Defending a Foundational Freedom

Andrew P.W. Bennett

January 10, 2017

Andrew Bennett, Canada’s former Ambassador for Religious Freedom and now Cardus Senior Fellow, argues for the need to recognise the foundational nature of freedom of religion and conscience in our society and its link to our common life.  

Through Cardus Law, we look forward to continuing our work with faith communities, religious freedom advocates, the academic community, public institutions, and our fellow citizens to affirm the importance of religious freedom In early December 2016, Cardus Law assembled an august group of academic ...

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Entertaining Us to Death

Peter Stockland

January 9, 2017

Peter Stockland examines the art of obituary authorship's demise and our ever growing mis-relation with death.

The best obituary writers understood in their bones that their craft relied on telling stories primarily about people who had passed on only after they had passed at least one of three stages in life: 1) old 2) very old 3) running out the clock Much of it results, I’m convinced, from the atrophying ...

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Frank C. Peters

David Ewert

January 6, 2017

Frank C. Peters became president of Waterloo Lutheran University (which would later be renamed Wilfred Laurier University) used his leadership and relational skills to help that institution move from the private faith-based sector into the public sphere.

After retiring from the university and after the children had grown up, Frank and Melita returned to Winnipeg to pastor the Portage Avenue Mennonite Brethren Church In 1944, he married Lena Hamm, including 25 years at Mennonite Brethren Bible College in Winnipeg (now a part of Canadian Mennonite Uni...

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When Mr. Churchill Changed Us

Raymond J. de Souza

January 5, 2017

Father Raymond J. de Souza reflects on the legacy of Winston Churchill and reminds Canadians of his powerful address delivered on our nation's 75th anniversary. 

Churchill’s stay at the White House is the occasion of some of the more famous stories about him – the instructions to the White House butler to have a tumbler or two of sherry ready before breakfast, brandy before lunch and champagne in the evening, and his declaration to FDR, upon discovering a na...

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Sacred Fire

Ray Pennings

January 4, 2017

Ray Pennings reflects on the sacred in a ceremony and looks forward to how Canada can best flourish over the next 150 years.

Yet, at this moment celebrating the kickoff of Canada’s 150th birthday party, something felt strange and out-of-place regarding this public celebration of aboriginal faith in a civic ceremony The appetite for participation by the full range of diverse religious groups in the sesquicentennial celebra...

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The Path Now Taken

Peter Stockland

December 23, 2016

Convivium publisher Peter Stockland finds a hole in a fence and follows a path built by determined pedestrians. What he discovers is not only a shortcut to Saint-Henri metro but also the common life of the quartier’s present, all the way back to its past.

In The Feel of the City, Kenny makes the case that Montreal was the ideological and physical 19th and 20th century force that pushed Canada into modernity with all its triumphs and tensions, progress and impoverishment It was a corporate grandfather of the Grand Trunk Railway that, ultimately, becam...

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Not My Rights Movement

Fred Litwin

December 23, 2016

Will a small group of post-modern activists force us all to change our language? Will doctors be forced to treat gender dysphoric kids with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones? Will the public go along with people using the change room of their choice? Will women accept more and more boys and me...

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To the Table

December 23, 2016

The importance of breaking bread is common to almost every faith tradition. Can we see the sacred in the midst of the table? 

Brooke Lark's photograph of the table reminds us that one of the most powerful and sacred spaces is the very table at which we gather together ...

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Wonder Woman

Raymond J. de Souza

December 22, 2016

Patrick’s have observed that behind the high altar, in the apse chapel, is a delicate statue of Mary, refined and serene, with the Lady carrying in her hand the entire world as a royal orb And this entire salvific plan of God was foreseen to include the free consent of the virgin of Nazareth Back in...

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Across Our Backyard Fences

Gideon Strauss

December 21, 2016

In the third of his regular dispatches from from Montreal’s faith-rich Outremont district, Gideon Strauss meets a 27-year-old borough councilor. She, a Hasidic Jew, decided to run for councilor in order to take advantage of the opportunity to make a difference in her community.

Mindy Pollak is a 27-year-old borough councilor in Outremont and a Hasidic Jewish woman I first met Mindy Pollak on Sunday, November 20, the day on which the borough of Outremont conducted a referendum on this question: “Do you agree with By-law AO-320-B, which prohibits places of religion and worsh...

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Deadly Misinformation

Albertos Polizogopoulos and Faye Sonier

December 21, 2016

Even if Picard’s unfounded and unsupported legal conclusion that the Supreme Court found there was a right to assisted suicide were correct — and again, there is no such right — should the burden of ensuring people’s access to this service fall on private faith-based hospitals? Or should it fall on ...

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A Gift that Cannot be Given

John Robson

December 20, 2016

Music that appears effortless, music where the struggle is achingly felt in every note, simple music, bafflingly complex music, sad songs, haunting songs, joyful songs, marches, all leave me mute with admiration and wonder as well as in compliance with that court order, precisely because I know it i...

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The Weight of Waiting

Hannah Marazzi

December 19, 2016

November marked the release General Roméo Dallaire’s latest book, Waiting for First Light: My Ongoing Battle with PTSD. Few figures are as well poised to speak on the subject as Dallaire, who served as the military commander of the United Nations Advance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in 1994 and bore witness to the brutal work of the Hutus’ Interahamwe death squads.

The lack of a chapel at Canada’s military colleges in particular concerns Dallaire in its current inability to spiritually equip soldiers such as the veteran in our midst to answer these pressing questions The pop of bullets interrupted the radio dialogue: a line of child soldiers was advancing on t...

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Janette Oke

Violet Nesdoly

December 16, 2016

Janette Oke, herself the daughter of Canadian pioneers, has kept the pioneering spirit of courage, resourcefulness, integrity, faith, and romance alive in the body of fiction and non-fiction she has written. Her contribution to Christian fiction in Canada and the U.S. is near-legendary. She is, indeed, one of Canada’s most beloved storytellers.

Oke has written 75 books and counting—the historical prairie romances (described as “real life, honest love, and lasting values”) for which she is most famous, many children’s books, and other standalone stories and devotionals Janette Oke, herself the daughter of Canadian pioneers, has kept the pio...

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Including Us Out

Daniel Proussalidis

December 16, 2016

The premise of Faith in Canada 150 – a Cardus effort to raise the profile of religious faith in the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Confederation – is that we can “live together in difference But does it truly imply neutrality on questions of culture and meaning? Cardus has taken the view th...

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