2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Yesterday, Peter Stockland queried the usefulness of the COP26 conference. Today, Susan Korah reports on the urgency of saving the Garden from climate calamity.
“We have inherited a garden, we must not leave a desert to our children.”
— Statement signed on October 4, 2021 by Pope Francis and 40 faith leaders
Two countries that were consistently in th...
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...
Despite historic pacts between Israel and its Arab neighbours, Middle East peace remains a chimera if Lebanon is left behind, Susan Korah writes.
World media attention has shifted from the horrific explosion in Beirut on August 4 to the historic Abraham Accord that is normalizing relations between some Arab states and Israel.
But speakers at a recent webinar on the region stressed the importan...
COVID-19 has sparked calls to recover domestic production of goods from pharmaceuticals to personal protective equipment. Raising a contrary voice, Matthew Lau argues for recognizing globalization as the good that comes from economic interconnection.
There has been, as Sean Speer noted recently in the National Post, a broad consensus in most countries on the benefits of globalization – th...
Matthew Kaemingk, recently named Hamilton-based Redeemer University College’s 2019 Emerging Intellectual, challenges Christians to defend the religious freedom of all faiths as they do their own.
Christians are really good at defending their own religious freedoms. When it comes to other faith traditions, however, Christians often seem quite ill-prepared to defend the religious freedoms of non-Christians.
This discrepancy was one of two key ...
On the feast of Pope St. John Paul II, we need to heed his messages of hope, courage and conviviality in the aftermath of a divisive election, writes Convivium's Rebecca Darwent.
A country divided in blue, red, orange, turquoise and a splash of green. The top-two parties’ popular vote divided with a margin of a mere 1.4 per cent, other ballots cast towards a split up of three other parties, radically different and yet, unequivocally...
The advent of digital nomadism, Josh Nadeau writes from experience, opens the door to home becoming pilgrimage, and roots becoming spirit to stretch instead of matter that restrains.
When one speaks of the omnipresent Millennial, a number of well-formed stereotypes come to mind. You have your vinyl-laden cultural connoisseurs, for example, or your selfie mavens (complete with seasonal latte) or experts in ‘90s nostalgia. While it’s ulti...
Editor in Chief Father Raymond J. de Souza reports on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's recent visit to the Vatican, delivering an insightful reflection on judgement, truth, and values.
Three weeks ago, Justin Trudeau knelt in the Sistine Chapel before The Last Judgement, Michelangelo’s depiction of the Risen Christ returning in awesome glory to render final judgement upon the saints and the damned. It is both sobering and salutar...
Convivium Editor in Chief Father Raymond J. de Souza reflects on the significance of Pope Francis and Bartholomew, Patriarch of Constantinople, addressing a peace conference hosted by the Al-Azhar mosque in Egypt tomorrow.
On Friday, Pope Francis and Bartholomew, Patriarch of Constantinople, will be together in Cairo to address a peace conference hosted by the Al-Azhar mosque and university, sometimes called the “Vatican” of the Sunni Muslim world. For the leadership of globa...
Father Tim McCauley points readers towards the necessity of recovering an approach towards politics which prizes perspective over personality.
Hate is in vogue. During the latest American election campaign, it was an entirely acceptable position, among certain conservative Republicans, to hate Hillary Clinton. Now it is not only commonplace but perhaps even expected among certain liberal Democrat...
On this fourth of July, our American friends are celebrating 237 years of their founding fathers declaration of independence from the "tyranny of repeated injuries and usurptions" that King George III had imposed on the colonies, declaring that "they are also absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown." As a loyal subject of Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, (we share her with 15 other countries including Great Britian), I suppose the red, white, and blue bunting that decorates the parades, fireworks, and concerts south of the 49th today should provoke resentment but this isn't the case.
I will confess to being among the 86% of Albertans who experience "an upwelling of emotion when singing" the Canadian national anthem...
"Help is needed to support a young girl who was recently rescued from human traffickers. She was bought and sold into the sex trade for nine years. Now she is free. She needs food, clothing, shelter, medicine, counseling, and rehabilitation. We would also like to provide her, when she is ready, funds for education courses to help her restore her life.
As Ottawa's echo-ocracy worked itself into stage five incoherence over a backbench MP's motion on sex-selection abortion, the following words quietly appeared on another MP's website:
"Help is needed to support a young girl who was recently ...
In many ways, it is neither wrong nor entirely mystifying why one religious group would draw attention to the abuses or suffering of their co-religionists. Christian groups draw attention to the suffering of other Christians in part because they are often more naturally familiar with these groups, as a result of global networks, but also because there is an implicit self-identification with the victimized.
It is only just beginning to come to light that one of the most powerful forces for global good can be the formal and informal networks of faith-based and religious organizations. These are the people that are, in the words of CBC correspondent Brian Stewar...
Almost everything he says, of course, turns out to have the predictable burble and sulphur of the primeval class-warrior. You can tell and smell it from three blocks away. There's no normal need to move in for exact identification. "The (condo) boom is gobbling up land almost as fast as it sucks up mortgage debt.
Jim Stanford sports an economist's badge on his white-collar shirt front, yet works for the Canadian Auto Workers. This combination gets him punditry gigs on CBC and in the Globe and Mail.
Almos...
