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...
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...
Susan Korah reports on a Canadian family that helped solve the mystery of a teenage girl’s life and death at Auschwitz.
Hana Brady could be another Anne Frank except she did not leave a diary.
But the suitcase that 13-year-old left behind when she died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz concentration camp continues to teach millions of children around the world the import...
Daniel Proussalidis and Monica Ratra write that while 2020 was a forgettable year for many reasons, Cardus initiatives throughout the year provided memorable highlights for the organization and our supporters.
It’s cliché at this point, but 2020 is surely a year most of us would like to forget. And not just because of the pandemic or the brutally polarized political rhetoric of the past year. But, as we think back on the past year at Cardus, there’s actually a lo...
Canada’s political amnesia leaves Prime Minister John Diefenbaker almost forgotten. Jonathon Van Maren discovers lost letters that affirm how fiercely Dief fought for human rights from womb to tomb.
“I am Canadian,” John G. Diefenbaker famously declared, “free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage...
Alan Hustak reports on the death and contrarian life of Montreal’s Father John Walsh, who began serving the Church as an altar boy while also a member of a street gang.
By his own admission, Rev. John Walsh, O.C. was a subversive Roman Catholic priest who at times seemed to be ministering everywhere, to all religious communities, in Montreal.
Father Walsh, 78, died of a heart attack on November 9 as he prepared to ...
Energy wasted defending or toppling statues should instead power a national conversation about what, why and how we collectively commemorate our pluralistic pasts, Peter Stockland writes.
Pictured: a memorial mural found in Belfast for those who lost their lives in conflict. Photo by Peter Stockland.
For her book Talking Stones: The Politics of Memorialization in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland, Elisabetta Viggi...
While our lives revolve around COVID-19, it’s difficult to remember life before the pandemic. But today being St. Patrick's Day, Peter Stockland reflects on the historic event that took the lives of thousands of Irish during the mid-19th century.
In mere weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has gone from media fixation to global obsession as countries around the world struggle to control infections and ward off death. Few are the media reports, or indeed the personal conversations, that don’t at least touch...
In this week's essay from Northern Ireland, Convivium's Peter Stockland encounters a young man whose grandfather was murdered on Bloody Sunday 1972 and waits to hear loyalist-unionist drums beat again in Belfast this Friday, July 12.
This is part two of Convivium’s series on Northern Ireland and its history as it exists today. Click here to read part one: “A Beacon of Hope and Warning.”
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Father Raymond de Souza looks back in time to his friends' high school graduation and recalls a lasting lesson about importance of the past to the present.
It’s graduation season, and thus the season of graduation speeches. Some worthy is invited to address the graduates – “graduands”, if the address is given before the degrees are awarded, for those who remember their Latin endings – and is supposed to lend s...
In the premature deaths of two young priests and in the hand-made rosary she carries with her, Convivium’s Rebecca Darwent finds incarnate reminders to affirm God’s gift of life even at its end.
Aesthetically speaking, the rosary isn’t anything special. Green and gold beads, a rather large Crucifix, attached with the small loops of a regular old chain. Being Catholic from birth, I have had many rosaries given to me as gifts – during my time of miss...
Thursday marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day. But, writes Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland, there is urgency this time we remember: we are at risk of forgetting the sacrifice that earned the freedom we still enjoy today.
There’s a sense of critical urgency about observing the 75th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy that will be marked on Thursday.
It’s an urgency born of the practical fact of life that the surviving combatants being feted ...
An Ottawa production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe leaves Convivium’s Rachel DeBruyn sensing the anticipation of Advent and the impact of the way in which we remember.
Photo by Chris Spencer
Imagine if it were always winter, but never Christmas.
This is a daunting prospect (especially for Can...
By removing a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, the City of Victoria has gone down the perilous path of erasing history rather than learning from it, Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett argues. What next? Renaming Montreal’s Trudeau airport because the former PM formally called for assimilation of Indigenous Canadians?
“We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.”
Rarely have more sage words been spoken about history and how we understa...
With the very advent of Christmas upon us, Brittany Beacham gives Convivium readers this irresistible reflection written from the pure-hearted beauty that is the full meaning of Christian faith.
O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.
Through quiet towns, spoken words and silent thoughts, a single prayer moved through the heart of a nation. Come, Emmanuel. Ran...
On Monday night during a panel discussion at McGill University’s Newman Centre in Montreal, Cardus Executive Vice-President Ray Pennings set out five points that he, as a Reformed believer, considers vital if Christians are to re-form a divided Church into unified faith.
The 500th anniversary of the catalyzing events for the Reformation prompts appropriate reflection within various church communities, undoubtedly with very different assessments from our various perspectives. However, discussing these matters wit...
Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin brought two artists to church on Remembrance Weekend: muralists from Northern Ireland’s Bogside neighbourhood who have memorialized that city’s bloody sectarian sorrows in order to create space for remembering, truth-telling and reconciliation.
The two minutes silence were finished; the trumpet had blown The Last Post; and we had all sung the hymn ‘Abide with Me,’ as we had faithfully done every year in our local Anglican church in Cambridge in the U.K. Many people in the congreg...
Tonight at the Canadian War Museum, Cardus will host John Pellowe re-enacting the role of General Sir Arthur Currie in the 1917 battle of Vimy Ridge, a moment in history that many see as defining Canada’s emergence into independent nationhood. Pellowe, CEO of the Canadian Council of Christian Charities, has been presenting the Leadership Lessons of Vimy Ridge on stages across Canada for almost 20 years.
Duncan Field: John, you have been presenting on Vimy ridge since 1999. What first drew you to the story of Canada’s involvement in this battle?
John Pellowe: I stumbled across the Battle of Vimy Ridge while researchi...