The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, and Where We Go Now Anya Kamenetz (Public Affairs, $37, 338 pages) National Public Radio education correspondent Anya Kamenetz has examined the effect of extended school closures during the pandemic on students and families. She offers vignettes on families coping with the disruption to their children’s regular school routines and there is a great [...]
Interim Staff: In July 1993, Alliance for Life and Campaign Life Coalition hosted a conference that attracted nearly 1300 attendees – some from as far away as Nigeria and England – to Toronto to call on world leaders and policymakers to prioritize human beings over the planet. The national conference, held at the Toronto Holiday Inn, had international overtones with its theme [...]
Paul Tuns: The Halton District School Board is defending one of its teachers who was revealed to be wearing ludicrously large prosthetic breasts because, it claims transgender identity is a protected right un the Ontario Human Rights Code and that due to a 2012 decision by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, self-identity is all that is necessary to claim such rights. After [...]
Paul Tuns: Alan Philips, 63, of St. Catharine’s Ont., has lived with chronic pain for 18 years and has been trying to get spinal fusion surgery to secure the loose vertebrae disc in his spine causing the pain, but his doctor has not approved the surgery and only prescribes opioids for pain. Philips says his drug regiment of — four two-milligram tablets [...]
Andrew Lawton: The minting of Pierre Poilievre as the new Conservative leader shouldn’t surprise anyone. From the time the firebrand Carleton MP launched his campaign, it has been clear that no one was going to catch up to him, or even come close. As always in the aftermath of a leadership race or nomination battle, two words became inescapable: “unity” and “pivot.” [...]
Paul Tuns Analysis: In the last two federal Conservative leadership races, the eventual winner scored victory only after a critical mass of socially conservative party members who backed pro-life leadership candidates with their first and second preferential votes, backed another candidate that some significant portion of rank-and-file pro-life Conservatives found more palatable than the alternatives. In 2017, Andrew Scheer eked past Maxime [...]
Angelica Vecchiato: American-born British royal Meghan Markle’s new podcast Archetypes has been living up to its edgy name, comprehensively challenging the status quo and fighting pervasive feminine gender norms, all the while rippling sound-byte waves across the vast ocean of mainstream media. Relatively popular, Archetypes remained number one on the Spotify charts for two weeks after its release date, displacing the controversial [...]
In defense of fatherhood The Florida legislature, at the urging of Governor Ron DeSantis, passed the Responsible Fatherhood law to help men become better fathers. Studies prove that children do best in a two-parent home where fathers are involved in their children’s lives and where children are statistically less likely to be abused or neglected and have fewer behavioral and psychological problems. [...]
Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey They say you should never read the comments, but we all do anyway. I was interviewed on CBC’s Power and Politics on the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I came home that day to a bunch of notifications on Twitter – not that many, really, but more than I usually have. Your consummate CBC [...]
John Carpay: In Nanjing, a man crosses the street while the pedestrian light is still red. Within seconds, a billboard-sized screen nearby displays his name, his face and an admonition to obey the traffic lights. The Communist Chinese government surveillance cameras have captured the moment, secured an image of the man’s face, compared it to a central database of faces compiled over [...]
Andrew Lawton: Man does not live on Supreme Court decisions alone. The Kansas abortion referendum should serve as a reminder that culture matters far more than politics does. Last month, Kansans rejected a ballot measure that sought to affirm the Kansas state legislature’s right to restrict abortion access. The proposal was defeated 59 per cent to 41 per cent, which is about [...]
Donald DeMarco, Commentary: Poetry in the best sense offers us glimpses into reality that we can ill afford to do without. Science, opinion polls, psychological theories, and the like, are but shadows in comparison with the light by which poetry can illuminate certain realities. G.K. Chesterton maintained that “great poets use the telescope as well as the microscope.” This paradoxical feature may make [...]
Rory Leishman: In addition to overturning the unfounded and outrageous abortion decision in Roe v. Wade (1976), the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health raises another fundamental issue: Who should have primary responsibility in a democracy for determining public policy -- unelected judges or elected legislators? It is a question that Canadians [...]
Paul Tuns: As it does every other July 11 – the date is designated by the United Nations as World Population Day -- the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs released its biannual report on global population and future projections. The World Population Prospects 2022, released a year late due to data-gathering bottlenecks because of the pandemic, predicted that in November, [...]
Angelica Vecchiato: The Haldimand Pregnancy Care and Family Centre, located in Dunnville, Ont., south of Hamilton, has been helping women with their pregnancy and maternal care needs for 18 years. The 22,000 square foot facility, formerly a school building repurposed as a pregnancy care centre, wasn’t always located on Adler Street West. Carol Butler, director of the Haldimand facility, avows that the [...]