Social Architecture

  • Stockland Moving On… But Not Out

    Convivium's co-founder says goodbye to become publisher of the Catholic Register but Ray Pennings, Cardus Executive Vice-President, welcomes Peter Stockland home as a Senior Fellow.  

    It is said of Cardus that once you’ve worked here for a certain length of time, you never actually leave; you’re just not there at the moment.

    So it is that while, officially and formally, I’ll be stepping down as editor of Convivium.ca effective Dec...

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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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  • What To Do After the Deluge

    Daniel Dorman argues each of us has an obligation, as soon as it’s safe, to assert individual freedoms lost to the pandemic.

    “What? Lose our freedom and not get security in return? Why, it was only for security we surrendered our freedom at all.” 

    – C.S. Lewis, A Dream

    “T...

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  • Is Canada Worth Our Sacrifice?

    On the day Canadians remember those who died fighting for freedom’s sake, Rob Joustra challenges us to name what we would give up, here and now, for our country.

    What would you give up for Canada? Not for your home, your kids, your community, your mosque, or your job: for Canada. What would you give? What's it worth to you?

    Issue polling gets a famously bad name, in part because it's hard to accurately measur...

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  • The Politics of Red Team! Blue Team!

    Don Hutchinson notes that when sports and politics overlap we become "fan-atics" cheering for our favourite sweaters and socks. 

    Once upon a time in Canada, we knew where we’d be on Sunday mornings and what would hold our attention on Saturday nights. For some, Sunday faith and Saturday fandom were effortlessly exchangeable.

    For today’s Canadian fans of team sports, it’s the b...

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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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  • Marking Your X With Neighbourly Love

    Don Hutchinson offers a primer on how to let Christian precepts guide voting choice.

    The 2021 federal election has resulted in plentiful social media pleas for citizenship assistance!

    Some people are jaded because of the behaviour of politicians. They challenge us to convince them they should, first, care, and second, vote. 

    O...

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  • COVID Lessons for the Education System

    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...

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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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  • Yes, We Can Understand Each Other

    Restoring trust in language goes beyond improving the sad state of our political debates. It’s vital to our common humanity, Daniel Dorman writes.

    Our political discourse is a demoralizing spectacle. In most public forums, and particularly in the House of Commons, we generally listen to what can’t (in any serious sense) be called ‘debate.’ Most of it is mere partisan verbiage.

    Character assault...

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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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  • 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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  • COVID’s Media Monologue

    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...

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  • Progress Against MAiD

    Catherine Frazee, a long-time disability Rights activist and Ontario’s former Chief Commissioner of Human Rights, talked to MPs about pending MAiD expansion recently. It wasn’t enough to make her give up hope, Peter Stockland reports.

    A powerful impetus behind the Liberal government’s push to jam expanded medical aid in dying through Parliament has been the force of proponents arguing it is progressive legislation.

    Yet Catherine Frazee, who testified last week before the Commons c...

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  • The Necessary and Essential Difference Between Essential and Necessary

    Of all the things the COVID-19 crisis has meant, Travis Smith argues, its means to distinguish between what we necessarily need and what makes us essentially human.

    Like many families across Canada this year, my family celebrated Easter alone at home, the three of us gathered together around the table. Attempts to compensate for the current situation were made via email, telephone, FaceTime, and Zoom, but those convers...

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  • Figuring Out Social Isolation

    Twenty-three per cent of Canadians suffer from extreme social isolation and loneliness, according to a recent Angus Reid Institute survey in partnership with Cardus. Convivium sits down with executive director Ray Pennings to discuss this and other results from the survey.

    Convivium: The main findings come as no surprise to Cardus, but I assume will come as a surprise to an awful lot of people – the role that faith and active participation in religious communities have in ...

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  • Pluralism and the Blue Plate Special

    Weekly media teeth-gnashing over deepening political polarization is finally turning up good news, writes Josh Nadeau. A path back to true pluralism leads through small local institutions such as places called Judy's Diner.  

    Polarization, despite having become a major buzzword in recent years, can be a tricky thing to study. This isn’t due to a lack of attention: concerned essays appear almost weekly in major journals, sites and magazines. 

    Analyzing, decrying or justify...

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  • Tools of Science: Trusted or Busted?

    Putting algorithms to an accountability test doesn’t require junking them entirely, but it can help us catch out powerful interests more intent on abusing than using our data, argues Cardus Social Cities Director Milton Friesen.

    The big success stories of our time have scaled at exponential rates -  Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and the other ‘super bigs’ that relentlessly enlarge themselves. When something scales, however, the mix of characteristics, benefits, and costs of a business o...

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  • Face Value

    Gillette has tried to make profits from selling social good. But where marketing and politics mingle, there lies danger, warns Peter Stockland.

    It’s tempting to take the week’s “controversy” over the Gillette shaving company’s new advertising campaign at something less than face value.

    For starters, controversy itself is no longer the conversational cutting edge it once was. In this era of f...

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  • Blessed Are the Peacemakers

    In the lull after Christmas and New Year’s, Josh Nadeau finds the pursuit of peace ever-elusive but never more imperative.

    We’ve come through Advent, got past Christmas season, and launched into January overweight with get-togethers, eggnog, nostalgia, spiritual practices and cultural traditions that would probably seem downright weird if they weren’t already so familiar. Stock...

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  • Salvation By The Young

    Drawing on Angus Reid polling, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings tells Convivium’s Peter Stockland why young Canadians are far more faith driven than the current secular narrative leads us to believe.

    Convivium: In a recent symposium hosted by the Centre for Research on Religion at McGill University in Montreal, you made the argument that Angus Reid polling data shows young people are much more engaged in faith than we think. What does t...

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  • 100 Years of Fortitude

    Convivium's editor in chief Father Raymond J. de Souza marks the anniversary of both the Sacred Heart of Mary parish and Queen's University's "Newman Club." 

    The Year of Our Lord 2017 has been rather full of notable anniversaries. Five hundred years since the Reformation, something that reminds us that our work across confessional lines at Cardus, Catholics and Protestants together in a common mission, is a bles...

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  • Peak Season

    Convivium author Peter Stockland reflects on the mysterious collapse of motels and the spiritual significance that these places of refuge possess. 

    I learned on my summer vacation something I should have known long ago: that the word “motel” is a compound of “motor” and “hotel.”

    According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it dates from 1925 when a publication called Hotel Monthly reported that...

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  • Dear Canada

    Today Convivium publishes an open letter, authored and affirmed at the Faith in Canada 150 Millennial Summit at the Ottawa Offices of Cardus, Canada’s faith based think tank, June 30, 2017. 

    Dear Canada,

    We write to you on the eve of the 150th anniversary of Confederation to affirm the role of faith in the formation of Canada in its past, today, and in future generations to come.

    We, delegates of the Faith in Canada 150 Millennial...

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