The Alumni Association is honoured to present this year’s Alumni Awards to four outstanding individuals to celebrate their significant accomplishments and contributions to the King’s community and beyond.
The awards will be presented at Alumni Day on June 6.
Robert Cribb
Judge J. Elliott Hudson Distinguished Alumni Award
In recognition of the outstanding contributions Judge J. Elliott Hudson made to the University of King’s College, to his profession as Family Court Judge and to his volunteer commitment, the Alumni Association established the Judge J. Elliott Hudson Distinguished Alumni Award. It recognizes King’s alumni who, like Judge Hudson, have made significant contributions to their discipline, community, charitable or volunteer work.
Robert Cribb, BA(Hons)’89, is the founder and director of the Investigative Journalism Bureau and an investigative reporter whose work has been featured on CBC, CTV, Global News and in the Toronto Star and Postmedia newspapers. He has received national reporting awards and citations for investigations into offshore tax evasion, organized crime, child exploitation, human trafficking, dangerous doctors, environmental threats and public safety. He was part of the international reporting team that produced the Pulitzer Prize-winning Panama Papers investigation in 2017. Cribb is founder of the National Student Investigative Reporting Network, past president of the Canadian Association of Journalists and the first international board member of Investigative Reporters and Editors. He is co-author of Digging Deeper: A Canadian Reporter’s Research Guide (Oxford University Press) and recipient of both the Massey Journalism Fellowship and the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy Reporting. He teaches investigative reporting at the University of Toronto.
Cassandra (Cassie) Hayward
Meraki Kudos Young Alumni Achievement Award
The purpose of the Meraki Kudos Young Alumni Achievement Award is to recognize young alumni of the University of King’s College who have achieved significant accomplishments via their professions, volunteer work or other endeavours. All alumni of the university under the age of 35 are eligible for this award.
Cassandra (Cassie) Hayward’s, BA(Hons)’19, commitment to food systems research is rooted in her personal experience with food insecurity and was further shaped during her time at King’s. While studying Political Science and Environment, Sustainability and Society, she represented Canada at the Youth Agricultural Summit in Belgium and addressed the United Nations through the Committee on Global Food Security and the Food and Agriculture Organization on four occasions.
After graduation, Hayward completed an MA in Global Governance at the University of Waterloo and spent nearly two and a half years as a Policy Analyst with Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, focusing on sustainability and food security in food and beverage manufacturing. She later pursued a PhD in Land Economy at the University of Cambridge, where her dissertation examined the sustainability performance of Canada’s largest food and beverage companies.
Reflecting on her decision to leave government for academia, Hayward explains: “my guiding principle has always been to create the greatest possible impact with the skills and experiences that I have. While I valued my public service role, I found institutional barriers limited the change I could achieve, motivating me to pursue doctoral research.”
Hayward submitted her PhD at Cambridge in just three years while simultaneously beginning a Postdoctoral position. Her current research quantifies resource use, including energy and water, in food and beverage manufacturing facilities in the South Yorkshire region, providing corporate and government recommendations for positive sustainability outcomes. She is hopeful that six academic papers focused on sustainability, food security and decarbonization of food systems will be published this year.
President William Lahey
Order of the Ancient Commoner
The Order of the Ancient Commoner recognizes an alum or friend of the college who has given significant support to King’s or to the Alumni Association above and beyond their position or affiliation.
President William Lahey exemplifies the spirit of the Order of the Ancient Commoner through his longstanding commitment to public service, thoughtful leadership and deep dedication to the University of King’s College. Since becoming President and Vice-Chancellor in 2016, he has championed the traditions and values of King’s while guiding the university toward a strong and forward-looking future. His service to the King’s community reflects the very qualities this award was created to recognize.
William Lahey became the 25th President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of King’s College on July 1, 2016. A professor and former provincial Deputy Minister, Lahey received his undergraduate arts degree from Mount Allison University, followed by degrees in jurisprudence from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a Master of Laws from the University of Toronto.
Throughout his career as a legal scholar and senior public servant, President Lahey has worked at the boundaries between law and other disciplines: history, political science, public administration, economics, health policy and environmental management.
