A very merry, holy and joyous Christmas to all our readers! The twelve days of Christmas traditionally goes until the solemnity of the Epiphany, on January 6th (in Canada, as with so many of our feasts, transferred to the nearest Sunday). But Christmas began yesterday, so continue the celebration! But to the point at […]
*The photo op of Justin Trudeau and Kathleen Wynne welcoming Syrian refugees at Pearson airport warmed the cockles of many hearts. There was Prime Minister Trudeau, offering a parka to one poor soul stepping off the plane, stating the obvious that ‘it gets cold in Canada’. No kidding, eh? And the current refugees are being […]
It is fitting on this feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of life, that we offer a hearty and warm congratulations to Father Alphonse de Valk who yesterday celebrated 50 years a priest. Father de Valk, a faithful member of the Congregation of Saint Basil, and the founder and editor-emeritus of both the Interim […]
*Buried in the headlines is the notice that at least 30 Afghanis are dead, killed in an attack by the Taliban at Kandahar airport. God rest their souls, and so goes life if you are unfortunate enough to live in a fundamentalist Islamic backwater almost devoid of the rule of law, except so-called Sharia ‘law’. […]
*Today is the memorial of Saint John Damascene, who lived in what is in now Syria and died on this day in 749, in a land that even back then, in the early days of Muslim expansion, lived under Islamic domination. A polymath, gifted in many subjects, he was a great foe of the then-rampant […]
Today is the feast of Saint Andrew, Apostle, brother of Saint Peter, patron of Scotland, Russia, Ukraine and Greece, for what reason are somewhat historically obscure. Here is the Wikipedia take on the matter, whether accurate or not, it fits: According to legend, in 832 AD, Óengus II led an army of Picts and Scots into battle against the Angles, led by […]
I am not surprised: Peter Jackson now admits that he made up the Hobbit trilogy more or less as it went along. From the very start, I was suspicious of taking a relatively small children’s book (we would say ‘young adult’ nowadays, I suppose), and making a full three two-plus hour movies out if such […]
The massacre in Paris yesterday marks the beginning, alas, of other tragedies to come. Well over one hundred dead, hundreds more injured, with a bomb going off in the Stade de France where President Hollande himself was taking in the French-German football (soccer) match. Our first response is to pray for the victims and […]
I had to wait a few days before writing on the election of Justin Trudeau as our new Prime-Minister-in-waiting, not least for the emotion of disappointment to dissipate somewhat, and a sense of objectivity to set in. To be honest, I expected the result. Harper’s heart (which sounds like a Harlequin romance) was not […]
In an interesting turn of events, the niqab, the face-covering veil worn by certain Muslim women, has become a defining election issue in Canada. Just today, Zunera Ishaq, who had petitioned for the right to take her citizenship oath wearing the veil, took that very oath, yes, with her face covered (she received a court […]