IN THE BASKET AT HOME Black photography When photo store developers saw Helen Burnie’s baby pictures in November 1990 they called the police. The suspicious officers appeared on her doorstep wanting to know how she came to have a photo of a decapitated seven-month-old baby boy. Miss Burnie explained that she intended to reproduce the photo of the baby found in the [...]
The Ontario Ministry of Education (MOE) plans to address the issue of home schooling again (see “Divine Right of Parents,” The Interim, September 1990). Malcolm Powell, Provincial School Attendance Counsellor said that work on a policy paper “to clarify both for parents and for school boards their rights and responsibilities” is in progress. “We are looking at our options now,” he told [...]
Who says parents can't be teachers? In Ontario, a number of parents can and do home school their own children. Michele McGrew, in Huntsville, Ontario is one of them. She teaches her three children in her own home. Mrs. McGrew’s reasons for starting this venture were varied, but a strong sense of commitment on her part as well as support from her [...]
CHURCH OF ENGLAND (Anglican) Dr. Robert Runcie’s resignation as Archbishop of Canterbury came into effect on January 31, 1991. Rt. Rev. George Carey will be his successor (on April 19). In an interview with Readers’ Digest magazine (February edition), the Anglican archbishop-to-be declared that “the idea that only a male can represent Christ at the altar is a most serious heresy.” Thus [...]
Four years ago the issue of schools and condoms was hotly debated. Some public school boards decided to teach students not only how to use condoms but to install condom dispensers for their use. Since they had adopted the contraceptive philosophy of the Planned Parenthood organization long before that, this move appeared quite natural to them. Parents in other public schools, however, [...]
On March 11, the Bay, Simpson’s and Zellers in Ontario announced that they would open on Good Friday. “Good Friday is a big shopping day in other provinces,” said a spokesman for the stores, “so we decided to open that day and close Easter Sunday.’ The announcement indicated the growing contempt of large businesses such as the above for the religious sensibilities [...]
On March 9, twenty people from Toronto, Brampton, Brantford, Port Perry and Sturgeon Falls, Ontario, met for quiet prayer in the lane behind Henry Morgentaler’s Toronto abortuary. Injunction Planning to pray for two hours, the participants did not obstruct the lane; neither did they carry sign, hand out the literature nor speak to anyone. They just prayed the biblical devotion of the [...]
An order in Council, designed to frustrate the efforts of picketers on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, was quietly resurrected using the Gulf War and President Bush’s visit. The original Order in Council was strongly objected to by senators and MPs and who forced the Tories to back down. Trying again The Tories are trying again. What is at stake is the right [...]
Our January front page featured the copy of a questionnaire on contraceptives and condoms used in a Grade 10 class in Notre Dame Catholic High School in Welland, Ontario. We also reported that the Public Health Nurse had explained various contraceptive devices to the students and gave them a choice of three answers to a question about abortion. Furthermore, we noted that [...]
Michel Arsenault of Life Savers, Moncton, N.B., stated the defeat “was rather nice.” The bill would have allowed abortions on demand. “Now we can work towards a law that really will protect both mother and unborn child.” (The Times-Transcript) Bernard Currie, President of the Kitchener Right to Life, said there will be “mixed reactions…Some of our members have not been pleased with [...]
“There is no safe sex,” asserts Robert noble, M.D., professor of Medicine at the University of Kentucky, in a full-page article in Newsweek magazine, April 1, 1991. “I’m an infectious-diseases physician and an AIDS doctor to the poor. Passing out condoms to teenagers is like issuing them squirt guns for a four-alarm blaze. We should stop kidding ourselves,” he said. Dr. Noble’s [...]
Delegates to the Policy Convention of the Ontario New Democratic Party held in early March in Toronto ratified a policy resolution calling on the government to create joint committees which would ensure co-operation between the separate (Roman Catholic) and public school boards. But some delegates brought forward other, much more ominous resolutions, all of which were shelved at this meeting. For example, [...]
Darryl Anaka’s five-year effort to obtain religious exemption from the B.C. Teachers Federation (BCTF) and his local teachers’ union, the Terrace Teachers’ Association (TDTA), has failed. Mr. Anaka, 41, father of three and a science teacher for 14 years at Thornhill Junior Secondary School in Terrace, had argued that the BCTF’s official ‘pro-choice’ position could not be reconciled to his religious belief [...]
In mid-February REAL Women demanded an immediate review of the Mulroney government’s Women’s Program by an “objective and unbiased Parliamentary Committee.” Renewed funding for radical feminists women’s centres this year to the tune of 1.2 million dollars provoked REAL Women’s call for a parliamentary investigation, National Vice President Gwen Landolt explained. In February 1990, as part of the effort to slow Canada’s [...]
Catholic Hospitals Coerced A federal court in Maryland has ruled that St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore should lose its accreditation if it does not allow its residents to learn about abortion and sterilization procedures. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, a national association, requires obstetric and gynecology programmes to provide training in abortion, sterilization and birth-control procedures. Hence, it withdrew the [...]