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  Home is More Than Just a Place

  Abigail Sefzik

  January 26, 2022

  Do younger Canadians lack a strong sense of home? Is that why they tell pollsters they’re more willing to pack up and leave for another country? Abigail Sefzik, a young writer herself, takes up these questions for Convivium.

  “Where are you from?”

  When asked this common “get-to-know-you question,” I usually chuckle and offer this response:

  “It's a bit complicated.”

  My life has been defined by an odd collection of temporary homes, and half-finished houses spr...

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  Santa Serves the War-Torn, Too

  Susan Korah

  December 21, 2020

  Saint Nicholas lives in the spirit of all who give gifts and life to those in the darkness of violence and poverty, Susan Korah writes.

  Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.

  Thank God! He lives, and he lives forever. A thousan...

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  Mercy From an Unrelenting Lent

  Rebecca Darwent

  April 10, 2020

  COVID-19 isolation caused Convivium’s Rebecca Darwent to give up even giving things up for Lent. It helped her understand what the Apostle Matthew missed.

  I’ve heard people refer to this season as the Lentiest Lent that ever Lented. At the beginning of the 40 days of Lent, having been through a wringer of a winter, I decided to not take on a huge feat, but rather stick to simple practices of prayer, fasting a...

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  The Art of the Home

  Brittany Beacham

  May 24, 2019

  Homemaking is setting up our homes to be places that are restful, where we can be refueled and renewed. Hospitality is inviting others into that, writes Brittany Beacham.  

  Since I was a little girl, I’ve loved to bake and I’ve wanted to be a mom. I grew up in a community that places a high level of importance on hospitality and that has always been a value in my life. For a time, I viewed hospitality as the same as hosting, a...

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  Minding the School-Home Gap

  Rebecca Darwent

  May 8, 2019

  Convivium’s Rebecca Darwent reports on a recent Cardus forum exploring the differing formative impacts of school and family on children.

  Photo by Peter Stockland

  One of the greatest challenges in determining the impact of a child’s school education is the simple fact that schooling is also connected to the impact of parents on their children and, in some cases, the chur...

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  Trying to Find a Place in This World

  Haley Welch

  December 27, 2018

  In the last seven years, Convivium contributor Haley Welch has moved many times: to new neighbourhoods, new provinces, and new countries. To move on (or away) is not equivalent to editing out the reality of that place from her story, she writes.

  When I moved into my first apartment that I would not share with roommates, I was elated. It was a bit by accident, and not entirely financially feasible, but it was the best option at the time. I had secured a full-time, permanent position at an great orga...

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  Hiraeth, Home

  Gideon Strauss

  December 18, 2018

  For a time, Gideon Strauss led such a peripatetic existence that he jokingly referred to airline rows and seat numbers as his address. Now home is Canada. And South Africa. And the annual voyage between.

  Our lives are overrun with strangers telling us how to succeed, who to love, what to buy, where to go and what to do. Yet each of us invariably encounters one or two people who truly influence us, shape us, give us the gift of being ourselves – and to w...

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  Home at the Library

  Peter Stockland

  December 10, 2018

  Today, Peter Stockland writes a letter to his past self, and extends his gratitude to the people whose words lined the library he liked to call home. These minds shaped him, and lead him to keep asking the questions that keep him coming home to wonder.

  Our lives are overrun with strangers telling us how to succeed, who to love, what to buy, where to go and what to do. Yet each of us invariably encounters one or two people who truly influence us, shape us, give us the gift of being ourselves – and to w...

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  Finding Home

  Valerie Michailovich

  December 3, 2018

  Between Russia, Israel, the USA, and Canada, each place Convivium contributor Valerie Michailovich has called home has given her something distinct. Rather than a place of stability or a foundation, which many associate with the concept of home, Michailovich sees it as a place where one learns, grows and builds. 

  Through Advent and Christmas, all manner of messaging will reinforce the importance of being home for the holidays. But to the extent the holidays themselves have been stretched into shapelessness, so also has our understanding of home. Over the coming ...

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