Paul Tuns: On May 14, thousands of Canadians took part in the largest annual demonstration on Parliament Hill, the National March for Life, organized by Campaign Life Coalition. Before participants marched through the streets of the nation’s capital, they heard pro-life speakers [...]
Paul Tuns: Nova Scotia Education Minister Brendan Maguire said that parents do not have “rights over a child.” Maguire, a Liberal who crossed the floor to join the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative government of Premier Tim Houston in 2024, was answering a question about Bill 201 in the provincial House of Assembly. Bill 201 proposes to, among other items, make it illegal [...]
Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist David Bather Woods (Chicago, $39, 294 pages) Arthur Schopenhauer has been described as a miserable philosopher who saw human life swing between pain and boredom, suffering that is relieved only partially through aesthetic contemplation and the renunciation of desire: “the world and life can afford us no true satisfaction.” The only antidote [...]
Sarah Stilton, Review: The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto by Leah Libresco Sargeant (Notre Dame University Press, $37.95, 219 pages) Leah Libresco Sargeant, an author and speaker, provocatively argues in her brief The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist that it is not women who form families by choosing marriage and motherhood that betray the sisterhood, but rather radical feminists who ignore or hide [...]
Paul Tuns: On May 1, Campaign Life Coalition organized demonstrations at 49 locations in nine provinces outside the constituency offices of Liberal MPs to encourage the elected representatives to put pressure on senators to defeat or amend Bill C-9. Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, is a government bill that, if passed, will amend the Criminal [...]
Digital Currency or Digital Control: Decoding CBDC and the Future of Money Nicholas Anthony (Cato Institute, $21.95, 160 pages) Version 1.0.0 Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are being researched and developed by central banks and policymakers, and author Nicholas Anthony warns it is nothing less than “an attempt to reinvent money as we know it.” CBDCs are inspired by cryptocurrencies [...]
Paul Tuns: James (Jim) Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition, died on May 18 at the age of 82. Hughes became involved in the pro-life movement in the 1970s after seeing a Toronto Right to Life presentation at the Canadian National Exhibition. After a conversation with his wife, Virginia, they agreed that he would give up his successful career in business [...]
On May 18th, Canadian pro-lifers lost a champion whose legacy is difficult to overstate. Jim Hughes was more than a leader, a founder, and an activist: he was, for decades, the face of the pro-life movement in Canada. When the media wanted to know the reaction to an event affecting the unborn, they did not call the Catholic Chancery, they called Jim [...]
Pro-lifers dodge a Molotov cocktail at Portugal’s March for Life On March 21, thousands of people marched in Lisbon and a number of other cities around Portugal. The Portuguese Federation for Life stressed the focus of the March was on “the dignity of all human beings for life from the moment of conception until natural death, and for families.” The March was [...]
Donald DeMarco: When Dante entered the vestibule of Hell, he witnessed the dreary souls “who lived without blame, and without praise; but were for themselves.” These were the apathetic souls whom both Heaven and Hell rejected. Dante was struck by sheer number of these lost souls. “So long a train of people,” he said to Virgil, his guide, “that I should never [...]
Josie Luetke: For years now, Canadians have slumbered through—or even cheered—the steady erosion of our civil liberties. It has thus been a pleasant surprise to see a notable pushback against Bill C-9, the so-called Combatting Hate Act, from a population that prides itself on hating hatred. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Labour Congress, and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and [...]
John Carpay: Until 1969, it was a crime in Canada for two men to have consensual sex in private. Then prime minister Pierre Trudeau famously said that “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Parliament went on to remove consensual sodomy from Canada’s Criminal Code. If the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation, [...]
Victor Penney: It sounds strange, but it’s true: the best player in college basketball this year was made in a lab. His name is Cameron Boozer. The 18-year-old just had an incredible season in the NCAA, and yet, underneath the accolades, there’s a wound at the heart of this young man’s origin story, a scar which is no fault of his own, [...]
Rory Leishman: Over the past 40 years, left-wing, secular zealots in the courts and legislatures of Canada have mounted an escalating attack on the rights and freedoms of theologically orthodox Christians -- Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical -- who uphold the traditional teachings of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The Supreme Court of Canada got the process underway in 1985 with its [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements At the end of last year Helen Andrews (whose book Boomers I reviewed here five years ago) published an essay in the online magazine Compact called “The Great Feminization,” looking over the world now that women have achieved parity and are edging into dominance of certain professions and institutions. It was a sensation [...]