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Whatever happened to spring legislature sessions that lasted until spring?

In 1972, the legislature's spring session last 54 sitting days. In 2020, it lasted 13. It seems we have nothing to discuss.

March 15, 2020 By Stephen Kimber

The last time I covered the Nova Scotia legislature on a regular basis, Gerald Regan was the premier. It was a simpler time: before even now-museum vintage fax machines and VCRs but also before personal computers, the Internet, online newspapers, 24-hour cable news, streaming services, social media and… well, life as we now know it....

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: Gerald Regan, legislature business, Premier Stephen McNeil

Coming to terms with the complicated legacy of Gerald Regan

How do you reconcile the contradictory facts of our 19th premier's life? You probably can’t. No matter what you write, you’re either rinsing Regan’s black heart in the cleansing stream of his passing or dancing gleefully on his grave. Most news reports I saw got it about as right as those complicated realities — and our changing times — allowed. Premier Stephen McNeil didn't.

December 1, 2019 By Stephen Kimber 5 Comments

“I think you know every Canadian knows you’re guilty. And you can take that to your grave!” Court spectator Mark Iich Shouted at Gerald Regan following his acquittal December 1998 As the author of “that book about”… I spent much of last week being interviewed by journalists, all of whom — like me — were […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Province House Tagged With: #MeToo, Gerald Regan, sexual assault, Stephen McNeil

NOT GUILTY: The missing Gerald Regan Chapters, Part 2

Gerald Regan, who died Monday at 91, was a prominent 20th-century Canadian politician, a federal Liberal cabinet minister and two-term premier of Nova Scotia. He was also a serial sexual abuser of young women who spent much of the 1990s fighting off criminal allegations involving more than three dozen women whose complaints stretched over four decades. Halifax journalist Stephen Kimber wrote the 1999 book, NOT GUILTY: The Trial of Gerald Regan. Because Regan had been found not guilty, however, his publisher decided to excise two chapters from the original manuscript. Here is the second of those two chapters.

November 27, 2019 By Stephen Kimber 1 Comment

It remains one of the most intriguing and enduring mysteries of the Gerald Regan era. Who stole the tape recording of the interview with the page girl — and why? That story began in the late winter of 1977 following a night sitting of the Nova Scotia legislature. Jennifer Oulton,[1] an 18-year-old legislative page who’d […]

Filed Under: Featured, Province House Tagged With: Gerald Regan, NOT GUILTY: The Trial of Gerald Regan

NOT GUILTY: The missing Gerald Regan Chapters, Part 1

Gerald Regan, who died Monday at 91, was a prominent 20th-century Canadian politician, a federal Liberal cabinet minister and two-term premier of Nova Scotia. He was also a serial sexual abuser of young women who spent much of the 1990s fighting off criminal allegations involving more than three dozen women whose complaints stretched over four decades. Halifax journalist Stephen Kimber wrote the 1999 book, NOT GUILTY: The Trial of Gerald Regan. Because Regan had been found not guilty, however, his publisher decided to excise two chapters from the original manuscript. Here is the first of those two chapters.

November 27, 2019 By Stephen Kimber 6 Comments

Before there was Jian Ghomeshi, or Bill Cosby, or Donald Trump, there was Gerald Regan. On March 15, 1995, the RCMP charged Nova Scotia’s 19th premier with what would eventually become more than 30 counts of sexual misconduct, including rape, involving nearly three dozen women over a 40-year period, dating from his days as a […]

Filed Under: Featured, Province House Tagged With: Gerald Regan, NOT GUILTY: The Trial of Gerald Regan

“A victory for tenants everywhere”

Morning File, Wednesday, November 27, 2019

November 27, 2019 By Philip Moscovitch 5 Comments

Party this Sunday! The annual Halifax Examiner subscriber party takes place at Bearly’s (1269 Barrington Street) on Sunday, Dec 1, from 4 pm – 7 pm. Music! Giveaways! Merch! Writers meeting readers! Free entry for Examiner subscribers. You can subscribe here or you can buy a subscription at the event. I look forward to seeing […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Aaron Naparstek, Black Power Hour, Chris Milburn, CN strike, Corey Rogers, double strollers, Doug Gordon, El Jones, Elizabeth Fry Society, Elizabeth McMillan, Gerald Regan, housing crisis, Jenna Hopson, Mayor Bill Steinberg, Pam Berman, parking rates, Peter Ziobrowski, public transit, Rebekkah Hyams, rent control, Sarah Goodyear, Sharon Hyman, Sylvain Charlebois, tenants rights, Uber

Verdict without end

More than 20 years after former Nova Scotia premier Gerald Regan was acquitted of sexually assaulting multiple women, other women are still coming forward with still more stories of what he did to them, still needing finally "to be heard." Including "Catherine."

