Alberta Comes Home

Peter Menzies

April 29, 2019

With its recent election results, writes veteran journalist Peter Menzies, Alberta has ended its four-year hard-left flirtation and returned to being a place of community without collectivism, where all are welcome, and no one asks “Who’s your daddy?”

Another question to be answered was whether the Alberta Party would find favour with former PCs uncomfortable in the company of Kenney Conservatives, and with Liberals too sensible to join the majority of their colleagues in supporting the NDP and Premier Rachel Notley’s socialism And Notley’s elect...

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The Inescapable Gravity of Grace

Terry Lisieux

April 29, 2019

How fitting, observes Convivium contributor Terry Lisieux, that the unveiling of the first photograph of a black hole should occur just before Easter reveals again the central Moment of Christian life.

Any matter that enters past the event horizon – effectively an outer limit – of a black hole is drawn into a singularity, where gravity becomes infinite and the laws of physics as currently understood are tossed out the window Physicists say that, before entering the event horizon, a black hole draw...

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Moving Away from Multiple Monologues

Jason West

April 26, 2019

Convivium contributor Jason West, who witnessed the recent Alberta election from the trenches as a constituency campaign chair, says a key lesson of Premier Jason Kenney’s victory is that mud-slinging and name-calling are politically counterproductive.

This also shows the need for communities of faith and political movements that support social conservative views to cultivate and support articulate, thoughtful representatives who can present and defend their views in the public square In this respect, it is worth noting that journalists seemed to ...

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Innovate to Educate

Ray Pennings, and Danielle Smith, Deani Van Pelt

April 26, 2019

In late March, parallel to the annual Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa, Convivium's parent think tank Cardus hosted a panel discussion on educational innovation. Alberta journalist Danielle Smith spoke with Ray Pennings, executive vice president of Cardus, and Deani Van Pelt, President of Edvance Christian Schools Association.

Good education for the public good across all delivery mechanisms, and until we get a sense that good education can be developed and delivered, designed regardless of whether it’s government delivering it or not, I think that’s going to be one of the barriers to education reform, certainly in this p...

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Notre Dame as Cultural Moment

Raymond J. de Souza

April 25, 2019

The burning of Notre Dame de Paris sparked an inferno of journalistic ignorance about Christianity, writes Father Raymond de Souza.

It reported on the heroic fire chaplain, Father Jean-Marc Fournier, who raced into the burning cathedral – the “waterfalls of fire” from the roof looked to him like a vision of hell – to rescue the two most precious things in Notre Dame, the reserved Eucharist and the relic of the crown of thorns Th...

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Educating Globally, Deciding Locally

Ray Pennings, and Danielle Smith, Deani Van Pelt

April 25, 2019

In late March, parallel to the annual Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa, Convivium's parent think tank Cardus hosted a panel discussion on educational innovation. Alberta journalist Danielle Smith spoke with Ray Pennings, executive vice president of Cardus, and Deani Van Pelt, President of Edvance Christian Schools Association.

However, if the tray is funded by the ministry of education, and a family decides to switch schools to an independent school, that tray may not go with the student to their new school Danielle Smith: A big part of the fight over education reform has to do with unions and also with regulations on sch...

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A Proclamation Reclaimed

Peter Stockland

April 24, 2019

In an interview with Irish politician Rose Conway-Walsh, Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland gleans from the 1916 Easter Rising universal lessons for renewing the architecture of pluralist society.

Out the Easter Rising’s collapse came a century’s history that included a war of independence, a civil war, the British government’s division of Ireland backed by threats of full-scale military invasion, anti-Catholic pogroms in the Protestant north, and ultimately the murderous 30-year “Troubles” t...

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A Fresh Eye On Education

Ray Pennings, and Danielle Smith, Deani Van Pelt

April 24, 2019

In late March, parallel to the annual Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa, Convivium's parent think tank Cardus hosted a panel discussion on educational innovation. Alberta journalist Danielle Smith spoke with Ray Pennings, executive vice president of Cardus, and Deani Van Pelt, President of Edvance Christian Schools Association.

I want to make the argument that when we think of reform in education at large, we need to include in our thinking the independent school sector So my answer to the question, Is education reform possible in Canada? would have these two caveats: Yes it is possible, first, if we’re willing to learn fr...

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Razing the Temple

Raymond J. de Souza

April 18, 2019

In the light of Good Friday, the Holy Week burning of Notre Dame de Paris provides spiritual illumination for the broken – then gloriously resurrected – body of Christ, writes Convivium’s Father Raymond de Souza.

Matthew’s Gospel, they will hear the testimony against Jesus against the news of the near-destruction of Notre Dame: “At last two came forward and said, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days This Good Friday, will we feel – at the moment that the d...

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Rise Again

Peter Stockland

April 18, 2019

In the example of the new life given his Quebec parish church, Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland witnesses the living hope that makes Christians an Easter people.  

This Easter, in our little Resurrection parish, we will join with the universal Church in that timeless Christian moment of Resurrection, though we will do so in a new way for us, joining in a bilingual combined Mass with our Polish fellow Catholics On Palm Sunday, at Resurrection of Our Lord church...

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Better News for Canadian Jews

Rabbi Reuven Bulka

April 17, 2019

As Passover arrives, an Environics survey shows Canada’s Jewish community is faring much better than its U.S. counterpart in number of ways. But as Ottawa’s Rabbi Reuven Bulka cautions, doing better doesn’t automatically mean doing well.

It is clear that community cohesiveness is a major factor in Canadian Jewish life, as is Canadian exceptionalism, a term coined by the authors of  the study The Canadian rate is 23 per cent; for the Jewish community in the U Consider Toronto, where 67 per cent of those who attended nine years of day...

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Heading Off The Robots

John Robson

April 16, 2019

Ottawa journalist John Robson warns that once machines become intelligent enough to tell human beings precisely what we’re good for, we might not like answer.

By now, the good computers are not just so much better than the best humans that there’s nothing interesting about playing, they increasingly approach chess strategy in ways we don’t understand (BTW I don’t claim to be much good at chess, but if you don’t know what the Panov-Botvinnik Attack is, tru...

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A Story in Stone

Rachel Feddema

April 16, 2019

Although the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris burned on the first day of Holy Week, we have not lost as much of the sacred as we might think, writes Rachel DeBruyn.

The modern cathedral visitor must remember a time when the church was the tallest building in the city At the same time, on the first day of Holy Week, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris was consumed by fire ...

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Speaking of Christchurch

Susan Korah

April 15, 2019

Marking the month’s passage since Muslims at prayer were attacked and murdered in New Zealand’s largest city, Convivium contributor Susan Korah hopes it will provoke a common outcry against the violence that afflicts all faith communities.

The world would become a Utopia, and people of diverse faiths, or no faith at all, would live in peace, if all political and faith leaders, media organizations and ordinary citizens followed the example of Prime Minister Ardern and the people of New Zealand; if they would all say “You, you’re us,” a...

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Hooded Loneliness, Solitary Fear

Peter Stockland

April 15, 2019

Isolation and emotional homelessness are rarely discussed, but they are the prevalent hurdle faced by those experiencing homelessness.

And then I come across Dave Heath’s inescapable photograph of Erin Freed’s face on a 1963 New York street, and look at those long-ago eyes of a pre-school shy child already filled with the pervasive pain of rejection, the deep well of all who suffer the inhuman violation that is emotional homelessne...

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