Peter Stockland
Peter Stockland is a Cardus Senior Fellow and Publisher of the Catholic Register.
Bio last updated April 4th, 2022.
Articles by Peter Stockland
Panem et circenses
By Peter Stockland
December 10, 2013
Doubtless, a similar argument went through Caesar's mind as his thumb hung suspended in the Colosseum air, poised between turning up or turning down, the bridge between a human life or death. Yet without downgrading the importance of a vital bridge that is reportedly poised to fall down, it strikes me (today, anyway) that more compelling comparisons with Rome are found in the sports pages rather than in those parts of the Daily Pump Organ where "real" news is purportedly reported
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Publisher's Letter
Peter Stockland
December 1, 2013
Seeing by a Christmas Light
It is to celebrate the birth of that natural advocate in a sorrowful stable so that He could experience the joy of Easter that allows us to wish Merry Christmas to one and all One of the central images we settled on was that of the welcoming table surrounded by good friends and loving family, making...
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Editorial Crackerjacks
Peter Stockland
November 26, 2013
I mean you can learn something about the peculiar way the particular class of people privileged enough to be newspaper editorial writers see your world The editorial, in that weird and wonderful mix of gratuitous influence, self-importance, and detachment from reality that characterizes newspapers a...
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Ford Shutdown
Peter Stockland
November 19, 2013
Why? Because Rob Ford is one more excuse for the Toronto media, and Torontonians at large, to talk about themselves Will the Toronto media ever deliver this message? Not on a bet ...
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Honking for Hats
Peter Stockland
November 14, 2013
Even as enormous political thought, energy, and activity were being put into overseeing the kind of hats Quebecers are allowed to wear in various circumstances, I could see nothing but the sea of bumpers of the cars of my fellow citizens: none of us able to move more than an inch or two per hour The...
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Creature Comforts, or Putting the Past Behind You
Peter Stockland
November 5, 2013
In fairness, my late cousin, a lifelong Montrealer who died far too young five years ago this month, used to argue persuasively that the 1998 ice storm put an ice pick through the heart of the separatist movement Those who persisted afterward in promoting separatist ideology were either neurotic gru...
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Championing a Cause the Countercultural Way
Peter Stockland
October 30, 2013
Since last Thursday, Michael Van Pelt, Ray Sawatsky, and I have accompanied Paul Donovan, the principal of Montreal's Loyola High School, on a six-city tour ...
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What's Under the Hat
Peter Stockland
October 8, 2013
It happened this past weekend at a conference in Montreal on Religious Freedom in Education, where Meehan was scheduled to present an overview of Supreme Court decisions affecting the free practice of religious faith in Canada As a collectivity within Quebec society, Sikhs make enormously worthy con...
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Publisher's Letter
Peter Stockland
October 1, 2013
Pardon Me?
Convivium's conversation with Lord Black, and the Calgary event at which it occurred, were not part of any grand strategic design on his part to re-enter Canadian public life William Finn of Alberta, who equated Lord Black to the eponymous figure in Chaucer's "The Pardoner's Tale ...
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Two Postcards from Canada's Switzerland
Peter Stockland
September 17, 2013
What government would behold this tableau and decide to "fix" it by telling those Muslim girls they can never, ever have female Muslim teachers providing them with models of strength and leadership at the front of their class while wearing the outward symbols of their faith? ...
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Scholars are Worth More than Dollars
Peter Stockland
September 3, 2013
In this week's Maclean's editorial urging students to "face the financial facts of education" and today's Globe and Mail column by Jerry Dias of the new mega-union Unifor, education and work are part of a continuum whose end is earning money and becoming a successful economic actor in a voraciously ...
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An Assault on Cynicism
Peter Stockland
August 20, 2013
Discussing the American critical curmudgeon Alfred Kazin, Epstein writes: "He was a man perpetually ticked off, a walking wound in search of a salt shaker Brooks elaborates expanding circles of Epsteinian salt-shaker-seeking that both bedevil the American political system and perpetuate falsehoods a...
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Human Rights Triage
Peter Stockland
August 13, 2013
Either the fine people at REAL Women of Canada missed that particular memo with its deeply conservative emphasis on constancy and prudence, or they suffered a temporary lapse in memory before issuing a terribly wrong-headed media release last week For while the media shred the air with their obsessi...
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Not Entirely Convinced
Peter Stockland
August 6, 2013
Chua's essay is the failure to meld the power of his subjective impressions about racism into clear argument that guides the reader toward the understanding that racism is discernible in the random facial expressions of strangers as much as in overt acts Last Friday, a young British Columbian publis...
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Publisher's Letter
Peter Stockland
August 1, 2013
Brave Days
Love or loathe his politics and persona, the genteel bravery of Conrad Black that shines through in his conversation with Father Raymond J Writing in this issue of Convivium shows us, I think, why we should love it much more than heroism as defined above ...
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Holding Onto Memory
Peter Stockland
July 30, 2013
One Christmas, as we were carving the turkey (memory provoked perhaps by the stuffing), he reminded my wife: "You tossed away the leader of an entire fictional universe from our childhood Here, no matter what either a reductive materialist science or the Daily Death Rattle might say, is the God-give...
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Holding Onto Relics
Peter Stockland
July 23, 2013
In my household this summer, The Hurricane howls: "Old! Useless! Out!" You will appreciate the many nerve-wracking moments when I wondered how long it would before I, too, was lifted and deposited firmly on the curb ...
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Baseball's Silence
Peter Stockland
July 16, 2013
According to the Wall Street Journal, the actual time in baseball when "everyone on the field is running around looking for something to do (balls in the air and runner advancement attempts)" takes five minutes and forty-seven seconds during a three-hour-plus game Still, much of what the WSJ discoun...
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Setting Down Roots...or Not
Peter Stockland
July 9, 2013
The idea that Vancouver is a great place to live is predicated on the misbegotten mythology that it is a place people can afford to live The first is that Vancouver is a great place to live ...
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The Extraordinary Ordinariness
Peter Stockland
July 3, 2013
In a lovely, reflective article by Charles McGrath, who identifies himself as Munro's first editor at the New Yorker Magazine in the 1970s, Munro confirms that a lifetime of short story writing has come to an end In fact, between the publication of her first book and the sixth that she produced as s...
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What's Being Demolished?
Peter Stockland
June 25, 2013
"Given the state of Quebec's bridges, roads and other infrastructure, I was under the impression construction workers have been on strike for the past 40 years," the comment writer wrote under a news story when the strike began June 17 ...
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After Meaning: Quebec's Religion Problems are Mere Symptoms
Peter Stockland
June 18, 2013
What seems, on the surface, to be simply fear of outsiders "diluting" French culture is the more complex response of those who have long ago emptied their lives of truly lived faith and now face others whose faith is the fulfillment of life itself ...
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Surrendering to Terror
Peter Stockland
June 11, 2013
When we accepted such hostile intrusions as necessary tradeoffs between security of the person and collective safety, did we really think they would end with snooping about in our creams and lotions? Did we truly imagine, when State apparatuses began inspecting our private bits with X-ray machines a...
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Where is the Video?
Peter Stockland
June 5, 2013
The slightly longer version of the question, perhaps necessary for those who have been away building the moon colony for the past month, is this: where is the video that the Toronto Star reported allegedly shows Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack ...