Light is Right Joe Campbell My good friend Bidwell is reducing his possessions and his weight. In common parlance, Bidwell is downsizing. As he is moving from a large two-storey house to a small bungalow, he sees no other viable option. When we last met, I found him brooding over several boxes of books he intended to give away. “It’s [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman On April 20, The Spectator, one of the oldest and most influential weekly, news magazines in Britain, published an intriguing debate on the legalization of euthanasia by two avowed atheists, Sam Leith and Douglas Murray, respectively literary and associate editor for the magazine. In recent years, bills to legalize euthanasia have been repeatedly rejected by the [...]
Laying Down the Lawton Andrew Lawton If you want to practice medicine, leave your beliefs at the door. That’s the key takeaway from a May decision by the Court of Appeal for Ontario ruling that conscience rights for healthcare practitioners effectively don’t exist. At least not when doctors are anywhere but in their own homes with the doors locked and [...]
Law Matters John Carpay Passing a law against “hate” is a popular move, but one that seriously threatens free expression because people cannot agree among themselves on what constitutes hate. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights is now looking at changing federal laws to stem “the propagation of hateful acts and the enticement of hate [...]
After eight seasons, 73 episodes, 47 primetime Emmy awards, and a massive audience that guarantees it a place in pop culture history, Game of Thronesended last month with a half dozen episodes that left fans distraught, angry, or both. Before the final episode aired, an online petition from fans demanding that the eighth and last season be rebooted and rewritten gained a [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman While the Trudeau Liberal government deserves credit for a substantial decline in child poverty over the past few years, there is still much that both the federal and the provincial governments should do to safeguard the lives and enhance the well-being of the poorest and most vulnerable of our fellow Canadians –starting, of course, with babies [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke Acknowledged: This method of abortion, RU-486, marketed in Canada under the brand name Mifegymiso, has downsides. It poses dangerous health risks to women and makes abortion more difficult to protest due to the decentralization of the pill’s consumption and the age and size of the embryo it kills. Abortion proponents are thrilled with Mifegymiso because of [...]
I want to tell you a story about a church catching fire. Over 20 years ago, a parish church in the Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale caught fire and burned down. Holy Family had stood for over ninety years, but by the time the fire was put out nothing was left but the walls. This might have been the end of the story [...]
Laying Down the Lawton Andrew Lawton "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Those oft-cited, immortal words from the Book of Matthew are in many cases used to extol the virtues of small groups for Christians. They took on a fundamentally different meaning for me as I watched [...]
Law Matters John Carpay Jason Kenney, Alberta’s new Premier, stated on election night that “parents know better than politicians what is best for their kids.” His United Conservative Party platform repeatedly referred to “Alberta’s successful tradition of school choice” and “the primary role of parents in choosing how their children are taught.” The UCP platform promises to repeal Bill 24, [...]
John Carpay Since 1982, judges have ruled in dozens of cases where a government, or a governmental authority, has violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (“Charter”). Section 2 of the Charter sets out the fundamental freedoms of association, peaceful assembly, conscience and religion, thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication. [...]
Laying Down the Lawton As the progressive war on free speech wages on, some strange schisms in the left-wing mindset are being revealed. You’ve seen all the stories by now: students are reprimanded for not minding their male privilege, white privilege, heteronormativity, cisgender privilege, and all the other phrases that seem to have been created by a random drawing of [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell Normally, I don’t publicly engage in sex talk. But when a progressive thinker corners me at a cocktail party, I can’t always choose the topic. “Homosexual orientation is innate and fixed,” she said. “You mean gays and lesbians are born with it?” I replied. “It’s due to nature, not nurture.” “Like being masculine or feminine?” [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke I recently attended presentations by Rebecca Oas, the associate director of research for the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), on how the United Nations misrepresents data in order to advance their anti-life and anti-family agenda. She pointed out the U.N.’s habit of confusing lower prevalence rates of contraception usage with lack of access when [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell There sure are a lot of stars, a lot of suns, too. In Canada alone, there is at least one star in most provinces and a multi-province chain of suns. Since modern journalism began in 17th century Europe, stars and suns have proliferated on newspaper mastheads around the world. Try as I may, I can’t [...]