The worst part of being a TV critic, I used to joke to my friends, was having to watch television. Like most jokes, it was mostly a statement of fact. The worst thing about watching TV in the last decade or so was a ubiquity of a lazy trope, played for laughs, that cast men as the village idiot of the family. [...]
Dorothy Carston, 94, has never missed a LifeChain and took part in the event in Kirkland Lake despite eight-degree temperatures, wind and rain. She said you are never too old to come out to LifeChain. According to LifeChain founder Royce Dunn, 1,890 chains took place in 1,552 cities across the United States and Canada on Oct. 6. Campaign Life Coalition [...]
Two years after Campaign Life Coalition Youth launched the Defund Abortion campaign in Ontario that included two rallies at Queen’s Park, two sets of demonstrations at the riding offices, petitions, pamphleting, and a province-wide poll, CLC began rolling out the initiative across the country in September and October. On Sept. 28, 40 people attended the rally organized by CLC Newfoundland and Labrador [...]
A teacher resource uncovered by the Toronto Sun that suggests teachers change the names of Mother’s and Father’s Day is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of political correctness when it comes to homosexualist propaganda being foisted upon Ontario schools. The Social Justice Begins With Me program, a “literature-based resource kit for early years to Grade 8” is intended to [...]
It’s a Girl (Shadowline Films, directed by Evan Grae Davis, 60 minutes, $24.95) It’s a Girl, a feature-length documentary directed by Evan Grae Davis, exposes the problem of gendercide in India and China. Filmed on location, the film is informative, well-paced, and visually stimulating in its mix of background information, animations, personal stories, and expert commentary. The key message is that while [...]
I didn’t watch television for nearly 20 years, roughly from when Knight Rider hit the air to when the first season of The Sopranos debuted. Only a few years after that I found myself – quite against my will – writing a daily TV column for a national newspaper, but as the one-time child who grew up with That Girl and Petticoat [...]
A school board in Windsor has laid off 90 teachers due to declining enrolment and financial difficulties. Faced with an almost $18-million deficit, the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board will be welcoming only 1,000 junior kindergarten students after 2,400 graduated from high school last June. Board supervisor Norbert Hartmann noted in an April report that half of the board’s 38 schools were [...]
I have always been interested in words. This fall, I began my third year at Carleton University where I am studying linguistics. I recently did an article for The Interim blog Soconvivium about a story in The Atlantic, which discussed women waiting to have children and the means some might use if they grew too old to conceive naturally. The piece reminded [...]
A study released by the Fraser Institute says that contrary to reports that have the cost of raising a child exceeding $200,000 or $10,000 a year, the actual cost of a child more likely between $3,000 and $4,500, or between $55,000 and $80,000 from birth to the age of 18. In “The Cost of Raising Children,” Chris Sarlo, a professor of economics [...]
Despite media spin that Pope wants to change Church focus, he said nothing new Pope Francis gave a long interview to a Jesuit magazine and the media seems to be picking up on a tiny portion of it and misrepresenting what he said. In an interview with the magazine La Civilta Catholica, and reprinted in other Jesuit publications including America, [...]
In late August, the Parti Quebecois government of Pauline Marois began leaking the details of their proposed Charter of Quebec Values, which would severely limit religious and cultural expression in state-run workplaces. If the bill, which will be introduced to the National Assembly later this Fall, becomes law it would ban the wearing of religious attire by state employees, including crosses and [...]
At the end of July, the Campaign Life Coalition interns collaborated with the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR) for weekly street activism. A lady stopped to ask us why embryonic human beings should be considered valuable. After all, we consume chicken embryos when we have eggs for breakfast, don’t we? (Actually no – those eggs have not been fertilized.) She went [...]
Michael Doyle fought to uphold pro-life principles in Toronto Catholic schools. The oldest of seven brothers, Michael Doyle passed away peacefully on July 27, 2013, after losing a battle with cancer. Born and raised in Dundrum, Ireland, Michael, and his wife Anita, immigrated to Toronto in 1968. In addition to being a husband, father of four and grand-father of six, [...]
Roger Kimball is a well-read man. Reading through his latest book, The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (St. Augustine’s Press, $36, 356 pages), I couldn’t help but envy whatever combination of discipline, habit, choice of profession and luck has let him trawl through the remainder tables of ideas and come up with a collection of essays [...]
What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster by Jonathan V. Last (Encounter, $28, 230 pages) In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich published an influential book, The Population Bomb. The manuscript was originally entitled, “Population, Resources, and Environment,” and Erhlich warned of impending doom if global population growth was not significantly curtailed. Erhlich predicted environmental catastrophe, famine, and even war [...]