2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Even the trees shine for the tiny players skating their heart out below.
Is this what David meant in Psalm 96? Are these ice coated branches evidence of letting "the earth be glad?" Another cheer from below, the trees sway again their light an applause all of its own ...
Is this light, this sound, what he will call to mind in new years to come? Is it that we somehow feel the presence of the First Light in these displays that we cheer and revel?
And so as the crowd begins to surge, counting down the last few minutes of the year that has passed away, I close my eyes and breathe a prayer, for the First Light to come and make His presence known among us ...
The scrape and scramble, the glare of the light and a frigid night sky. On a Canadian ice rink, glimpses into the bigger swell of time, memory, and perhaps a bigger presence.
I look beyond the neon glare in the bright black sky and feel, if only for a moment, that we are not alone ...
Putting algorithms to an accountability test doesn’t require junking them entirely, but it can help us catch out powerful interests more intent on abusing than using our data, argues Cardus Social Cities Director Milton Friesen.
But the potential of the tools to truly solve problems can be tainted when they are applied to less noble ends: giving powerful people a means to shrewdly take more from the weak, harvesting our family history curiosity by coaxing DNA from us that in turn becomes a data asset they can benefit from w...
The New England Patriots won yet another glorious football victory on the 100th anniversary of the first Irish republican parliament being founded. Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland argues the apparent coincidence is providential proof of the power and necessity of great institutions.
The New England Patriots, and the Irish parliament that was forged by that blessed land’s patriotic sons and daughters, stand as vivid examples, past and present, of the necessity for institutions that simultaneously ground and advance the best of which human beings are capable What the first Irish ...
Children remind us not to look backward in nostalgia, but to look forward to a freedom that childhood merely prefigures, writes author Jennifer Trafton. The Mary Poppins sequel is a piece of art that unpacks the variety of gifts that imagination offers—and the freedom it promises.
If there’s one theme that links both the old and the new Mary Poppins movies, it’s that you can’t get through to the adults unless you get through to the children first—and even when they grow up, they will need new children to remind them What I love about the movie is not just that it’s about the ...
Gillette has tried to make profits from selling social good. But where marketing and politics mingle, there lies danger, warns Peter Stockland.
That’s doubly true when the source of the purported controversy is some corporate behemoth funding a mega-million dollars advertising campaign explicitly to draw attention to its product It’s tempting to take the week’s “controversy” over the Gillette shaving company’s new advertising campaign at so...
There are many great pretenders to the title of greatest athlete of all time. But Father Raymond de Souza acknowledges New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady has a commanding claim to being better than all the rest.
Which is noteworthy, because LeBron’s self-promotion, like the president’s, has the same roots, namely in Muhammad Ali, who took it from professional wrestling, where there is precious little humility but a lot of selling oneself From Ali to professional wrestling to reality television to Donald Tru...
Edmonton’s Salima Versi finds in the glories of the city’s Aga Khan Garden a reminder that goodness grows even in ground tainted by bigotry and fear.
And the garden helps me to remember that as I do that work, I can still show people that my faith is beautiful, and graceful, and strong, filled with a quiet ecstasy that runs through me as it does through the garden, perhaps all the more so for the snow that falls And it’s a reminder that, as Rumi ...
The death sentence handed to a Canadian convicted of drug smuggling reminded the world that China is the world’s top state executioner. But as former MP and veteran human rights observer David Kilgour tells Convivium readers, Beijing’s vicious persecution of its own minority populations rivals Maoist-era inhumanity.
About 20 million Muslim and Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, who make up the largest community in China’s far-west province of Xinjiang, are facing brutal repression by police and others acting on behalf of the Beijing government Kaplan noted: “The repression of the Turkic Uyghur Muslim community in western...
January marks the official kickoff of the 2019 Mitchell Prize, jointly hosted by Convivium’s parent institution Cardus and Seattle-based Image Journal. Talented Canadian poets are invited to submit their best work to win $25,000 in prizes. In place of Convivium’s usual news, views, and ruminations, we’re treating readers to first place finishers Rowda Mohamud and Brandon Trotter from the last Mitchell Prize awarded in Canada’s sesquicentennial year..
“Ooof!” Tom recoiled as he crashed into the courier bot standing at the bottom of the stairs just outside the church, his umbrella clattering onto the sidewalk As he was shaking the hands of several patrons on their way out of the cathedral, Tom noticed his robot friend hiding in the shadows at the ...
Legal changes around drinking and driving (supported by Mothers Against Drunk Driving) passed in 2018 criminalize Canadians who've done nothing wrong, say some defence lawyers in Ontario. Convivium publisher Peter Stockland sees this as part of a larger trend of groups that initially come into existence to gain a given end soon end up making their continued existence the reason they continue to exist..
A possible scenario the criminal lawyers depict is Constable Flatfoot following someone home from a bar or restaurant, waiting outside the person’s house until the right amount of time has elapsed, and then forcing the suspect to take a breath test without any reasonable grounds to indicate they wer...
Convivium Editor-in-Chief Father Raymond de Souza marks the 10th anniversary of the death of his mentor and inspiration, Father Richard John Neuhaus.
Convivium is what Father Richard created over his whole life, delighting in the company of others and the delightful things the Lord had made This past Tuesday, for the 10th anniversary Mass, the homily was preached by Father Vincent Druding, a young man from Indiana who came to New York to work at ...
The choice to learn another language, Convivium contributor Jacob Sims contends, is an example of action that can lead us to, and ground us in, the sense of community where genuine human freedom opens to us.
And, in fact, for this very reason, our culture teaches us to hold our beliefs, communities, relationships, our very identities loosely; to break free from the bonds of our particular circumstances, and to embrace limitless choice as an individual being Once we’ve made that decision, our task is to ...
What place could, within its very silence, make room for the act of reading and absorbing the divinity of words?
Once a place where the Sisters of Charity of Montreal, the Grey Nun’s, worshipped, prayed, confessed their sins, read the Divine Word for almost 150 years, it has been transformed yet meticulously preserved as a reading room of Concordia University where, at any given hour of the day, students obser...