April 15, 2019 By Stephen Kimber

I shouldn’t be surprised. Not after Me-too. But I am. Still. It happens more often than you might suppose. I’ll be attending a public event, and someone will come up to me. “Aren’t you the guy who wrote that book, the one about…?” Yes, I am, but it was published 20 years ago. “My sister…...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: #MeToo, Gerald Regan, Me-Too, sexual assault

Gerald Regan and the legacy of our #MeToo moment

It isn't the jury's verdict from 1998 we should be remembering today, but the fact the RCMP and prosecutors finally chose to believe women over one of the country's most powerful political men. And, more important, that women — lots of them — stood up for other women, and said #MeToo.

December 17, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

“Members of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdicts?” The court clerk asked her rote question with a wavering, tell-me-don’t-tell-me tone that seemed to capture perfectly the nervous, nerve-wracked mood among the more than three dozen men and women sitting in the Halifax Law Court’s Courtroom 3-1 on the blustery afternoon of December 18,...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: #MeToo, Gerald Regan, justice, sexual assault

From who me to #metoo

In which Stephen McNeil continues to be Stephen McNeil, dismissing calls to apologize to a young man for the province's own security failure. But there is also some small hint of change in the #metoo air. We take our good news where we find it.

May 13, 2018 By Stephen Kimber

Why am I not surprised? Last Monday, Halifax police dropped all charges against the 19-year-old they’d arrested less than a month before for “unauthorized use of a computer with fraudulent intent.” The fact is this case has been a cock-up from the beginning. Even before the beginning. Perhaps especially before the beginning. Let’s review. On...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: FOIPOP security failure, Gerald Regan, Stephen McNeil

Winning, losing, and Jamie Baillie

While I don’t believe Baillie should have won last spring’s provincial election, he probably should not have lost either. If he hadn’t — if Stephen McNeil’s Liberals hadn’t barely sputtered across the majority finish line four long hours after vote counting began — Jamie Baillie probably wouldn’t have considered leaving a job he’d only recently begun to grow into.

November 6, 2017 By Stephen Kimber

Many years ago, probably after an election campaign he’d just lost that he believed he should have won, I interviewed then-Nova Scotia Liberal politician Gerald Regan. He was in a philosophical mood. “Victory and defeat,” he told me, paraphrasing a Rudyard Kipling poem, “are equal imposters. Sometimes you lose when you should win; sometimes you...

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Filed Under: Commentary, Featured, Province House, Subscribers only Tagged With: Gerald Regan, Jamie Baille, Stephen Kimber

PRICED OUT

A collage of various housing options in HRM, including co-ops, apartment buildings, shelters, and tents
PRICED OUT is the Examiner’s investigative reporting project focused on the housing crisis.

You can learn about the project, including how we’re asking readers to direct our reporting, our published articles, and what we’re working on, on the PRICED OUT homepage.

2020 mass murders

Nine images illustrating the locations, maps, and memorials of the mass shootings

All of the Halifax Examiner’s reporting on the mass murders of April 18/19, 2020, and recent articles on the Mass Casualty Commission and newly-released documents.

Updated regularly.

Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

A blonde woman and a white man with a dark beard, both wearing pajama bottoms and either a red or a pink bra, have a pillow fight on a bed.

Episode 84 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne, is published.

After a year’s worth of singles and videos, the Halifax duo is finally releasing its first recorded project in the form of FLUTTER, a six-song genre-agnostic EP that’s deeply personal and incredibly catchy. Art Ross and Aaron Green return to the show a year later to dish on their music-industry immersion, why Ross’ sapphic lyrics strike all kinds of chords, and where you can see them this summer.

Listen to the episode here.

Check out some of the past episodes here.

Subscribe to the podcast to get episodes automatically downloaded to your device — there’s a great instructional article here. Email Suzanne for help.

You can reach Tara here.

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