few of the premier’s union “buddies.” I’m delighted this new volunteer group—set up to “provide advice to government on strategies and actions to grow the economy and act as a sounding board on […]

The tragedy of Trevor Zinck's public meltdown

I’ve only met Trevor Zinck once. Back in 2007 when I was working on a story about the far-too-many children who fall through the cracks of our child welfare system and he was a fresh-faced NDP MLA, we both attended a meeting examining other, better child welfare models. Afterward, Zinck handed me his card, offered […]

Convention centre secrecy deja vu all over again

Frankly, I’m not sure what I think of the controversy over whether to build a new convention centre in downtown Halifax. Those who support it claim that, during the past three years, we’ve lost 70 conventions—and the economic benefits they bring—because the current World Trade and Convention Centre is too small to attract the kind […]

Coast story Atlantic Journalism Award finalist

Stephen Kimber’s cover feature for the June 9, 2009th issue of The Coast—"Who is Premier Darrell Dexter?"—has been selected as one of the finalists for this year’s Atlantic Journalism Awards. The Dexter story is up against two other stories—Tim Bousquet’s "Doolittle, Darwin and the Deeply Dumb" from The Coast and Andrew McGilligan’s "Long Journey’s Home" […]

The sound of one cymbal clanging

It’s difficult to comprehend how a politician seemingly in such perfect harmony with the populist political zeitgeist eight months ago could have become so cymbal-clangingly tone deaf so quickly. Darrell Dexter got himself elected premier by channeling Coffee-at-the-Tims Everyman. He was like us, only smarter. We could—and did—trust him. We forgave him for lying to […]

A promise is not a law until it is

It happened so long ago that Alexa McDonough was still the leader of a rag-tag band of New Democrats in the provincial legislature. And I was a still-young-ish reporter. McDonough had just introduced a private member’s bill to reform the ways in which political parties got financed. Its specifics have long since escaped my memory. […]

Reclaiming black history, acknowledging our own

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 […]

Africville… a look back at the struggle for redress

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 […]