My Indian Residential School Experience

Rodney Clifton

June 1, 2016

In the late 1960s, Rodney A. Clifton spent a year working at a residential school in the Northwest Territories. His experience there paints a markedly different picture than what we’ve been hearing from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports

The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on the history and legacy of Indian residential schools (IRS) reminded me of a letter I received in August 1966 while I was boarding at Old Sun, the Anglican residential school on the Blackfoot reserve in southern Alberta It is now ob...

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Listen for the Whisper

John Walsh

June 1, 2016

In a reflection on a groundbreaking Vatican document on relations between Jews and Catholics, Father John Walsh finds renewed understanding that, despite millennia of often barbarous hostility, the children of the Old and New Covenants share one path toward one God

The Gifts and the Calling offers a new direction and a new conversation on several theological topics as it stresses the unique status of the relationship of Catholics and Jews within the wider gambit of interreligious dialogue, and further discusses theological questions such as the relevance of Re...

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The Tempest of the Times

Ian Hunter

June 1, 2016

On the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, Professor Ian Hunter explores how The Tempest, among other things, shows us fools mistaking the trappings of power for power itself

Prospero tells Miranda how the faithful Gonzalo (counterpart to Kent in King Lear) provisioned them with some supplies and, more important, books: “He furnished me / From mine own library with volumes that / I prize above my dukedom” – the bibliophile’s creed down succeeding centuries! All this had ...

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Keeping Faith with Philosophy

Richard Bastien

June 1, 2016

The dead ends of post-Enlightenment philosophies, Richard Bastien argues, are truly openings for rediscovering the symbiotic relationship between faith and reason

All this may seem quite strange in a time when both the media and academia would have us believe that there is absolutely no relationship between faith and reason, or between philosophy and theology, and that, indeed, the two are incompatible Yet it is a world where not only faith but also reason an...

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Hero for the Faith

Alan Hustak

June 1, 2016

Alan Hustak recounts the life of a Canadian political figure whose death in a house fire 50 years ago was a sacrifice for his faith

Fifty years ago, Quebec’s Lieutenant Governor, Paul Comtois, died a martyr to the faith trying to save the Blessed Sacrament from the chapel in Bois-de-Coulonges – the century-old vice-regal residence that was destroyed in a fire in the winter of 1966 (“Sea to Sea,” February-March 2016) Comtois was ...

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Acts of Faith in Canada

Andrew P.W. Bennett

June 1, 2016

Last May, Canada’s former ambassador for religious freedom, Andrew Bennett, addressed the launch of Cardus’ Ottawa hub for Faith in Canada 150. The initiative brings to the national capital the presence of an interfaith movement to celebrate Canada’s religious traditions – past, present and future.

Let us, especially many of us as Christians who in the past have embraced the myth of the exclusively private space for religion, re-emerge now into the light of the public square and there encounter our fellow citizens and the image and likeness of God within them We must recall and reaffirm the ce...

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School for Scofflaws

Raymond J. de Souza

June 1, 2016

Kraków, the royal and ancient capital of Poland, is best known today by Catholics as the city of Saint Faustina, the hitherto obscure nun who received revelations about Divine Mercy, and the city of the pope of mercy, Saint John Paul the Great Perhaps that’s because Trump and Ali have the same rheto...

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Palliative Care: Time for a Compassionate Approach

Ray Pennings

May 31, 2016

Three documents have come out of this roundtable: an adapted version of the agenda and background documents; a summary of discussion themes; and a backgrounder providing a statistical overview of Palliative Care in Canada ...

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Walking Home

Stephanie Schoenhoff

May 30, 2016

Himy Syed has been involved in Jane’s Walks since its beginning in 2007. This December he led a public walk on the history of Muslims in Toronto. 

Himy hopes that public efforts like the tour will help curb assaults like those faced by the woman outside her Toronto home, and others continually faced by Torontonians For Himy, long involved in the effort, a Jane’s Walk would be the perfect platform to share the history of his Muslim faith to fel...

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Henri Nouwen's Journey to Toronto

Stephanie Schoenhoff

May 27, 2016

Henri Nouwen's spiritual walk was travelled on the road to Richmond Hill after two decades teaching in the Ivy Leagues. Learn more about his life and works through the words of Karen Pascall, Executive Director of the Henri Nouwen Society in Toronto. 

Help other people discover the love of God that Henri Nouwen had discovered in his life,” says Karen The Henri Nouwen Society is hosting Way of the Heart, an international conference on the life and work of Henri at University of Toronto Mississauga campus from June 9-11 ...

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A banquet of hospitality for Fort McMurray evacuees

Peter Stockland

May 24, 2016

Upon hearing news of the Fort McMurray fire, Suzanne Gross thought evacuees needed a meal fit for a banquet- so she gave them one. Read Peter Stockland's report here.

On what she calls “Inferno Day,” Suzanne Gross was planning to attend a reception and banquet at the very centre in Edmonton where evacuees from Fort McMurray were being given emergency shelter Gross and her colleagues set up shop at the University of Alberta’s Lister Hall, and plunged into the enor...

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Al Rashid: Mosque and Refuge

Peter Stockland

May 24, 2016

Peter Stockland visits Al Rashid in Edmonton, Canada's first Mosque, to talk about their efforts to rebuild community and offer support to evacuees of Fort McMurray.

She points out that those who found shelter at Al Rashid in the first week after the evacuation of more than 80,000 people from Fort McMurray were almost entirely working people with financial means For Jaffar Pathan, a volunteer from the Islamic Circle of North America working with the Edmonton Eme...

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Give Where You Live

Peter Stockland

May 19, 2016

Gertie Groenweg's faith called her to serve her neighbours in distress. Reporting from Edmonton, Peter Stockland watches how faith communities have responded to the Fort McMurray Fire. 

“I have such admiration for first responders in any emergency, and especially for what the first responders were able to do in Fort McMurray,” Jacquie says “Certainly as Catholics, we are called to corporal works of mercy, and that’s what this is ...

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Syrian refugee extends hope to Fort McMurray evacuees

Peter Stockland

May 17, 2016

Syrian refugee, Basel Abou Hamrah, volunteers at Edmonton's Evacuee Reception Centre to help residents of Fort McMurray who were forced to flee in the wake of forest fire catastrophe.

Last week, he signed up as a volunteer to help at Edmonton’s Evacuee Reception Centre to help residents of Fort McMurray forced to flee south from a May 3 wildfire that destroyed their northern Alberta community A Druze Christian, with a faith rooted in all three of the great Abrahamic monotheisms, ...

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Help in the Wake of the Fort McMurray Fires

Peter Stockland

May 16, 2016

Peter Stockland reports from Edmonton in the wake of the Fort McMurray fires to see how faith communities respond to the catastrophe: "As she seems to do with everyone, Dalia Abdellatif listens calmly to the agitated young man in front of her at Edmonton’s Evacuee Reception Centre."

Arriving in Canada with her physician husband and children five years ago, Dalia began volunteering with the Islamic Family and Social Services Association, then helped with Edmonton’s Mennonite Centre for Newcomers and then Edmonton Emergency Relief Services Society (EERSS), where she is both a vol...

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