2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
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...
Peter Stockland reports on how the pandemic’s overshadowing of legislation radically expanding medical assistance in dying might reconfigure Canada’s future.
For two evenings this week, my Cardus colleagues and a panel of expert guests have engaged an in-depth discussion on YouTube on Canada’s post-COVID future.
They cov...
Theologian James Bryson surveys the historical landscape of Munich and finds troubling harbingers vis-a-vis his home province of Nova Scotia’s authoritarian response to the pandemic.
Born and raised in Halifax, I currently live in Munich, Germany. I have been monitoring the Nova Scotian response to the pandemic from abroad by reading the news and by keeping in touch with family and friends.
I write this article to lend some persp...
Faced with pandemic “certainties” that quickly turn out to be up, down, and all around, Don Hutchinson cautions that science can provide estimates but not ultimate truth.
A friend recently joined the growing group of Canadians who take issue with the moving goalposts of the declared as life-or-death (not-really-a) game of pandemic response. Another compared the relationship between science advisors and politicians t...
Palliative care physician Dr. Anthony Kerigan highlights the A-B-C and D steps to safeguard the full dignity of the frail elderly and those at the end of their life.
The last year has seen two events of major concern to older persons, especially those with significant frailty who are unable to live independently. The first was the isolation forced on them by the COVID-19 pandemic and the often substandard conditions und...
Patti-Anne Kay and Fr. Peter Doherty, OMI, find Easter parallels in COVID suffering but recall it was at Pentecost that the fullness of the Resurrection was realized.
Let us go about daily activities with a renewed sense of focus, purpose, and appreciation.
The COVID-19 pandemic struck close to home. Finally, at Easter, my husband and I were overjoyed to see two of our grandchildren outdoors, everyone wearing mask...
Cardus Executive VP Ray Pennings breaks down for Convivium’s Peter Stockland new data on the eagerness of Canadians across faith traditions to gather again in their churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples.
The COVID-19 pandemic has meant bitter medicine for Canada’s religious faithful but its aftermath could be the good news churches and other houses of worship have been waiting for.
Poll resu...
Peter Stockland reports on a group of B.C. Canadian Reformed Churches going to court to be allowed to come in out of the rain and worship together.
As Christians around the world raise “hosannas” to their Saviour this Palm Sunday, the congregation of Aldergrove Canadian Reformed Church might also be putting up umbrellas.
Members of the church located near the western end of B.C.’s Fraser Valley ...
Don Hutchinson considers the complementary roles of Church and State vis-à-vis the pandemic and public health.
Governments have reacted, some say overreacted, to a declared pandemic by moving beyond giving advice for the good of our health to legislating behavioural constraints. Those restrictions have come to church, generating contradictory responses.
Wash ...
Bad news sells but Peter Menzies wonders why journalists eager to echo alarms about pandemic case numbers ignore the social devastation of lockdown policies.
It has long been accepted both within and without the world of journalism that negative news trumps developments of a positive nature pretty much every time. Much may have changed in how news is delivered to people but the old cliches - “if it blee...
Contrary to theologian David Hionides, James Sikkema argues no one has a moral obligation to obey COVID-19 lockdown orders and that civilly disobeying them is justified.
Lockdown orders are not justified. There is, consequently, no moral obligation to obey them. Let me explain.
In the wake of ...
On this day before Lent, Don Hutchinson counsels Convivium readers to prepare for the 40 days before Easter as a mix of self-denial and doing unto others as we would have them do for us.
It’s Pancake Tuesday! My first memory of Pancake Tuesday is from my elementary school years. My working single mom had arranged on school days for a neighbour to feed me breakfast – cereal I carried each morning in a baggie – and lunch. On that particular T...
Writing from a Christian perspective, theologian David Hionides argues followers of Jesus must endure COVID lockdowns by serving Christ as good citizens in the spirit of the early Church.
Lockdowns are not easy by any stretch of the imagination. They are a hard sacrifice. Christians believe humanity was created for community and as Scripture repeatedly indicates, this is a physical connection.
It is simply not good for humanity to be...
Western “realities” of freedom, prosperity and individualism have been shattered by the pandemic, clearing the way for a profound spiritual opening of hearts, Tara Vreugdenhil writes.
The year just behind us was one of shaken realities. The news from Wuhan, China was of an unknown virus claiming lives in unprecedented numbers. But China is across the world so the West continued the reality of our usual daily tasks of work, school, activi...
Peter Stockland speaks with lawyer John Carpay, of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, about looming legal battles on pandemic-driven infringements of Charter rights.
It’s tempting to paraphrase a quote about the weather often (mis)attributed to Mark Twain as a summary of our COVID-19 year: Everyone keeps talking about the pandemic but no one’s doing anything about it.
We must not lead ourselves into that temptati...
In these days of pandemic disorientation and fatigue, uncertainty over the right thing is all right but failure to be good neighbours will be more toxic than the disease itself, Travis Smith writes.
Trust withers in an environment where anyone who does not dutifully repeat the orthodox refrain by rote hazards condemnation as a rumourmonger spreading disinformation. The ubiquity of mask-wearing in public has become an apt metaphor for a situation in whi...
A severe social side effect of the pandemic is the disconnection between those in authority we must trust and our personal experiences that contradict what we’re told, Travis Smith writes.
As justifiably proud as Canadians are about their health care system, carping about our experiences with medicine is a national pastime, too. Presented with a novel technology under today’s unusual conditions, it is unsurprising that some of the same old fr...
In the third of Convivium’s essays on the politics of the pandemic, Travis Smith argues reassurances about vaccine safety will convince only some of the people some of the time.
The history of technological progress is littered with innovations that seemed monstrous at first but proved marvelous instead. Soon enough, people lose their scruples, realize how silly their misgivings were, and take these new technologies for granted. Of...
The Ontario government’s methods to combat COVID-19 risks re-educating citizens in the Machiavellian art of compliance, political theorist Travis Smith writes.
Stuck inside these four walls
Sent inside forever
Never seeing no one nice again
Like you, Mama
–Paul McCartney, “Band on the Run”
Then I better stay in my room
...