Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements By Rick McGinnis The recent Netflix adaptation of J.D. Vance’s 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy begins with a flashback – a vignette of working-class life that resonated with me, perhaps more than with most viewers. We begin with a montage where the camera glances over scenes of life in ramshackle rural Kentucky, the “hill country” where [...]
Paul Tuns Commentary There is a cynical saying in politics about never letting a serious crisis go to waste. The idea is simple enough: to use an unusual situation as a pretense to implement an agenda that might otherwise prove unpopular. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns imposed by governments have presented an opportunity to some to ensure we do not return [...]
Canada—like the rest of the world—is in the grip of a dangerous epidemic. This sickness is transferred from person to person, and often travels on the spoken word. Yet, unlike COVID-19, its reach is more pervasive and its effects more pernicious. This plague can propagate through modern modes of mass communication, a spiritual contagion which combines a “viral” ability to spread with [...]
Michael Haynes Special to The Interim A Christian medical student in Manitoba has been expelled from university for expressing anti-abortion views on Facebook. Rafael Zaki is a Coptic Christian, who left Egypt along with his parents, in order to be able to practise their religion freely. His parents are both successful in medical careers, The Post Millennial (TPM) reports, and as Zaki [...]
The Interim invited a number of pro-life leaders and contributors to the paper to suggest a book or two that would make a great Christmas gift. Joe Campbell When, as a student, I told an aging priest that I had never read anything by G.K. Chesterton, he declared, “If I had tears, I would cry for you.” I was so impressed by [...]
By Oswald Clark Charter Schools and Their Enemies by Thomas Sowell (Basic Books, $28, 276 pages) The economist and erstwhile columnist Thomas Sowell is a national treasure. He wrote a regular column for 25 years and wrote more than three dozen books. He is what National Review’s Kevin Williamson calls “that rarest of things among serious academics: plainspoken.” His books have tackled [...]
By Michael Taube Family gatherings will undoubtedly be smaller and more intimate this year. We’ll have to regularly wash our hands, and maintain proper amounts of social and physical distancing, for health and safety purposes. This will make it more challenging to eat together at the dining room table, trim the tree, sing carols in the crisp night air, and open beautifully [...]
In September, Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne (Independent Senators Group) introduced her private member’s bill, S-203, An Act to restrict young persons’ online access to sexually explicit materials. If passed, the bill would require commercial pornography websites to verify their consumers are adults to access their content. While there is little public appetite to tackle pornography despite its often degrading and dehumanizing depiction of women [...]
Low fertility rates, not over-population, present challenge “Demography is destiny,” the French sociologist Auguste Comte reportedly said. Population trends – fertility rates, infant survival, ageing, and other facts that are literally about life and death – greatly influence the economy, politics, culture, and world affairs. Demography may not be destiny, but it is nonetheless a powerful force and one that often seems [...]
Interim writer, Rick McGinnis, Amusements By Rick McGinnis The term “social media” wasn’t in widespread use over 10 years ago, when I started writing this column. Back then we still worried about television and the general amount of “screen time” our children were spending on increasingly smaller and less expensive devices. Re-reading my old columns, like almost every exercise in [...]
By Rick McGinnis While our collective anxiety was being ramped up amidst stories of plague and rioting, 2020 reached deep into its awful cornucopia this summer with a reprise of cancel culture. That apparently ceaseless turkey shoot, insuring that anyone employed in politics, the arts, academia, journalism and science – so far agriculture, fisheries and forestry seem immune, but the year isn’t [...]
The lockdowns have now become a permanent violation of our Charter Rights and Freedom to move, travel, assemble, associate, and worship. Governments are showing no intentions of removing restrictions, even as COVID-19 deaths slow to a trickle, and are now proven to be a small fraction of the dire predictions made by politicians in March. Masks have become mandatory for children to attend [...]
By: Josie Luetke Interim writer, Josie Luetke, Talk Turkey Imagine a man on death row. Some of you probably support his being there, or at least raise no objection. Imagine that he has been fighting his impending execution for years when he learns he has terminal cancer. Suddenly, his will to live vanishes. To be spared the anguish of cancer, [...]
The summer political news cycle was dominated a scandal that saw the Federal Liberals give money to the We Charity, which had paid speaking fees to members of the Trudeau family and provided travel to the family of then-finance minister Bill Morneau. In the Spring, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $900-million in new funding for students who could not find summer work [...]
Eleven of Ontario’s 29 English Catholic school boards explicitly acknowledged June as “Pride Month,” even though “Pride” events are known for celebrating homosexuality, transsexualism, and other sexually deviant behaviors. The Catholic boards acknowledged “Pride Month” in the context of assurances that Catholic schools are inclusive and welcoming to all and often used the tagline: “We are all wonderfully made,” with an illustration [...]