I was watching a TV broadcast of a game between the Red Sox and the Devil Rays, comfortably insulated, so I thought, from all the trouble and turmoil of the outside world, when their single avenue of invasion into my home, the telephone, began sounding its alarm. It was a long distance call from a friend who had, perhaps with some misgivings, [...]
Three and a half years ago, same-sex “marriage” was not an issue. Marriage was understood to be the union of one man and one woman and the possibility of its redefinition was not even on the political radar screen. When marriage became an issue in 2003 (that is, when three Ontario judges decided to strike down what may be the oldest legal [...]
So far, Canada’s new Conservative government has done precious little to promote the sanctity of human life, but pro-lifers should not give up on the Conservative party. There is good reason to hope for major pro-life gains from the Harper Conservatives after the next federal election. Consider what Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already accomplished. Thanks mainly to his leadership, the formerly [...]
The current, troubled moral state of the Western world vindicates the predictions of the late Pope Paul VI in the 1960s concerning what would happen if the use of contraception became widespread, says one of the world’s leading scholars on the issue. Speaking at the Humanae Vitae 2006 – A New Beginning conference in Ottawa, staged by The Rosarium organization May 12-14, [...]
On Wednesday, May 10, MP Maurice Vellacott resigned from the parliamentary committee he headed because of allegedly“controversial” comments he made to a CBC reporter the previous Friday. This tawdry affair was entirely orchestrated by our public broadcaster, the CBC, in an attempt to tarnish the good name of a fine politician. And, although Vellacott has been humbled by this manufactured scandal, it [...]
Strange creatures come out of hibernation during an Atlantic Canada spring. It starts with the arrival of a bevy of animal rights crusaders to protest the seal hunt. Some are quite exotic by East Coast standards. This year's flock included Pamela Anderson, Brigitte Bardot and Paul and Heather McCartney - all oblivious to the complexities of the issue, lacking information, even [...]
Capote Directed by Bennett Miller. Rated: R Review by Hilary White Reporter The Oscar-nominated film Capote opens with a long, still shot of the Kansas prairies creating the backdrop to a solitary farmhouse in which a young woman discovers the bodies of the Clutter family, murdered by two drifters, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. The murders and the two men become Truman [...]
Last month, Ri Kwang-chol, a doctor and defector from North Korea, addressed a human rights panel and stated that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has no people with physical disabilities because they are killed almost as soon as they are born. Kwang-chol claimed that babies born with physical disabilities were killed in infancy in hospitals or at home and quickly [...]
It's being called an issue that has few rivals in terms of controversy in Canada and around the world. It's dominated by bloody images, heated rhetoric and impassioned defences on both sides. Few facts go unchallenged. Language becomes a tool, as words become weapons of outrage or instruments of reassurance. Abortion? Nope. The annual Canadian seal hunt. The description above comes from [...]
Until the Jan. 23 federal election, the campaign to legalize drugs in Canada seemed unstoppable. The Chretien-Martin Liberals, whose values were formed in the free-love, pot-smoking 1960s, had already legalized "medicinal" marijuana, opened a government-contracted pot-growing facility and sanctioned a heroin shooting gallery in Vancouver. A Liberal bill to decriminalize marijuana possession was also working its way through Parliament. Yet, on April [...]
On April 5, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the federal broadcast regulator, rendered a bizarre decision, granting a Toronto-area radio licence to a group committed to promoting homosexuality on the airwaves. Rainbow Broadcasting gained the first Toronto FM radio licence issued in more than four years at the expense of many legitimate applicants, including a group hoping for an all-Catholic station. [...]
Organs are being taken for transplantation from the living bodies of thousands of detainees in China's labour camps - a big story out of the world's biggest country. Couple this with a current surge in transplant operations being performed in China's hospitals in advance of hastily cobbled-together restrictions on transplants that take effect July 1 and we have a breaking news story [...]
Judging from the reputation of Justice Marshall Rothstein, and the answers he gave to the questions put to him in the unprecedented public hearing that preceded his appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada, he should make an excellent addition to the country’s top court. Asked by Conservative MP Diane Ablonczy to state his views on the proper role of judges in [...]
Watching Judge Marshall Rothstein, our newest Supreme Court justice, perform was like watching Wayne Gretzky in his prime dodge, circle, hide and evade. Wayne had the aid of a hockey cop dressed in a uniform similar to Wayne’s, who was ready to hospitalize any opponent aiming to hospitalize Wayne. What did we know about Justice Marshall Rothstein? Nothing. Nothing important. And after [...]
Years ago, feminist Gloria Steinem opined that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” adding for good measure that one become a “semi-non-person” after the wedding vows are exchanged. Steinem later raised some eyebrows in 2000 when she tied the knot with a wealthy younger man, but Canadian women seem to have taken her earlier views on cohabitation [...]