Former gay PQ head quits politics MONTREAL – Former Parti Quebecois leader Andre Boisclair, the first open homosexual to be chosen leader of a major party, has announced he will leave politics. His party fell to third, behind the Liberal Party of Quebec and Action Democratique in March, and he subsequently was forced from the party’s leadership. Few pundits blamed his sexual [...]
"In all my wanderings, it seems to me that the grace of God is in courtesy.” So wrote the famous English writer of the 1930s, Hilaire Belloc. As this is my first column for 1992 – the January column was written in December 1991 – I was trying to think of something positive as a subject. Then, on Sunday last, I happened [...]
Columnist alarmed by motherhood authors TORONTO – In the October issue of Chatelaine, Katrina Onstad complained that U.S. author Rebecca Walker is promoting the joys of family life in her new book, Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence. Walker, the daughter of Alice Walker, author of The Colour Purple, has repudiated her mother’s feminist worldview – for which she [...]
Another attack on the rights of pro-lifers on our Canadian campuses has occurred. This time, the attempt to silence pro-life students came from the Memorial University of Newfoundland Students Union Board of Directors (MUNSU). MUN for LIFE, Memorial’s pro-life club, was denied ratification on Sept. 26 at a MUNSU board meeting. Up until then, Patrick Hanlon, club president, and members of the [...]
Canadian families as a whole are surviving – although not doing as well as before The headlines in papers and announcements from broadcasters on Stastics Canada’s report Family Portrait: Families, Marital Status, Households and Living Arrangementsdeclared the traditional family nearly dead. Reporters pointed to census data that shows for the first time in Canadian history, “more than one-half of the adult population [...]
He is Britain’s second-most popular children’s author. His books are bestsellers, have won numerous awards for literature and have received glowing reviews from all the fashionable newspapers. Critics hail him as a new Tolkien. His books pop up on many reading lists for young people and Hollywood is finishing the first film-adaptation of his most popular book – just in time for [...]
We had a pro-life guest for dinner from out of town recently. She had been doing pro-life work for ages and was discouraged. She started to list our defeats and setbacks and hers would have filled a phone book if I hadn’t interrupted her. “Wait a minute!” I cried excitedly. “I know a guy who helped organize a LifeChain this year that [...]
Every year, Canada’s pro-life university students look forward to the National Campus Life Network national symposium on the final weekend in September. The symposium is designed to educate, network and motivate post-secondary student leaders for pro-life activism. Students from across the country travel by car, bus, subway and plane to partake in this important event. This year, 46 attendees, representing 22 Canadian [...]
To a large extent, the recent election in Ontario was an utter waste of time. Democracy was shattered as one single issue was abused, exploited, caricatured and then used to frighten people into voting Liberal and re-electing a government that broke more promises than most in living memory. A shame and a sham. The issue, of course, was faith-based funding for schools [...]
Kitchener school board situation serves as a sterling example The elevation of an “open mind” to the status of an unchallengeable moral principle is, as a matter of plain fact, a perfect example of being closed-minded. Professor Allan Bloom made this point in his best-selling critique of higher education, The Closing of the American Mind, a book that offended a legion of [...]
On a mild fall day, I sit in the Dreamers’ Peace Garden in Regent Park South, contemplating the Month of the Dead. I offer my prayers in union with the one who, in another garden, brought his own agony to prayer. I hand to him my own grief and the grief of my counsellees. According to a plaque affixed to a rock: [...]
On Nov. 30 - Dec. 1, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is holding the First International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, which will take place at the Four Points by Sheraton - Toronto Airport Hotel. Most of the leaders of groups that oppose the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide will be speaking at this Symposium, including Bobby Schindler, the brother of [...]
The Family Coalition Party garnered less than one in 100 votes cast in the Oct. 10 Ontario election, leading some people, including pro-lifers, to ask: is the party still relevant? Admittedly, the juxtaposition of this fact and this question is unfair, although getting just 0.8 per cent of the vote is a reflection of larger problems. These problems lead to serious questions [...]
A spokesperson for Rick Hansen’s Wheels in Motion research organization into spinal cord injuries has confirmed that its research methods include the use of human embryos. And Hansen himself has been quoted as saying: “To limit the science based on fears or political pressure would be wrong. I expect government leaders will be able to differentiate between fear or conjecture or political lobbying [...]
One hot, humid day last summer, Ann Wilson, then the director of downtown Toronto’s Aid to Women office, heard yelling on the street below. Such commotion is not unusual, given the location of the office next door to an abortuary, in a red-light district and surrounded by drug activity. Still, she wondered what was going on. A new sidewalk witness, Vanya Gobbi [...]