Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements I knew something was up when my eldest daughter texted me: “Dad, how often do you think about the Roman Empire?” I replied quickly – and honestly. “At least every other day.” “That’s what I thought,” she wrote. “I know why you’re asking this,” I responded. It had begun just a few days [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few” (Matthew 9:37). Therefore, the labourers often get asked to do more labour than that for which they have time. In June, I was asked to delegate to the Dufferin Peel Catholic District School Board to request that they cease to fly the Gay [...]
Rory Leishman: Nothing can better illustrate the theological degradation of the mainline Protestant churches than their pathetic twists and turnings in their conceptions of murder and assisted suicide. As originally enacted, Section 14 of the Criminal Code provided that anyone who unlawfully kills another person can be found guilty of murder, even if the victim begged to be killed. However, under the [...]
Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements Rick McGinnis: I have a theory that we only started thinking seriously about generations after World War II when – in Western countries at least – it became rarer for multiple generations to inhabit the same household. Instead of being divided roughly into “young” and “old” we became obsessed with the small differences between discrete [...]
In August of 2023 at the University of Regina, UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity filed a court application seeking to strike down Saskatchewan’s “Use of Preferred First Name and Pronouns by Students” policy. This policy protects children from being pressured or manipulated (absent parental knowledge and consent) into embarking on a dangerous and futile quest to become the opposite [...]
From the editor’s desk Two recent books, both published by Broadside Books, delve into the roots of today’s woke ideology to describe its origins and march “through the institutions” as Antonio Gramsci called for: The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and The Triumph of Identity Politics by Richard Hanania ($39.50, 270 pages) and America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical [...]
John Carpay: Judging by Canadians’ overwhelming compliance with lockdowns, vaccine passports, and travel restrictions since March of 2020, it unfortunately seems that most Canadians meet authoritarianism with unquestioning obedience. University of Manitoba psychology professor Robert Altemeyer argues that those with an authoritarian personality are submissive even to authority figures who are dishonest, corrupt, and inept. They persist in their belief that their [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements Social media as we know it is nearly a quarter century old, and by now I think we have some idea of its dangers as well as its benefits. There was a reminder of those dangers earlier this year – just one of many we get, and one that you’re likely to miss [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey Imagine that you’re mentally ill, convinced that you’re worthless, and waging an internal war with yourself over whether you ought to keep on living or not. You weigh the pros and cons. You consider who might be sad over your death, and so you attempt to keep lists of things to look [...]
Rory Leishman: For 15 years, blameless Christians dedicated to the care and teaching of children within Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (IRS) have been lumped in with the few perverts in their midst and vilified with the most outrageous smears. Yet no political leaders or clerical leaders within the churches -- Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, and United -- which ran these schools for the [...]
Josie Luetke: Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey There’s a quotation I really like from author and left-wing activist Andrew Boyd: “You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.” When you use abortion victim photography in activism, as I have for almost a decade now, [...]
John Carpay: When statisticians speak of “excess” deaths, they speak of a higher-than-expected death rate. The number of “expected” deaths (for a country or province, for one year or some other time period) is based on the population’s age, race, employment, education, income, marriage rates, birth rates, and mortality statistics for previous periods. For example, statisticians might expect 300,000 people to die in [...]
Rick McGinnis: Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements In her new book On Class, Toronto writer and editor Deborah Dundas talks about showing up for a job interview at a television station overdressed. Brought up with a working-class background, she recalls that she “looked like I was pretending to be a banker,” while the people interviewing her dressed more casually, familiar [...]
Paul Tuns: From the editor's desk Typical headlines on a local crime story read “Nebraska teen who used pills to end pregnancy gets 90 days in jail” (New York Times) and “Nebraska teen sent to jail over illegal abortion” (Rolling Stone). The first is misleading, the second an outright lie. Read the actual news story and one discovers that Celeste Burgess, 18, [...]
Rory Leishman: Time and again, the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pledged that as of March 17, 2024, physicians and nurse practitioners in Canada will be authorized to kill suicidal patients who are suffering solely from a mental illness. What can account for this appalling prospect? The Criminal Code of Canada clearly and unambiguously states in sections 14 and [...]