Several dozen demonstrators turned up outside the Metro Toronto Convention Centre Oct. 18 to draw attention to former prime minister John Turner’s chairmanship of a major fundraising dinner there.
The event was the 21st annual Cardinal’s Dinner, which attracted about 1,800 people at $175 per plate. Recipients of proceeds from last year’s dinner included the Birthright pregnancy service and the Rosalie Hall residence for single mothers.
The demonstrators were there this year because Mr. Turner, as justice minister in 1969, shepherded the passage of an omnibus bill through Parliament that, among other contentious aspects, legalized abortion. Some demonstrators, holding roses, passed out information pamphlets while others, as members of the Show the Truth project, stood along Front Street with large, graphic placards illustrating the effects of abortion.
After the dinner began, participants gathered near the convention centre entrance for a prayer vigil. No mention was made at the dinner about the demonstration outside.
Alex Vernon, a spokesman for some of the demonstrators, said the effort was successful in educating people on the abortion issue and in letting it be known that history will not be “whitewashed” on the matter of Turner’s role in introducing legal abortion to Canada.
“I’m very pleased with the numbers that came out,” he said. “The young faces impressed everybody, especially the reporters that were there.” The Toronto Star and Toronto Sun ran coverage the next day.
Vernon added that many attendees took the pamphlets that were handed out. He stressed that the purpose of the demonstration was to call attention to Turner, and not to protest against the Cardinal or the dinner. He said demonstrators had assured archdiocesan officials beforehand of prayers for the success of the event and the many fine charities it supports.
Rosemary Connell, spokesperson for the Show the Truth demonstrators at the site, said her group felt the need to make a statement on behalf of the human beings aborted since the 1969 omnibus bill. “Perhaps (people) needed a reminder. We remember what Turner did.”
Demonstrators Judy Johnson and Anne Dobson had an opportunity to speak to Turner before the dinner.
“He said, ‘You ladies don’t know what you’re talking about. I do. I was there,'” recalled Johnson. Turner also claimed he was in good standing with the church and called the demonstrators “a bunch of extremists” before he entered the convention centre.
The Archdiocese of Toronto had issued a statement on Oct.1 in response to criticisms from what it called a “small number of persons” regarding the choice of Turner as chairman of the dinner. The unsigned statement noted that the legislation put forth by Turner “merely ratified the decisions of the highest courts in Canada and other jurisdictions.”
What has happened since in Canada, according to the statement, “is the responsibility of all of society, not of any one individual, particularly one who neither willed nor mandated what came later … By action or inaction, all of Canadian society has brought this about.”
Interviewed briefly at the convention centre’s entrance by The Interim, Suzanne Scorsone, director of communications for the archdiocese of Toronto, said “the ultimate objective of protection of all human beings from conception to natural death is something that everyone holds in common. There may be differences of opinion as to how to get there. But the ultimate objective is something that everyone shares.”
Asked whether awarding chairmanship of such a prestigious event to someone such as Turner undermined the church’s position when it spoke on life issues, Scorsone said, “You have the archdiocesan statement and that pretty well deals with those issues. The problem now is that there is no abortion law at all, not even a highly restricted one … That’s what ought to be concentrated on. We all ought to work together to raise the respect for all human beings in this country.”
In response to a question about whether the statement’s claim that abortion is the responsibility “of all of society” absolves an individual of his or her actions, Scorsone said, “All of us have a responsibility to try to deal with the issues.” When a demonstrator further tried to question her regarding the statement, she replied, “I’m not going to get into specific debate on the issues. You have the statement and it pretty well speaks for itself.”
Historian and Catholic Insight magazine editor Father Alphonse de Valk observed that Turner’s abortion legislation changed an outright prohibition on abortion into a “theoretical prohibition only, with so many loopholes that within a few years, it became clear that the 1969 law actually permitted abortion on demand.”
He characterized as “a radical rewriting of Canadian history” the view that Turner merely ratified decisions of the highest courts in Canada and other jurisdictions. “I ask: what courts? What jurisdictions? … There were no decisions by the highest courts in Canada at all.”
de Valk added that the suggestion that abortion is the responsibility of society, and not the individual, makes the individual appear to be helpless in the clutch of irresistible forces of some sort. “But we are not the products of Darwinian evolution, or of unseen impersonal forces that make us do things for which we can’t be held responsible,” he said. “We are responsible … It was not as if Mr. Turner had never heard the Catholic view of abortion.”
Turner’s chairmanship came in the wake of controversy over former U.S president Bill Clinton’s speaking appearance at a Catholic hospital fundraiser in Hamilton earlier this year, as well as the Canadian Catholic Health Association’s use of David Suzuki and the intensely pro-abortion Stephen Lewis as keynote speakers at its past two annual meetings.
Meanwhile, LifeSite News has learned that Turner will again appear with Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic at another Catholic fundraising dinner, this one sponsored by the Meritus organization on Nov. 14. Tickets for the event, called The Tastes of Heaven, will be $500 per plate. It is being billed as an “exquisite Italian festa in support of Catholic Missions in Canada.”