Issues, ethics, memory
During the federal election campaign in the autumn of 1965, dozens of students at my boarding school in rural Saskatchewan traveled in a big cattle truck to hear Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson speak in the Humboldt arena. The building was packed and Pearson gave a fulsome speech which was heard by anyone who showed... Continue Reading →
The Harperites and their fellow travellers in the Conservative universe have been scathing in their criticism of Justin Trudeau for saying recently that he wants to grow the economy “from the heart outwards.” After the Liberal leader made his comments during a stop at a Regina farmers’ market, the Conservative war room rushed out a news... Continue Reading →
The National Hockey League’s Ottawa Senators want to abandon the club’s 20-year-old arena in the suburb of Kanata and rebuild near the city's downtown. Although the team says that fans don’t want to travel to the edge of town to watch their team, the arena actually draws an average of 96 percent of its capacity... Continue Reading →
The summer edition of The Catalyst, publication of Citizens for Public Justice, has published a number of books reviews, including mine of a book by Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan, who lead an organization called Samara. Other books reviewed in this issue include those by ecologist Wendell Berry, Naomi Klein and John Ralston Saul and... Continue Reading →
The history of conflict in Northern Ireland is such that there has been a long and bitter disagreement over the name of one of its historic cities. The locals, a majority of them Catholics and nationalists, call it Derry, while Protestants and British loyalists call it Londonderry, the name introduced when the Crown planted London... Continue Reading →
In his recent encyclical, Pope Francis may succeed in ways that the earnest scientists of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have not. The world’s foremost climate experts have issued a series of ever more urgent reports about looming ecological catastrophe if we don’t mitigate human-induced climate change. Those reports are factual and credible,... Continue Reading →
In 2014, we hiked the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and I kept a brief diary. This is day one of Canadians on the Camino,
If Murray Thomson wasn’t a pacifist, you might call him a happy warrior. The 92-year-old Order of Canada (OC) recipient is on the phone constantly from his retirement residence in Ottawa. He is trying to convince all of his fellow OC recipients to support a UN call to entirely eliminate nuclear weapons. More than 800... Continue Reading →
(September 05) We rise early and in the dark to take the breakfast provided by our hotel. We will each be carrying backpacks, mine a 44-litre Osprey which weighs about 10 kilos (just over 20 pounds) when packed, while Martha’s is a 30-litre pack and will weigh about seven kilos. We took considerable care in... Continue Reading →
A priest blesses pilgrims in Estella (September 06) We are on the road in the dark prior to 7:00 a.m. to avoid the heat of the day - and to get a spot in an albergue in Estella, a larger town of 14,000 which is 22 kilometres down the road. We begin by walking down... Continue Reading →
Pulpit and Politics 