Philip Roth Novelist Philip Roth passed away May 22 at the age of 85. Roth is certainly in the pantheon of famous and accomplished 20th century American authors. During the 1990s, he won a National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and a Pulitzer Prize for literature for three different novels. Roth had a number of early successes with a collection [...]
Since last December, patrons of a Toronto institution have been harassed as they enter. The sidewalk outside is regularly picketed by protesters shouting “Murderer!” and “You’ve got blood on your hands!” at those within, many of whom are visibly rattled by the ordeal. The owners of this institution regularly call the police, but the right to assembly of these protesters is clearly [...]
Traditionally, Campaign Life Coalition reminds its supporters that they should vote for the local pro-life candidate for MPP regardless of party affiliation. If there is more than one pro-life candidate, voters could then look at other issues and choose among the pro-life candidates that best represents their overall views. Unfortunately, not many voters have that opportunity; there are few ridings in which [...]
In one of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, a character identifies the two ways he went bankrupt: “gradually and then suddenly.” For decades, pro-lifers have been raising the alarm about the gradual, subtle, but ultimately disastrous effects that the legal acceptance of pre-natal infanticide has on culture, all under the spurious banner of “choice.” Pregnant mothers in dire situations are deprived of the ability [...]
To the victor go the spoils; fortune favours the bold; who dares, wins. These are just a few of the idioms that convey the enduring connection between victory and audacity. Triumph is often a kind of retrospective blessing upon the prophets of action whose visionary deeds favourably shape the arenas in which they struggle. Those who would win must first have the [...]
At America’s founding, the moral character of slavery was not in doubt. The contradiction of self-evident truths of man’s God-given rights being held in tandem with an iniquitous institution that violated those right by treating people as property was a scandal even then. Laws proposing slavery’s eventual abolition were discussed, and bans on slavery in new territories were proposed; its eventual elimination [...]
It is a cliche of modern life that New Year’s resolutions are made to be broken. Perhaps by the time you have read this editorial you have already returned to the bad habits or behaviour you vowed to cease in 2018. We hope, though, that there is a resolution we all make that we all keep this year: a solid commitment to [...]
When the story broke that several Saskatchewan Party leadership contenders were pro-life, the reaction focused on the fact that Ken Cheveldayoff did not have an exception for rape. Within 24 hours, the presumptive frontrunner in the race to replace Brad Wall was backing down from his principled pro-life position. Of course, he said, he supported a “woman’s right to choose” in “circumstances [...]
It is a cliche of modern life that New Year’s resolutions are made to be broken. Perhaps by the time you have read this editorial you have already returned to the bad habits or behaviour you vowed to cease in 2018. We hope, though, that there is a resolution we all make that we all keep this year: a solid commitment to [...]
Spring, in December, is unthinkable. Nature is a husk of faded flowers and fallen fruit: its breezes have become blizzards, its streams have all stopped. And yet we know that there is a term to the world’s cold fury, a limit past which its tempests may not pass. The endless cycle of seasons is a permanent lesson in transience, a lesson so [...]
The Washington Post reports on the search for good genes that is helping the assisted reproduction business. Some stats about the state of the industry: “The multibillion-dollar fertility industry is booming, and experimenting with business models that are changing the American family in new and unpredictable ways. Would-be parents seeking donor eggs and sperm can pick and choose from long checklists of physical and [...]
This cartoon was originally published in The Interim September 1994. When a half dozen Members of Provincial Parliament sat and (presumably) listened to the dozen and a half presenters on the anti-free speech bubble zones before the standing committee on general government on Oct. 19, they left the impression of merely going through the motions of listening to experts and [...]
There is a new book out by Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders called Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians is Not Enough (Penguin, $27.95). In brief he argues Canada has too much land and too few people. In some ways he is counter-intuitive, saying that more people are necessary for Canada to become an environmental leader. Typically, more population is seen [...]
There was a time when many Progressive Conservatives and Republicans supported so-called abortion rights and many Liberals, NDP, and Democrats were pro-life. (The joke used to be that all those right-wing politicians needed abortion to be legal so they could cover up their mistresses’ pregnancies.) The early pages of The Interim featured advertisements for both Liberals for Life and Tories for Life. [...]
Last month CBS reported on the supposed success Iceland had in eliminating Down syndrome yet it was immediately obvious that the Nordic country had done no such thing. Rather, through nudging expectant mothers toward genetic testing and a cultural predisposition to abort preborn babies with the chromosomal disorder, Iceland had succeeded not in eliminating Down syndrome but rather people with Down syndrome. [...]