Peter Menzies is in the house to watch Canada beat Mexico and suddenly a dream comes true to trump eighteen nightmarish months that included – oy! – taking up camping.
It’s been almost two years now since I had a social life of any kind to speak of. You remember social life, don’t you?
Having friends over for dinner, going to a crowded restaurant on Friday after work and feeling the buzz of interaction, picking you...
Don Hutchinson writes that whether we have unwittingly become card-carrying members of monsters at work or mobs inc. is best revealed by a look in the bathroom mirror.
When I encounter Frankenstein, the word that most readily comes to mind is ‘monster.’
I chuckled at the meme, “Albert Einstein was a genius. But his brother Frank was a monster.” The word association instantly conveys a humorous image, even ...
In the second of two parts, Travis Smith argues that our responses to the pandemic reveal a Canada progressively squeezing out its commitment to liberty.
Part One: The COVID Golden Calf
“The passion to be reckoned upon is fear.”
– Thomas Hobbes, Leviat...
In this first of a two-part essay, Travis Smith teases out the new ersatz religiosity of our political, clinical and social pandemic responses.
Part Two: Follow The Political Science
The ongoing campaign against COVID-19 has several religious attributes and analo...
Ottawa writer Ruth Dick argues it’s time to restore political health by purging our viral responses of the urge to condemn and dominate.
Basta! Enough!
With that exhortation out of my system, let me add a suggestion that’ll go over like a lead balloon: Within the sphere of public discourse, leave those who are actively vaccination resistant alone:
Avoid sharp-p...
Sandra B. Julian warns a basic human right is being trampled in the COVID-fed panic to digitize and QR code where we can go and what we can do based on whether we’ve had the jab.
As a bonus feature, we’re linking Sandra Julian’s article to a Long Way Podcast discussion on vaccine passport policy.
...
Ominous State expansion under cover of the COVID crisis isn’t a sign of future despots at work but the consequence of a culture in which outcome trumps process, Robert Joustra argues.
The overreach of government is a common refrain among conservatives this pandemic, and not without cause. As those such as Father Raymond de Souza, Ed Bosveld, and others have argued, the State has not merely expanded to the occasion of the crisis, nor only...
Susan Korah reports on the grim toll the country’s collapse inflicts on its young while Canadian kids return to post-pandemic trick or treating.
“For every act of violence against children that creates headlines and cries of outrage, there are many more that go unreported.”
Henrietta H. Fore, UNICEF Executive Director
As we approach the first post-pandemic Halloween, ...
Don Hutchinson says the recent court order compelling a Calgary street preacher to reference science in his sermons about COVID is offensive and has to be appealed.
Politically determined public health guidelines during the covid-19 pandemic have come with a cost.
Governments have defined essential and non-essential services, ostensibly to ensure Canadians have access to food. Not all can afford essential servi...
Travis Smith warns time is running out to free our home and native land from its pandemic-induced contagion of distrust, resentment, and contempt for our neighbours.
“But now old friends are acting strange / They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed”
– Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now”
We have been learning a lot about each other, ha...
The good results notoriously sceptical French are getting by taking a leap of faith in the fight against COVID shows the necessity of trust within democratic life, Peter Stockland writes.
A photo in Monday’s public prints brought the good news of people dancing in La Grande Motte, France as evidence la République appears on its way out of its COVID crisis.
Alas, the photo was taken last July, which seems a lifetime in pandemic days, o...
In the dizzying dash for vaccine mandates, James Bryson asks, what happened to the liberal/Liberal claims of “my body, my choice” that justified abortion and MAiD?
By throwing their weight behind vaccine mandates, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada have picked a strange hill to die on in the run to Canada’s snap election next week.
The Liberal support of vaccine mandates represent a 180 degree turn ...
Peter Stockland reports on writer Charles Eisenstein’s work to identify a force even more dangerous than contagious public stupidity.
American writer Lance Morrow recently identified our current moment as the golden age of stupidity.
No evidence exists that the author of America: A Rediscovery and Second Drafts of History was peeping across the border watching the...
Despite contrary claims, sincerely held faith is a Charter-protected justification for declining to take the COVID shot, Don Hutchinson reports.
John Longhurst’s provocatively titled column Religious leaders should make it clear faith ...
In the second of two parts, Tara Vreugdenhil writes that regardless of pure intentions, many methods used in the pandemic response are classic harassment tactics.
This is part two of a two-part series from Tara Vreugdenhil. Click here to read part one: "A COVID Shot in the Dark"
The point is made frequently that hospita...
In this first of two parts, Tara Vreugdenhil argues the pandemic response has unleashed a contagion of fuzzy language, shifting definitions, and logic that doesn’t follow.
This is part one of a two-part series from Tara Vreugdenhil. ...
The flexibility and responsiveness of Ontario’s independent schools during the pandemic prove the advantage of humanized education in small, family-centric schools, David Hunt writes.
As Ontario’s public schools struggle to accommodate students in a new school year amid what could be a fourth wave of COVID-19, what can the Ontario government learn from the last 17 months?
For starters, the government needs to accept that huge, ind...
Despite fines for congregating contrary to COVID rules, an open air church in an inner-city park flourishes by serving society’s marginalized, writes Matthew Boardman.
Recent media reports of a petition by residents in Ottawa’s inner-city Dundonald Park neighbourhood demanding more community supports for indigent users of...
Susan Korah reports on the desperate state of the former Mediterranean oasis one year after the blast that decimated Beirut.
One year ago today was a night of splintering glass and splattering blood.
On August 4, 2020, as the last hours of pre-sunset daylight illuminated Beirut’s skyline, a cataclysmic explosion shook the city like the blast of an atomic bomb. It turned o...
In her review of a 2021 book by British journalist Laura Dodsworth, Anna Farrow highlights disturbing evidence of governments using our primal panic response to push pandemic policies.
Long before David Attenborough brought his soothing voice to the explication of animal behaviour for the BBC Life series, the North American television public had been introduced to the majesty and oddities of the natural world through Mutual of Om...
Peter Stockland flags an institutional shift in journalism that seems to be causing media outlets to follow the State line rather than inquire and clarify in the public interest.
Warning lights should always flash before our eyes whenever journalists mix raw numbers and percolating percentages in the same paragraph.
Numbers clearly state actuality. Percentages are the ups and downs of context. Regardless of the axiom attribut...
Though a vaccination supporter himself, Peter Stockland cautions against the campaign to denigrate those honestly questioning it in a world of abounding COVID absurdities.
In a recently re-opened Ottawa restaurant this week, a member of our party of five was forbidden from using a chair.
He wasn’t sitting in it standing on his head showing off some exotic yoga pose or, more pedestrianly, engaged in man-spreading to a d...
We must not let the stresses and fear of the COVID crisis seep into suspicion and crowd out mercy, Father Tim McCauley writes.
Recently, I was participating in an online training course to volunteer with Ottawa Inner-City Ministries. The facilitator asked us to begin by sharing something for which we are grateful during this pandemic. People responded with various answers such as r...
Peter Jon Mitchell, Cardus Family Program Director, reports on the link between Canada’s severe baby-making problem and young Canadians increasingly choosing to delay or reject marriage.
Wedding industry vendors are reporting a boom in bookings – or at least south of the border according to the Associated Press. Couples who waited out the pandemic are booking their big day, as are those who married during the pandemic but are now p...
Convivium means living together. Unlike many digital magazines, we haven’t put up a digital paywall. We want to keep the conversation regarding faith in our common and public life as open as possible.
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