President Lahey began his career as clerk for Mr. Justice La Forest of the Supreme Court of Canada and later practiced with the Halifax firm of McInnes, Cooper & Robertson. After eight years in the Nova Scotia public service, including as Assistant Deputy Minister of Health, he joined the faculty of Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law in 2001, where he served as the Director of the Dalhousie Health Law Institute between 2007 and 2011. He continues to teach Canadian legal history at Schulich Law. He has been honoured for teaching excellence by Dalhousie law students on three occasions, in 2004, 2008 and again in 2015. His research spans the fields of administrative, constitutional, health, environmental and regulatory law.
During his public service career, President Lahey was responsible for legislative reform in a number of areas, including workers’ compensation and occupational health and safety, labour relations and labour standards, health system and health professions legislation, and environmental law. In 2012-2013, he worked again with Mr. Justice La Forest to complete a major review of Nova Scotia’s mental health legislation.
As Deputy Minister, Department of Environment and Labour from 2004 to 2007, President Lahey spearheaded the development of the Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act, a far-reaching piece of legislation designed to improve environmental law and policy and to make Nova Scotia a leader in integrating economic growth and environmental protection objectives.
President Lahey has been called upon to advise on some of Nova Scotia’s most challenging public policy issues. In 2013, he co-authored a highly-regarded review of the province’s aquaculture industry with his colleague, Dr. Meinhard Doelle, that recommended significant changes to its regulatory framework in accordance with the principles and concepts of sustainable prosperity. In 2018, he completed An Independent Review of the Province’s Forestry Practices, commonly known as the “Lahey Report”, which emphasizes protection of ecosystems and biodiversity. More recently, in 2021, he completed the Independent Evaluation of Implementation of the Forest Practices Report for Nova Scotia (2018).
President Lahey has played a leading role as Board Chair in the founding, and continuing operation of, Efficiency Nova Scotia, which operates today as EfficiencyOne, Canada’s only regulated energy efficiency utility. It is largely responsible for Nova Scotia’s nation-leading success in reducing electricity use and greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency programs. President Lahey has also served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation and as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs. He was Chair of the Council of Nova Scotia University Presidents from 2019 until 2023. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Autism Nova Scotia.
In 2019, President Lahey received the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration and in 2022, the Queen Elizabeth Platinum Jubilee Medal for contributions to education.
Stephen Kimber
Order of the Ancient Commoner
The Order of the Ancient Commoner recognizes an alum or friend of the college who has given significant support to King’s or to the Alumni Association above and beyond their position or affiliation.
For nearly four decades, Inglis Professor Stephen Kimber has made an extraordinary contribution to the University of King’s College through his teaching, mentorship and leadership. As a longtime faculty member in the School of Journalism, Writing & Publishing and co-founder of the MFA program, Kimber has helped shape generations of writers, journalists and storytellers. His enduring commitment to the King’s community reflects the lasting contribution and stewardship this award was created to honour.
Kimber is an award-winning writer, editor, and broadcaster, and the author of 13 books, including two novels and 11 works of nonfiction. His 2007 novel, Reparations (HarperCollins)—which bestselling Canadian novelist Lawrence Hill called “an entertaining, provocative legal thriller about power and race relations in Nova Scotia… bold, outrageous, and dangerous”—was a finalist for both the 2007 Crime Writers’ of Canada First Novel Award and the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.
Reviewer Ian Colford called his 2020 novel, The Sweetness in the Lime, “a quietly powerful novel, poignant with the sorrow of great loss, uplifting with the joy of discovery.”
Stephen is currently working with Halifax-based Two East Productions to develop a new multimedia project, a TV series and a series of novels, about a fictional police detective that is set in Halifax during World War II.
His most recent nonfiction books include Bitcoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions, a memoir co-written with Jennifer Robertson and published by HarperCollins, and Alexa! Changing the Face of Canadian Politics, a biography of former Nova Scotia and Canadian New Democratic Party leader Alexa McDonough, by Goose Lane. Alexa! won the Evelyn Richardson Award for nonfiction.
His writing has appeared in almost all major Canadian magazines and newspapers. Between 1985 and 2002, he was a weekly political and general interest columnist for the Daily News in Halifax. As a broadcaster, he has been an Ottawa-based current affairs producer for the CTV Television Network and a producer, writer, story editor, and host for numerous CBC television and radio programs. Stephen currently writes a weekly column for the Halifax Examiner and is a contributing editor to Atlantic Business Magazine.
He is a member of the National Advisory Council of The Walrus and has served as the Atlantic Regional Representative on the National Council of The Writers Union of Canada, where he is currently the treasurer. He was previously the president of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and a national board member of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.