The newest food for fret is quinoa. The Guardian warns, "There is an unpalatable truth to face for those of us with a bag of quinoa in the larder." The article continues, "The appetite of countries such as ours for this grain has pushed up prices to such an extent that poorer people in Peru and Bolivia, for whom it was once a nourishing staple food, can no longer afford to eat it."
Fretting is the hot new side dish, but it's not healthy. I'm sure there are many in wealthy North America who eat their oatmeal every morning blissfully unaware of the controversies around whether their porridge is fair-trade, organic, local, steel cut or m...
During the Cold War, the party of Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Reagan was strongly anticommunist, but these presidents took foreign policy seriously and executed their grand strategies with a healthy degree of tactical flexibility. Since 9/11, however, Republicans have known only one big thing—the "global war on terror"—and have remained stubbornly committed to a narrow militarized approach.
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing" -Archilochus
American foreign policy rock star Dan Drezner ...
This is especially so later in the evenings around Christmas when the white noise of the city softens and the temperature falls. Then, the smack of sticks on ice and the ricochet of frozen rubber discs zipping off the boards rattle around my brain like flash card memories of high school girlfriends that—unsolicited and about which we may not speak—refuse to disappear from the subconscious.
Sometimes when it's quiet the sounds from the outdoor rink over by the Catholic school carry across the snow after dark and tap on the window outside my bedroom.
This is especially so later in the evenings around Christmas when the white noise of the...
For instance, Canada's women recently lost their Olympic semi-final football (soccer) match to the USA (4-3 after extra time), due in large part to a couple of quaintly creative decisions by Norwegian referee Christiana Pedersen. My initial reaction to this was that Canada should scramble the CF-18s pronto and launch an invasion of Norway or at the very least make some bold incursions into its airspace as an expression of outrage. Given the sense of injustice I was feeling at the time, this felt like a moderate approach. What did inspire, however, are some thoughts about service that were prompted by the fact Canada's team contained one dual Canadian-American citizen, Chelsea Stewart, while the American team contained another, Sydney Leroux. This is not unusual. Canadians have for years played hockey and other sports for foreign countries and as we are all aware, Team USA swimmer and gold medalist Missy Franklin is also a Canadian citizen with Canadian parents. I don't think these matters should be controversial, particularly in the case of Franklin who was born and raised in the USA and always dreamed of representing the land of her birth; the nation that nurtured her.
The beautiful game, as it is known, can inspire some frightfully ugly reactions.
For instance, Canada's women recently lost their Olympic semi-final football (soccer) match to the USA (4-3 after extra time), due in large part to a couple of quaintly ...
Aaron Sorkin is an Academy and Emmy award-winning American screenwriter, producer, and playwright, whose works include A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, Sports Night, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Charlie Wilson's War, The Social Network, and Moneyball. He has presided over some of the greatest moments in TV and he did it again recently in the opening episode of The Newsroom.
"Why is America the greatest country in the world?" a coed asks the assembled media pundits on season opener of HBO's The Newsroom.
Aaron Sorkin is an Academy and Emmy award-winning American screenwriter, producer, and playwright, whose works ...
Take, for instance, the Canadian Auto Workers Union. Yesterday, the CAW launched a major paper entitled "Re-thinking Canada's Auto Industry: A Policy Vision to Escape the Race to the Bottom." The report outlines policy recommendations including "buy Canadian" measures, direct government investment in the auto industry, Central Bank tampering with monetary policy to lower the Canadian dollar and encourage exports, and a host of other measures intended to "protect Canada's share of this industry." The first community whose head gets stepped on is workers in developing economies.
The race to the bottom is a full-contact sport full of cheap hits and thuggery. The thugs, however, are not always easy to spot.
Take, for instance, the Canadian Auto Workers Union. Yesterday, the CAW launched a major paper entitled "...
Not long ago I was enjoying an evening meal with the monks at St. Gregory's in Three Rivers, Michigan, and the text being read for the evening was a cultural history of the Cold War as told through Monopoly. Over their spartan supper, I learned that Monopoly has become one of the most powerful, influential games in the world. The concomitant rise of its narrative, competitive capitalism, has mirrored American cultural and political ascent. It is a game predicated on the fictions of level playing fields, impartial chance, limited intervention, and the ingenuity of market competition. Victory in Monopoly also spells disaster for capitalism, an ironic tension that now seems to be eternally nestled in the American psyche.
If there are two cultural artifacts that showcase the distinctives between Americans and Canadians, it is surely these two board games: Monopoly and Poleconomy. What the devil is Pole...
Mr. Crowley proposes a planned disintegration of North American borders in favour of integration of economies. To wit:
Brian Lee Crowley's piece in yesterday's Financial Post is the most provocative piece I have read in some time. It not only contains one of the most open challenges to Can...
The city of Gatineau—best known for hosting Canada's Museum of Civilization and a host of public servants—has recently released a "values guide" for new immigrants. The guide is a veritable smorgasbord of helpful advice for new immigrants to ensure that they assimilate—sorry, transition—into Canadian society. On the one hand it's hard to dismiss outright the idea of such a document. I would like to know the various traditions and practices of the city I'm moving to too. It's hospitable.
Things like this give liberalism a bad name.
The city of Gatineau—best known for hosting Canada's Museum of Civilization and a host of public servants—has recently released a ...