I may have been one of only a handful of reviewers in the Western world who bought and read the novel The Children of Men before seeing the film of the same title, released in North America on Christmas Day. Given their mutual premise – a near-future world of total human infertility and the rebirth of hope in the person of an unborn [...]
The late John Muggeridge once told me of the time he met Evelyn Waugh. “I was sitting with my father and celebrating the fact that I’d just received my commission in the army. I was rather proud. He immediately deflated me with some rude comment about the status of my regiment. But I didn’t mind. He was so gifted, so clever and [...]
The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On by Dawn Eden (W Publishing Group, $17.50, 224 pages) Dawn Eden, “a Jewish-born rock journalist turned salty Christian blog queen,” has written “a book for marriage-minded single women who (have) had enough of the Sex and the City lifestyle.” While giving up her promiscuity has been an arduous aspect of her [...]
One of the few bright lights on the Canadian media landscape has gone out. Larry Henderson passed away in his sleep at the age of 89 in London, Ont. Although remembered in the mainstream media mostly for being the first regular anchor of CBC TV’s national newscast from 1954 to 1959, he is regarded in Canada’s pro-life community as a pillar of [...]
When Malcolm Muggeridge died in 1990, it can be said without any fear of hyperbole that one of the most sparkling minds and souls of contemporary Christianity and the pro-life movement had been taken from us. The body died, but the achievements live on, mostly in books such as Jesus, The Man Who Lives, Paul, Envoy Extraordinary, volumes of autobiography, biographies of Mother [...]
Sacrificed? Truth or Politics by Larry D. Spencer (Kayteebella Productions, $17.99, 172 pages) Truth and politics – are they mutually exclusive? After reading Larry Spencer’s new book Sacrificed? Truth or Politics, the answer, unfortunately, seems to be yes. And that’s the main reason every concerned Canadian should read this well-written volume. The book is more than a simple retelling of the details surrounding [...]
Did Harper really want to win it or was he playing politics? On Dec. 7, the Conservative government’s motion to re-open the debate on same-sex “marriage” was defeated in the House of Commons by a vote of 175-123. If you believe the pundits and the politicians, on Dec. 7, Canadians debated the issue of same-sex “marriage” for the last time and the [...]
When Jim Hughes, Campaign Life Coalition president, hired Ann Liptok 27 years ago as his secretary in the first small, cramped CLC office in downtown Toronto, he was puzzled. When he asked her why she didn’t get a job closer to her faraway suburban home in Mississauga, she quietly replied, “I want to work for this cause. It’s very dear to my [...]
Juergen Severloh is a pioneer in Canada’s pregnancy crisis centre movement. The German immigrant will be 50 years old this March, having spent over half his life as one of Manitoba’s most well-known pro-life activists. Juergen’s interest in pro-life activism evolved from his conversion experience four years earlier. “I became a Christian at the University of Manitoba in 1976,” he told The [...]
Peter Naglik, a long-time political party activist and devout Catholic, was killed in the early hours of Sept. 29 at the age of 39 in a single-vehicle accident en route to his home, near Ottawa. The resident of Russell, Ont. was driving his 1995 Chrysler Concorde when he lost control of the vehicle. The car flipped onto its roof and smashed into [...]
Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter (Crown Forum, $36.95, 308 pages) Review by Kathy Shaidle The Interim Those who object to U.S. conservative columnist Anne Coulter’s torture-all-prisoners punditry are like pre-teen boys griping that Gone With the Wind has “too much kissing.” That is, Coulter-haters suffer from genre dysphasia. The bestselling author is neither a journalist nor a scholar, so [...]
The Truth Is Out There: Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction by Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth (Brazos Press, $23.99 pb, 272 pages) Thomas Bertonneau and Kim Paffenroth are both well-respected American academics and committed Christians. Readers should not be put off by the 50s “flying saucer” image on the cover. This very erudite book looks at the possible [...]
Upon my return from a recent vacation in Ireland, I received the sad news of the death of my most valued friend, the Rev. Ken Campbell. I think most pro-life people in Toronto are aware that I am a Catholic priest and Ken was a Baptist minister. But on one vital issue, we were totally at one and that is the pro-life [...]
“When our three girls were adolescents, we moved to a small farm with no cable TV, gave them each a pig to raise, taught them to run a tractor and began an organic market garden.” Thus began a fascinating interview with popular Interim writer Doreen Beagan. Doreen hails from Prince Edward Island, where she was the oldest of nine children born to [...]
Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life By Eugene O’Kelly and Corinne O’Kelly with Andrew Postman McGraw-Hill, 2006, 179 pages; $25.95 Chasing Daylight opens with the startling words, “I was blessed. I was told I had three months to live.” Yet, this personal account of a vigorous, active man’s last 100 days is an uplifting book about embracing life to [...]