Religious Sisters labour to comfort those displaced by war in Ukraine

Religious Sisters labour to comfort those displaced by war in UkraineReligious Sisters of various congregations are active in humanitarian work in their monasteries and beyond Angelica Blyzniuk ended up in the railway station in Lviv on Feb. 26, 2022, two days after the outbreak of a brutal war. Fleeing the relentless shelling that pounded Nikopol, her hometown in south-central Ukraine, she reached Lviv, numb with…

Should we laugh, or cry, after the COP-26 debacle?

Canada sent 277 delegates to Glasgow at a cost of about $1.6 million for this?

Should we laugh, or cry, after the COP-26 debacle?Prior to the so-called COP-26 conference, Pope Francis, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians, Bartholemew I of Constantinople, urged the world to “listen to the cry of the earth” regarding climate change. With the 39,000-delegate extravaganza having concluded on the weekend, it’s tempting to disregard the three Christian…

Justin Trudeau and the relativism of truth

Is it too much to ask for honesty from the Prime Minister?

Justin Trudeau and the relativism of truthGeorge 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 of the mid-20th century. His magisterial essay Politics and the English Language includes…

The rise of the golden age of stupidity

The pandemic is making scapegoats of those that only yesterday we called fellow citizens and neighbours

The rise of the golden age of stupidityAmerican 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 2021 Canadian federal election when he made the claim. That’s probably a good thing. Morrow's language might have…

The hidebound habits of the journalistic mind

'Reporting' today is simply a note-perfect parrot-squawk of State-approved storylines

The hidebound habits of the journalistic mindAn 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 in bearing a burlap bag full of ferrets and released them during her performance. The…

Believe it or not! First-rate journalists still exists in Canada

In the midst of institutional confusion and ineptness, individual journalists are still holding the powerful to account

Believe it or not! First-rate journalists still exists in CanadaHonesty demands acknowledgement. In recent weeks I’ve written sharp criticism of journalistic performance on a variety of issues. It’s true that at the institutional level, corporate providers of the ceaseless information that floods our waking hours too often resemble a pooch begging for table scraps while running in ever diminishing circles going yip-yip-yip. It would…

The questions left unasked about Indigenous deaths

Including: how was it possible for these deaths to occur without anyone noticing?

The questions left unasked about Indigenous deathsMelissa 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 Devoir newspaper recently, Mollen-Dupuis was sharply critical of media response to the shocking news that ground-penetrating…

Lazy journalism becoming a mouthpiece for the State’s narrative

There is a growing comfort in institutional journalism to follow rather than question

Lazy journalism becoming a mouthpiece for the State’s narrativeWarning lights should always flash before our eyes whenever journalists mix raw numbers and percolating percentages in the same paragraph. Numbers clearly state actuality. Percentages are the ups and downs of context. Regardless of the axiom attributed to Stalin that one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic, if two people die,…

Standing up for vaccine skeptics

Denigrating those who question the need for Covid vaccinations as “conspiracy theorists” is an attack on our liberties

Standing up for vaccine skepticsIn a recently re-opened Ottawa restaurant this week, a member of our party of five was forbidden from using a chair. He wasn’t sitting on it, standing on his head showing off some exotic yoga pose or, more pedestrianly, engaged in man-spreading to a degree that discomfited other diners. In fact, he was told he…

Time to celebrate the Week of Indigenous Women

RoseAnne Archibald, Mary Simon and Jody Wilson-Raybould give Canadians plenty of reason to hope

Time to celebrate the Week of Indigenous WomenThe fifth ballot win that made RoseAnne Archibald the first ever female national chief of the Assembly of First Nations sealed the Week of Indigenous Women in Canada. Fittingly, it came only seven days after the wave of soul-searching national angst over residential schools that led to overwrought cancellations of Canada Day in some corners…
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