Ruth Dick
Ruth Dick is an Ottawa lawyer and photographer who has lectured on medical ethics at the University of Manitoba and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Bio last updated November 9th, 2021.
Articles by Ruth Dick
The Contagion of Tribal Contempt
By Ruth Dick
November 8, 2021
Ottawa writer Ruth Dick argues it’s time to restore political health by purging our viral responses of the urge to condemn and dominate.
We who support vaccination are the ones who have backfilled the message of that sign with hostility and disdain, causing many at whom it’s aimed to feel a sense not of community, but isolation Thus we have people responding in Pavlovian ways to public health measures Instead of realism about the risks of the virus, and clear-eyed scrutiny of government action, approaches to managing the pandemic and its fallout have been dragged under the wheels of our tribal stubbornness Thanks to having had West Nile, I declined the Astra Zeneca vaccine due to the small risk of brain clots
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Replacing Aid With MAiD
Ruth Dick
March 29, 2021
Expansion of medically assisted dying risks an explosive moral crisis when shortages already endemic in health care make Canadians choose death over delay, Ruth Dick writes.
So what are we to do? Only offer MAiD to those who have timely access to a full range of support services, and deny it to those who meet the criteria set out in the statute, but can’t access those services? Deny it to them because they live in small, remote communities that don’t have physiotherapy,...
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The Shortfalls of Quebec’s Bill 21
Ruth Dick
May 17, 2019
As legislation banning religious symbols in public sector workplaces leaves committee and heads for passage in the National Assembly, Ottawa writer Ruth Dick dissects it on feminist, philosophic, legal, and religious neutrality grounds.
I believe in the separation of the State from religion, in the religious neutrality of the State, and, to echo the language of the bill: I “attach importance to the equality of women By banning personal religious expression in State employees the bill contrives to make such practice of a piece with ...
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The Law of Closed Doors
Ruth Dick
April 5, 2019
Prime Minister Trudeau expelled Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from caucus this week to staunch what he called a political civil war among federal Liberal MPs. But in the second of her two-part Convivium essay, Ruth Dick argues Canadians’ real focus must be law that lets the privileged plead their case behind closed doors.
Yet the process outlined above is evidently not what happens when a criminal defendant corporation wishes to appeal to the attorney general to overturn the Director of Public Prosecution’s decision to deny them a deferred prosecution agreement A powerful defendant might secure informal assurances fr...
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Too Big to Try?
Ruth Dick
April 5, 2019
Prime Minister Trudeau expelled Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from caucus this week to staunch what he called a political civil war within the federal Liberal party. But in a two-part Convivium essay, Ruth Dick argues what truly must change is the very law that ignited the SNC-Lavalin scandal.
Conversely, would we want prosecutors to go after people simply because they didn’t support the government’s politics? Would we want prosecutors to go after business competitors of the government’s corporate supporters on political say-so? You wouldn’t want a government, acting through its attorney ...
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Courting Contempt
Ruth Dick
February 13, 2019
The spreading toxin of treating political differences with dehumanizing contempt, Convivium contributor Ruth Dick warns, sounds a tocsin for the future of democratic life.
But my fellow travelers somehow seem to think it’s a political stopping point: that we can anchor ourselves in contempt, no matter how much doing so undoes the possibility of doing more ...
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What Child Is This?
Ruth Dick
July 30, 2018
Ottawa photographer Ruth Dick reminds viewers that the gift and mystery of life can, more often than not, be found in the form of a child.
In the simple lines of a candid photo taken during a street celebration in Montreal, Ottawa photographer Ruth Dick brings child and love together in a unity of light and shadow. ...
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Transcending Connection
Ruth Dick
July 25, 2017
Many moments of transcendence are found in the every day. Ottawa photographer Ruth Dick pays homage to a transcendent connection on the streets of Montreal with her camera lens.
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The Language Of Ashes
Ruth Dick
July 11, 2017
Surveying the smoke and clangour of current political (dis)engagement, Ottawa writer Ruth Dick echoes the wisdom of her grandfather’s life-long admonition: Listen to everyone.
We don’t need to stray far into theories of meaning to see that a Pavlovian response (be it condemning or approving) to utterance, shorn of intent and context, and treated simply as a badge of where someone stands on certain issues, is an impoverishment of communication, and arguably of relationship...