The End of the Summer of Love

Tim McCauley

September 12, 2017

Father Tim McCauley considers the 50 years since the great hippie upheaval of 1967 and finds a paradox: that generation’s lust for power has given way to a new counterculture of Christian love.

For Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison, the Summer of Love and the decade it symbolized came to a tragic end As the walking wounded continue to emerge from the purple haze of the Summer of Love, and to stumble out of the dark tombs of the Culture of Death, they will need to encounter authentic witnesses t...

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Of Faith and Fairies

Ariella Kimmel

September 11, 2017

At a sacred ceremony at the Turtle Lodge on Sagkeeng Territory, memories of her grandmother flooded Ariella Kimmel. In her Golden Thread submission, Ariella reflects on her faith, the legacy of her grandmother, and how visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau in the presence of loved ones living and gone was a significant part of her faith journey.

When I embarked on the March of the Living, I carried with me my grandmother and all of my family who were murdered, on this significant journey ...

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Dialogue By Asking Why

Josh Nadeau

September 11, 2017

Convivium contributor Josh Nadeau offers an exercise to show why dialogue that begins with listening needs to move on to asking “why” if we’re to regain the capacity to disagree with civility. 

Thankfully this can start with a simple question: why? Why might someone think differently than I do? Why might people be reacting so strongly to this? Are there factors that could be hard for me to see? And, because things don’t happen in a vacuum, asking about the history behind an issue is huge –...

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Shifting Seasons

Katie Maryschuk

September 8, 2017

Convivium contributor Katie Maryschuk reflects on the shifting of seasons. As she prepares to head into her final year of university, Katie examines the way in which God has shaped her path forward. 

Coming to understand what His will for the next year looked like took time, and I ended up attending Trinity Western University’s extension program, the Laurentian Leadership Centre in Ottawa for the four fall months of last year I spent a lot of time comparing these past four months to last summer ...

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Pieces of a Bigger Story

Meredyth Campbell

September 7, 2017

Inspired by Faith in Canada’s Thread of 1000 Stories initiative and in response to the “Our Story” focus, students at Niagara Christian Collegiate were invited to participate in a visual storytelling project. The goal was to create a mosaic of story tiles to represent that each individual plays a role in the NCC story and in God’s larger redemptive narrative.

As part of an introductory lesson on short stories, I asked my English students at Niagara Christian Collegiate (NCC), “What makes a good story?” After discussing character development, plot devices, and narration, we agreed that although important to a story, these are simply the devices an author ...

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Beauty, Celebrity, and Sainthood

Raymond J. de Souza

September 7, 2017

Convivium editor-in-chief Father Raymond J. de Souza reflects on the twentieth anniversary of the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Mother Teresa, as well as their legacy of beauty.  

During those days Diana was proposed not only as a glamourous, but glorious, not only a celebrity but a saint, something of a secular Mother Teresa In Diana’s case, even Hollywood – the high priesthood of the celebrity cult – had second thoughts, churning out by the tenth anniversary of her death He...

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God In My Everything

Hannah Marazzi with Ken Shigematsu

September 6, 2017

Struck by the conviction of those around her that Ken Shigematsu’s book God in My Everything should be required reading for the contemporary Christian, Convivium’s Hannah Marazzi set out to have a conversation with the West Coast pastor and author. 

I think that sometimes we feel that monks and people who pursue monastic ideals are only concerned about their personal spiritual life, or what happens in their cloistered community People tend to be busy, and yet, many want to have a deeper life with greater connection with God Pursuing God in pray...

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Rebel Engagement

Peter Stockland

September 5, 2017

Convivium publisher Peter Stockland knows the media world inside and out – knowledge he uses to dissect the latest bone-shaking controversy involving Ezra Levant and The Rebel, as well as the journalistic response to it.

In recent years, I’ve watched as Original Ezra left the house, to be replaced by Kinda Kooky Cartoon Ezra, an automated ideological variant of the very knee jerkery he used to skewer so zestfully But journalists vetting media outlets for political suitability? Journalists deciding image-appropriate ...

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Entering In

Peter Stockland

September 5, 2017

To follow in the footsteps of the faithful who have come before shapes our path to glory. 

Like faith, you enter into it, drawn inexorably forward by the its unusual shape that has the pews flanking the nave in parallel rows rather than branching off it at horizontally ...

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My Beautiful Books

Hannah Marazzi

September 1, 2017

Convivium’s Hannah Marazzi offers up a hymn to books that refreshes our faith in the life of reading as sustenance of the soul.

So, too, did words on the pages of my childhood Bible begin to set forth the precepts for the kind of person I would strive to be, the framework through which I would begin to see the world, the stories I would carry with me Be it through the analysis of an academic work, the joyful return to a book...

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George Monro Grant

William Christian

August 31, 2017

George Monro Grant pursued the academic life after an injury prevented him from taking over the family farm. Grant immigrated to Canada at 25 and began an influential career organizing and fundraising. He would go on to spend twenty five years developing Queen's university into a successful institution.

George Monro Grant – Principal Grant of Queen’s College as he universally came to be known – was a celebrated churchman and university administrator who is best remembered for his travel narrative Ocean to Ocean Grant’s son, William, would much later marry Parkin’s daughter, Maude, and they would be...

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Canadian Values and Charlottetown

Raymond J. de Souza

August 31, 2017

Convivium editor-in-chief Father Raymond J. de Souza marks the 25th anniversary of the Charlottetown Accord, reporting on its significance in our current cultural moment.

(1) The Constitution of Canada, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the following characteristics: It would speak of the nature of Canada and would have interpretative authority, meaning that the courts would have to interpret the r...

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From Tolerance to Respect

Kit S.

August 30, 2017

This story is not my own— it’s the story of a friend, a Muslim, who to me represents all the astonishing beauty, all the unstinted warmth and diversity, all the generous understanding, of this country we live in.

We worked together last summer as day camp leaders at one of Vancouver’s neighbourhood houses, which meant spending 40 hours per week together, ferrying children across the city on public transit, doing headcount after headcount, playing cards and Monopoly and chess and, of course, talking We, as a ...

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Dunkirk, The Enemy, And Us

Peter Stockland

August 30, 2017

Convivium asked Calgary scholars, Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe to watch Dunkirk and then talk about its effect on them. Here's what they had to say.

Some would answer that the enemy is silent because it’s greedily watching a movie called Dunkirk that Hollywood’s finest marketing minds have manipulated it into seeing So, I had to see this as an existential phenomenon, a sense that it is epitomizing human experience: an extreme experience of rescu...

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In The Palm of God's Hand

Sophia Wasylinko

August 29, 2017

There are three things about me that might surprise someone outside the family. First, we homeschool; second, I have five siblings (Ana, Juliana, Teresa, Adrian, and Timothy), who are all younger than me; and third, my dad (tato) is a priest.

First, we homeschool; second, I have five siblings (Ana, Juliana, Teresa, Adrian, and Timothy), who are all younger than I am; and third, my dad (Tato) is a priest As Mama went through the prep talk that we’d gotten in Vernon before moving to Kelowna, I looked around We made friends with the childre...

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