TYP: It all began in a duck blind

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 […]

Keep hate laws for real haters

It’s difficult to summon a scintilla of sympathy for the Rehberg brothers. Twenty-year-old Justin was convicted Friday of criminal harassment and inciting hatred against blacks by setting a two-metre cross ablaze last February in front of the Hants County home of a mixed-race couple. His brother Nathan faces similar charges this week. But since this […]

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 […]

Is Corey Wright the wrong man?

When American sailor Damon Crooks was killed on Argyle Street, police had a strong suspect but a weak case. Luckily for a city embarrassed by the murder, the suspect cooperated. Stephen Kimber finds out how pleading guilty became Corey Wright’s best move, right or wrong. Corey Wright Photo essay by Aaron Fraser […]

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 […]

Protecting privacy or covering up?

So whose privacy are they protecting? On Dec. 2, 2008, an RCMP constable shot and killed John Andrew Simon, a member of Cape Breton’s Wagmatcook First Nation. Simon, everyone agrees, was alone inside his house, drunk and suicidal, at the time he was killed. According to what police reportedly told Simon’s family, he was unarmed, […]

She was someone’s daughter

On Monday, the Chronicle Herald carried an In Memoriam advertisement for Kimber Leane Lucas, a young woman who died on November 23, 1994 at the age of 25. The notice featured a photograph of a strikingly attractive, smiling young woman above a message that read, in part: “You will never be forgotten. Forever loved and […]

Past time for Nova Scotians to honour Viola Desmond

Damn. Missed it. Again. I’m not the only one. Which is unfortunate. For everyone. Last Sunday marked the anniversary of an event that symbolizes—or should—the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in Canada. On November 8, 1946, a 32-year-old black beautician named Viola Desmond was driving from Halifax to Sydney when her car broke […]