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 ...
We must not let fear of this pandemic stop us from trusting God and praying through our doubt and frustrations, writes Father Tim McCauley.
Christ wept over ancient Jerusalem for the people’s lack of faith, failing to recognize God in their midst in the Person of Christ. I wonder if Christ also weeps over our culture during this pandemic. Perhaps we too fail to recognize the presence of God amo...
Don Hutchinson writes that whether we have unwittingly become card-carrying members of monsters at work or mobs inc. is best revealed by a look in the bathroom mirror.
When I encounter Frankenstein, the word that most readily comes to mind is ‘monster.’
I chuckled at the meme, “Albert Einstein was a genius. But his brother Frank was a monster.” The word association instantly conveys a humorous image, even ...
Ottawa writer Ruth Dick argues it’s time to restore political health by purging our viral responses of the urge to condemn and dominate.
Basta! Enough!
With that exhortation out of my system, let me add a suggestion that’ll go over like a lead balloon: Within the sphere of public discourse, leave those who are actively vaccination resistant alone:
Avoid sharp-p...
Ominous State expansion under cover of the COVID crisis isn’t a sign of future despots at work but the consequence of a culture in which outcome trumps process, Robert Joustra argues.
The overreach of government is a common refrain among conservatives this pandemic, and not without cause. As those such as Father Raymond de Souza, Ed Bosveld, and others have argued, the State has not merely expanded to the occasion of the crisis, nor only...
Peter Menzies argues the salvation of Canadian democracy lies in our two youngest political jurisdictions where consensus government, not leadership whip cracking, prevails.
Six years and three elections ago, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was about to become Prime Minister. Deficits were to be modest and temporary, Canada was going to “be back” as a global player, ways were to be sunny, transparency would blossom like flowers i...
Don Hutchinson notes that when sports and politics overlap we become "fan-atics" cheering for our favourite sweaters and socks.
Once upon a time in Canada, we knew where we’d be on Sunday mornings and what would hold our attention on Saturday nights. For some, Sunday faith and Saturday fandom were effortlessly exchangeable.
For today’s Canadian fans of team sports, it’s the b...
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 good results notoriously sceptical French are getting by taking a leap of faith in the fight against COVID shows the necessity of trust within democratic life, Peter Stockland writes.
A photo in Monday’s public prints brought the good news of people dancing in La Grande Motte, France as evidence la République appears on its way out of its COVID crisis.
Alas, the photo was taken last July, which seems a lifetime in pandemic days, o...
Peter Stockland reports on writer Charles Eisenstein’s work to identify a force even more dangerous than contagious public stupidity.
American writer Lance Morrow recently identified our current moment as the golden age of stupidity.
No evidence exists that the author of America: A Rediscovery and Second Drafts of History was peeping across the border watching the...
Despite laudable adaptation to extraordinary technological change, too many journalists remain stuck with a story-telling idée fixe that blocks the light of facts, Peter Stockland argues.
An editor-in-chief infamous for, shall we say, whimsy once decreed no opening sentence of any news story could exceed 21 words.
The impromptu commandment unleashed a newsroom tizzy equivalent to what might have erupted if an exotic dancer had walked ...
Peter Stockland argues that despite the legitimate criticism journalism gets for all its institutional failings, abundant first-rate reporters and writers serve Canadian democracy well.
Honesty demands acknowledgement.
In recent weeks I’ve written, and other Convivium.ca writers have contributed, sharp criticism of journalistic performance on a variety of issues.
It’s true that at the institutional level, corporate providers ...
In her review of a 2021 book by British journalist Laura Dodsworth, Anna Farrow highlights disturbing evidence of governments using our primal panic response to push pandemic policies.
Long before David Attenborough brought his soothing voice to the explication of animal behaviour for the BBC Life series, the North American television public had been introduced to the majesty and oddities of the natural world through Mutual of Om...
Daniel Dorman argues that the phenomenon of cancel culture emerges from a black and white vision of the world that forgets the vivid hues moral struggle brings to life.
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscilla...
Deliberately ambiguous bills such as Ottawa’s C-10 and C-6 are the political deceiver’s plaything, Daniel Dorman argues.
John Milton’s Paradise Regained (the poem which followed his great English epic, Paradise Lost) expands and interprets the gospel narrative of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4). In one particularly potent scene Jesus accosts ...
Theologian James Bryson surveys the historical landscape of Munich and finds troubling harbingers vis-a-vis his home province of Nova Scotia’s authoritarian response to the pandemic.
Born and raised in Halifax, I currently live in Munich, Germany. I have been monitoring the Nova Scotian response to the pandemic from abroad by reading the news and by keeping in touch with family and friends.
I write this article to lend some persp...
Restoring trust in language goes beyond improving the sad state of our political debates. It’s vital to our common humanity, Daniel Dorman writes.
Our political discourse is a demoralizing spectacle. In most public forums, and particularly in the House of Commons, we generally listen to what can’t (in any serious sense) be called ‘debate.’ Most of it is mere partisan verbiage.
Character assault...
The very wording of the federal government’s updated Broadcasting Act means language itself is being subordinated to the State’s political purposes, Peter Stockland argues in the second of two parts examining Bill C-10.
Read part one of Peter Stockland's two-part series on Bill C-10.
Debate over the federal government’s updating of the Broadcasting Act has l...
The continuing battle over Bill C-10, which revises the federal Broadcasting Act, is a fundamental dispute over who decides how Canadians connect, Peter Stockland reports in the first of two parts.
Read part two of Peter Stockland's two-part series on Bill C-10.
Two bright spots amid the thunderbolts and lightening of the Liberal government’...
As Cardus’ The Long Way podcast probes alarming declines in institutional trust among Canadians, Convivium’s Peter Stockland explores the specific effect on media and academia.
Purely at the institutional level, it’s troubling enough to watch the current media revolution in which the workers seek control of the means of redaction.
Journalistic greybeards know in their bones no good can come from recent eruptions whereby you...
A severe social side effect of the pandemic is the disconnection between those in authority we must trust and our personal experiences that contradict what we’re told, Travis Smith writes.
As justifiably proud as Canadians are about their health care system, carping about our experiences with medicine is a national pastime, too. Presented with a novel technology under today’s unusual conditions, it is unsurprising that some of the same old fr...
Drug companies touting new pandemic vaccines should be causing huzzahs. But Peter Menzies warns septic skepticism in the body politic must also be addressed.
Today’s news that not one but two COVID-19 vaccines have tested 95 per cent effective casts a welcome burst of light into Canada’s gloomy COVID-19 narrative amid signs the pandemic is ripping into its social fabric.
Moderna announced Monday that its ...