When I was a boy, I heard nothing about animal rights. I guess that’s not surprising, as I also heard nothing about animal duties. In those days, the adults I associated with took for granted that duties and rights go together. As no one I heard of promoted animal duties, it would have seemed peculiar if someone had promoted animal rights. I [...]
Law Matters John Carpay Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) tries to ban pro-life expression whenever it can. ASC is a non-government body composed of advertisers, large corporations, law firms, the CBC, Toronto Star, and Globe and Mail. ASC thinks it is qualified to determine what is “true, fair and accurate” when it comes to controversial issues like abortion. ASC rulings are [...]
There’s a scene at the beginning of the season finale of The Young Pope that sums up this controversial HBO series as much as any of a dozen or so startling scenes in the previous nine hours. The titular pontiff, played by Jude Law, has just been told by his director of publicity that he is scheduled to lead a group of [...]
Pierre Lemieux Among the numerous candidates for leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Lemieux is one of the few who merits serious consideration. During 10 years in Parliament, he distinguished himself with an impeccably pro-life record and now he also stands out for denouncing the usurpation of legislative powers by the Supreme Court of Canada. In a [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman For the past year, headlines across Canada have tracked a shocking increase in deaths from overdoses of illicit opioids. The final count for 2016 in British Columbia could reach close to 900; that is up more than 70 per cent over 2015 and twice the annual death toll in the province from traffic accidents. For Canada [...]
There’s a story my family likes to tell about the only time my mother’s photo ever appeared in a national newspaper. She had been invited to the offices of the Toronto Star with several other women, where the paper had apparently set up a test kitchen. Several dishes were baked, interviews were conducted, and photos were taken of the women. When the [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell Please don’t breed any more acronyms and initialisms. The speed with which they increase and multiply overwhelms me. Trying to figure out what these abbreviations mean, or don’t mean, is like puzzling over quotes from an unfamiliar language. Oh, I realize that some acronyms are widely understood, like OPEC, a political cartel and AIDS, a [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman Who would have thought that it might take a crass narcissist like United States President-elect Donald Trump to curb the greatest moral catastrophe in the history of the United States: namely, the deliberate, mass slaughter in the womb of more than 50 million babies over the past 40 years. Trump has got off to a promising [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell Pity the poor legislators. Increasingly, Big Brother watches their every move. Well, not just Big Brother, Big Sister, too. Being constantly watched is intimidating. Having what you painstakingly put together repeatedly taken apart is demeaning. But that’s the fate of legislators under a judicial dictatorship. From time to time, I’ve called Big Brother/Sister, also known [...]
I have always been a sucker for the “first-contact” subgenre of sci-fi movies – films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Contact, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, District 9 and, at the very genesis of the genre, The Day The Earth Stood Still. Distinct from the usual sort of sci-fi that re-imagines westerns or war movies with ray guns and space [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell "Well, they’ve done it,” Dingwall said. “Done what?” I asked. “Removed the stigma from suicide,” he replied. “By letting doctors help patients kill themselves, the Supreme Court transformed a calamity into a cure.” “Some think the ruling is very restrictive,” I said, “requiring intolerable suffering, among other conditions.” “Maybe for now,” he said. “However, the [...]
Depending on what you read on my Facebook page this month, the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency was either the onset of fascism on American soil or the beginning of the return of American greatness. There was little in the way of middle ground, and keep in mind that the majority of my friends on social media are Canadians, [...]
I was born and raised a city kid; you have to go back to Scotland and Queen Victoria to find someone in my family who lived and worked in the country. Pavement and asphalt are my natural habitat, so it was with some unease that I bought my first pair of hiking shoes this year, in preparation for a trip to Ireland [...]
National Affairs Rory Leishman The vise of oppression is closing ever so tightly on pro-life physicians in Canada that they are liable soon to be drummed out of the profession for steadfastly refusing to collaborate in the deliberate killing of patients. That seems to be just fine with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal colleagues. In the government’s recently [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell Disloyalty spoils everything. Look what it’s done to professional sports. I’m not talking about things like fixing games or using performance-enhancing chemicals. I’m talking about shredding bonds between players and fans. I don’t know about you, but when I get interested in a sport, I commit seriously to particular teams and players. Because of roster [...]