Culture

  • Home is More Than Just a Place

    Do younger Canadians lack a strong sense of home? Is that why they tell pollsters they’re more willing to pack up and leave for another country? Abigail Sefzik, a young writer herself, takes up these questions for Convivium.

    “Where are you from?”

    When asked this common “get-to-know-you question,” I usually chuckle and offer this response:

    “It's a bit complicated.”

    My life has been defined by an odd collection of temporary homes, and half-finished houses spr...

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  • The Trial of Big Porn

    Cardus NextGen Fellow Maxime Huot Couture summarizes important progress in 2021 towards cancelling porn culture. He hopes both the law and the culture will continue to make anti-porn progress in 2022.

    The original version of this article appeared in Le Verbe magazine.

    Pornography is not a new phenomenon, but it has enjoyed an ambivalent moral pass for a long ti...

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  • Defining Canada?

    In his most recent Insights newsletter, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings emphasizes the need to recover a sense of vision and national purpose as Canadians, especially as we think about the future of young Canadian leaders.

    Ray's Take is part of a weekly Saturday morning newsletter written by Ray Pennings designed to inform and provide perspective to Christian leaders. Read a sample and sign-up here...

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  • True North Interview

    Reading the Canadian storyteller’s posthumous new book, Jonathon Van Maren retraces in imagination his travels from his own driveway to the main streets of small towns and cities across the land.

    Earlier this fall, a new book by radio host, writer, and Canadian storyteller Stuart McLean was released: The Vinyl Café Celeb...

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  • The Christian’s Progress

    As Advent moves us toward the promise of Christmas, Peter Copeland and Fr. Deacon Andrew Bennett chart the Christian progressive vision against its static secular form. Part one of three.

    In our heart of hearts, we know that we are not all that we can be, personally, or collectively. We cry out for more, not knowing where to go, or how to get there, but led forward by this flame that burns within.

    Christians have long thought that tho...

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  • The COVID Golden Calf

    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...

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  • The Biblical Cast of Ted Lasso

    Evan Menzies watches the season two finale of the Apple TV+ surprise hit and sees the shadows of Cain and Abel falling across the characters.

    “Nate Shelley is never seeing Heaven.”

    That was one of many Twitter hot takes on the betrayal of Ted Lasso at the end of season two by his assistant coach and socially awkward apprentice Nate Shelley.

    I was a bit surprised to see the outpourin...

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  • Have We Become Not-Canada?

    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...

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  • The Hard Truth About Reconciliation

    Healing wounds inflicted on Indigenous people by Canada and its churches means facing what’s wholly true, not what’s politically appealing, Father Deacon Andrew Bennett writes.

    Let’s discuss truth and reconciliation in their fullness. How do we tell the truth, the fullness of the truth? How do we achieve true reconciliation? Both are two-way streets.

    Firstly, what is truth? Pilate’s question to Christ at his passion rings d...

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  • Truth and Justin Trudeau

    Even as Canadians auto-correct for political falsehoods by expecting and accepting them, the Prime Minister’s fib on Truth and Reconciliation Day reveals a worrying pattern, Peter Stockland writes.

    George Orwell would likely have caught his breath at news of a prime minister caught in a flagrant fib on a day dedicated to capital T Truth.

    Orwell, of course, spent his journalistic career ferreting out and castigating the incessant political lying...

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  • Canada’s Disconnect on Religious Freedom

    Our country of newcomers gives scant political weight to global affairs and forgets that for billions worldwide faith is essential to identity, Susan Korah writes.

    In Canada, the battle of the ballot box is seldom fought and won on the intricacies of the country’s role in international affairs— and the latest election was no different.

    Despite the catastrophe in Afghanistan, which has direct consequences for Ca...

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  • An Election Exercise in Media Conformity

    The shared-bathwater insularity of Parliament Hill’s media elite has made the 2021 campaign an adventure in safe and narrow thinking, Peter Menzies argues.

    The words of Jody Wilson-Raybould are as good a place as any to begin an assessment of media coverage of Canada’s 44th federal election.

    “In Ottawa, the political culture, which includes the media, lives in a world of its own construction, quite divo...

