2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Convivium publisher, Ray Pennings, writes the last Convivium column as a tribute to this unique platform, expressing the gratitude we feel for all of you who have breathed life into it for over a decade.
Whenever we need to make statements of conclusion, we’re tempted to say, “mission accomplished.” We’ve done what we have set out to do, so the job is finished.
As publisher of Convivium, I need to let you know that this will be the last ...
In time for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Susan Korah writes a commemorative piece on Canada’s first female Senator—Cairine Wilson— a “firm but gentle voice” who advocated for refugees entering Canada after WWII.
As Jews and human rights advocates all over the world mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, Canadians have a special reason to honour the memory of Cairine Wilson, Canada’s first female Senator, who was appointed to the Red Chamber in ...
Ted Byfield was no quitter and until his passing over the holidays, he was a front-line culture warrior in the journalism, publishing, and Christian education spheres, Jonathon Van Maren writes.
Edward “Ted” Bartlett Byfield passed away in his Edmonton home on December 23, 2021, at the age of 93. For more than a half-century, he was one of Canada’s most significant public Christians, and his life’s work included the founding of a religious order, t...
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...
Drawing on history and imagination, André Schutten “interviews” former Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker about Conservative Party failure to properly oppose the new legislation.
On December 1st, I watched in stunned disbelief as the Conservative Party of Canada proposed, and then unanimously supported, a motion to expedite the Liberal’s Bill C-4, an act to amend the criminal code in order to ban conversion therapy. In less than 30 ...
On a day that will live in infamy to mark violence against Canadian women, Susan Korah reports on a global study of gendered religious persecution.
Aid to the Church in Need, a global Catholic charity has released a groundbreaking—and heartbreaking— report.
With the launch of Hear Her Cries—the first comprehensive report on gender-specific religious persecution—Aid to the Chur...
As Advent foreshadows the Christmas narrative, Peter Copeland and Father Deacon Andrew Bennett write that our end is not in restless secularism but the peace of union with the Father.
Returning to where we began, to find out what ends we seek, what is the story we claim to be a part of?
The secular progressive story is one that is inherently ill-defined. The end, the telos, are goalposts that are constantly changing. Its gaze is s...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
This just in: the current prime minister is steadfastly refusing to follow his father’s footsteps, especially on human rights and justice. Don Hutchinson traces the divergent path.
The two Trudeaus are the only father-son federal prime ministers in Canada’s brief history. Each in their time, father Pierre and son Justin, led the Government of Canada into record ...
From a profound Christian faith, Residential School survivor Chief Kenny Blacksmith believes true healing will come not from politics but from paying our debt to God, Jonathon Van Maren reports.
Even before I spoke with Chief Kenny Blacksmith, I suspected Canadians were talking past each other on the subject of residential schools.
After speaking with him I was convinced of it, primarily because Chief Blacksmith speaks directly from inside t...
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...
Alan Hustak reports on the removal of a statue honouring the 19th-century priest who suffered a nervous breakdown battling Ottawa over its abusive residential school system.
The statue of a priest whose Indigenous students were originally taught in Cree, and who fought forced removal of Indigenous children from their parents, is slated for removal from a Saskatchewan cemetery.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina has...
In this homily, Father Cristino Bouvette says the enduring faith of his Indigenous grandmother shows the real peace of Christ heals even the torments of residential schools.
One of the most consequential conversations I ever had was with my grandmother- whom most of her younger grandchildren affectionately called ‘Kokum’ – the Cree word for grandma – within my first couple of years of seminary studies.
I had known by then...
Despite the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Susan Korah reports, undaunted groups seek just solutions that benefit both sides.
A just and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine seems as illusory as a mirage in the desert, particularly since the recent outbreak of violence following expulsion of 40 Palestinian families from Sheik Jarrah in East Jerusalem to make room for Israeli...
Peter Stockland brings a journalist’s mindset and hometown origins to his analysis of media coverage around the finding of Indigenous children’s bodies in Kamloops, B.C.
Melissa Mollen-Dupuis and I don’t know each other but we appear to share similar thoughts on the journalism around Kamloops, B.C. and the discovery of an unmarked grave containing remains of Indigenous children.
In an interview with Montreal’s Le...
Peter Stockland reports on the week’s political signs that the past might be coming back to haunt Canada’s future much sooner than we dreamed.
Ears of a certain vintage had to hear echoes of Elijah in Jody Wilson-Raybould’s emphatic “no” this week.
The reverberation’s source was the late Indigenous politician Elijah Harper rather than the Biblical prophet Elijah. The latter, of course, over...
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...
On April 24, 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden will acknowledge the 1915 genocide of Armenians. Canadian descendants now want Turkey to own its historic crime, Susan Korah reports.
April 24 is a day of deeply felt and often turbulent emotions, say members of the Canadian Armenian community.
Designated Armenian Genocide Memorial Day, it brings back tortured memories of a painful past mingled with a sense of gratitude for their ...
In conversation with Convivium contributor Jonathon Van Maren, former career diplomat David Mulroney says Canada’s residential school past should curb its neocolonialist urges in Africa.
“[The Trudeau government] is using foreign policy as an exotic stage from which to tell stories to its supporters back in Canada. This is a really cynical political move.”
It is rare for a former Canadian diplomat to speak out against a sitting gover...
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...