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  • Indigenous Women Ascending

    Peter Stockland sees the appointment of Mary Simon as GG, the election of RoseAnne Archibald as AFN National Chief, and Jody Wilson-Raybould’s political courage as hope for Canada.

    Thursday’s fifth ballot win that made RoseAnne Archibald the first ever female National Chief of the Assembly of First...

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  • Canada’s Common Spiritual Hunger

    After last week’s online National Prayer Breakfast, Cardus Executive Vice President Ray Pennings reflected in his weekly Insights newsletter on how to pray in public – and pluralistic – spaces. Convivium reprints his text.

    Cardus Insights strives to “connect the dots” among faith, business, and public life. Ray’s weekly reading summaries can catch you up or provide you with more insight into the headlines you may have seen this week. And you can look forward to a...

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  • Grave Men Facing A Grave Faith

    Jonathon Van Maren reports on a series of leading serious intellectuals who recognize the need for Christianity’s resurrection but can’t quite bring the faith to life in themselves.

    Earlier this month, I spent some time on the phone with Niall Ferguson, the Scottish historian and Milbank Family Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, for a ...

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  • A Rude Awokening for Justin Trudeau?

    Peter Stockland reports on the political implications of a speech the former justice minister gave this week castigating the Prime Minister’s “hypocrisy” on Indigenous issues.

    In the year before the pandemic, Jody Wilson-Raybould served as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s worst headache.

    In a speech she gave on Wednesday, the former justice minister and attorney-general showed why she could become the PM’s worst nightmare....

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  • When Politics Trumps Meaning

    The very wording of the federal government’s updated Broadcasting Act means language itself is being subordinated to the State’s political purposes, Peter Stockland argues in the second of two parts examining Bill C-10.

    Read part one of Peter Stockland's two-part series on Bill C-10.

    Debate over the federal government’s updating of the Broadcasting Act has l...

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  • Talking Turkey About Tulips

    Ottawa’s annual Tulip Festival owes its origins to a Turkish refugee and Canada going Dutch during the Second World War, Susan Korah discovers.

    The transformation couldn’t be more dramatic. Each May, thousands of tulips in full bloom turn Ottawa’s parks and public gardens into bursts of vibrant colour, ranging from fiery reds and yellows to delicate pastels—all the more striking after the dreary gr...

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  • The Cat Fight Over State-Controlled Internet

    Experts pushed back this week on government efforts to legislate control of Canadians’ Internet use. Peter Stockland reports on what’s at stake.

    Despite the almost spiritual significance Internet cat videos apparently have for Canadians, fears that legislation known as Bill C-10 might snuff out Fluffy’s chance for viral stardom seem seriously misdirected.

    As Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeaul...

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  • Religious Freedom Equals Educational Freedom

    The latest call to defund Ontario’s Catholic schools both rewrites Canadian history and goes counter to international schooling norms, Cardus Education Program Director David Hunt argues.

    In terms of cultural insensitivity, the latest call for ending Ontario’s Catholic school funding wins the shamrock, coming...

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  • Irish Eyes on Meghan and Harry

    This might be the best Saint Patrick’s Day to skip the clownish caricatures and ponder the British monarchy from Ireland’s historical perspective, Peter Stockland argues.

    With her ever-present perspicacity, Wall Street Journal writer Peggy Noonan pinpoints the flurry of furies engulfing the House of Windsor as both family tragedy and institutional catastrophe, two matters of particular program concern here at Cardus...

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  • When A Pope Comes Home

    The welcome for Pope Francis on his visit to Iraq was a memorable first step. Now hope must become reality, Susan Korah reports.

    A calculated risk in the face of pandemic fears and potential security threats, the visit of Pope Francis to Iraq brought incalculable benefits, say members of the country’s indigenous Christian community. 

    Traumatized by years of violence and hate w...

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  • The Unlawfulness of Lockdown

    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 ...

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  • Cancel That Cancellation

    Desecration of the U.S. Capitol and undermining of North American institutions are both being rebuked by those willing to stand up for reason and sanity, Peter Stockland writes.

    The riot that produced the U.S. Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump has its analogue in the cancel culture rampaging through North American institutions. Neither cancels the other, of course. Both are horrid, each in its especially hideous way.

    ...

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