Canada

Fletcher Harper 6-09-2023
A man stands in the Empty Sky 911 Memorial in Jersey City, New Jersey looking towards the One World Trade Center tower in lower Manhattan in New York City shortly after sunrise as haze and smoke hangs over the Manhattan skyline

A man stands in the Empty Sky 911 Memorial in Jersey City, New Jersey looking towards the One World Trade Center tower in lower Manhattan in New York City shortly after sunrise as haze and smoke caused by wildfires in Canada hangs over the Manhattan skyline on  June 8, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Some insurance companies still use the phrase “act of God” to describe fires or other natural disasters for which no human agent can be held responsible. But we need to stop putting God on the hook: These disasters are happening because governments are drunk on the fossil fuel industry’s deadly Kool-Aid.

Pope Francis is welcomed by some elders of the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples during his visit to the Church dedicated to Our Lady of Seven Sorrows a Edmonton, July 25, 2022. Vatican Media/Catholic Press Photo. 

Pope Francis on Monday made good on a promise to apologize to Canada’s native people on their home land for the Church’s role in schools where Indigenous children were abused, branding forced cultural assimilation “evil” and a “disastrous error.”

Indigenous delegates from Canada's First Nations pose for a photo with Pope Francis during a meeting at the Vatican on March 31, 2022. Vatican Media/­Handout via REUTERS

Pope Francis apologized to Canadian Indigenous peoples on Friday for the Roman Catholic Church's role in residential schools that sought to erase their cultures and where many children suffered abuse.

Métis National Council president Cassidy Caron poses for a group picture alongside Métis Residential School survivor Angie Crerar, 85, and other Indigenous delegates from Canada's First Nations after a meeting with Pope Francis near St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, March 28, 2022. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane.

Survivors of Canada’s residential schools on Monday asked Pope Francis for unfettered access to church records on the institutions where Indigenous children were abused and their culture denied.

A crew performs a ground-penetrating radar search of a field, where the Cowessess First Nation said they had found 751 unmarked graves, near the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Grayson, Saskatchewan, Canada on June 18, 2021. Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations/Handout via REUTERS.

“I have spoken personally directly with His Holiness Pope Francis to press upon him how important it is not just that he makes an apology but that he makes an apology to indigenous Canadians on Canadian soil,” Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa.

A child's red dress hangs on a stake near the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School after the remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found at the site in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, June 6, 2021. REUTERS/Jennifer Gauthier

Indigenous leaders and school survivors on Sunday dismissed Pope Francis' expressions of pain at the discovery of 215 children's remains at a former Catholic residential school in Canada, saying the church needed to do much more.

In his weekly blessing in St. Peter's Square on Sunday, Francis said he was pained by the news about the former school for indigenous students and called for respect for the rights and cultures of native peoples. But he stopped short of the direct apology some Canadians had demanded.

Elaine Enns 12-01-2020
A photo taken in 1923 of the Mennonite church choir in Osterwick, Ukraine. There are 14 people in the photo, both men and women.

Photo courtesy of Elaine Enns

A FEW YEARS AGO, Ched Myers and I discovered this graffiti in my old suburban neighborhood in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, scrawled across a fence just a block from where I grew up:

“... as long as the sun shines,
as long as the waters flow downhill,
and as long as the grass grows green ...”

It is a venerable phrase from the Two Row Wampum of 1613, an agreement between the Five Nations of the Iroquois and representatives of the Dutch government in what is now upstate New York, which affirmed principles of Indigenous self-determination, rights, and jurisdiction. The phrase has been reiterated in most subsequent treaties between European settlers and Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

Sixty miles due north of my old neighborhood is Opwashemoe Chakatinaw (named Stoney Knoll by settlers), nestled between the North and South Saskatchewan Rivers. A spiritual center for the Young Chippewayans, it was part of Reserve 107, assigned to this Cree tribe in 1876 under Treaty 6.

Olivia Whitener 4-25-2018

WE ALL HAVE a story of where we were that September morning, when the crumbling skyline of New York City brought the country to a standstill. For people on thousands of airplanes in flight that morning, their stories began with emergency landings and sitting for hours on the tarmac in unexpected places after U.S. airspace closed. Of those stranded “plane people,” 7,000 arrived in Gander, Newfoundland—an island town of about 10,000 locals and limited resources. The new Broadway musical “Come From Away” provides a snapshot of the rest of that story.

At a preview performance in February, the audience was on its feet for an ovation before the lights went down. For 100 minutes the musical allows the audience to pause and reflect on the events of Sept. 11. Claude Elliott, the mayor of Gander (played in the show by Joel Hatch), introduced the 10th-anniversary commemoration of 9/11 in Gander by saying, “We honor what was lost. But we also commemorate what we found.” To sit in the audience alongside New Yorkers with intimate connections to that day and tourists with their own reasons for being there was to pay tribute to those memories as part of a community of strangers.

Image via Christopher Penler/Shutterstock.com

More than 500 prominent evangelical Christians from every state have signed on to a letter addressed to President Trump and Vice President Pence, expressing their support for refugees. The “Still We Stand” petition, coordinated by World Relief, ran on Feb. 8 as a full-page advertisement in the Washington Post.

Kimberly Winston 1-13-2017

Image via RNS/ Screetshot from video 

Curtis thought there would be a few still shots taken of their meeting in an otherwise empty City Council chamber. But a video was made instead, showing the two men stretching, twisting, and wrapping a scarlet cloth on the mayor’s head. 

At the end, Pandher breaks into Bhangra — a traditional folk dance from the Punjab region — and Curtis gamely follows, despite his portly figure and business suit. 

The video ricocheted around Canada and then overseas via BBC News. It has been viewed more than 4.5 million times. 

Image via RNS/Jennifer Zdon/The Times-Picayune in New Orleans

Canadian researchers are revisiting a hotly debated sociological question: Why do some churches decline while others succeed?

Since the 1960s, overall membership in mainline Protestant Christian churches has been dropping in both the U.S. and Canada.

But some congregations have continued to grow, and a team of researchers believes it now knows why. It’s the conservative theological beliefs of their members and clergy, according to researchers from Wilfrid Laurier University and Redeemer University College in Ontario.

Kimberly Winston 10-28-2016

Image via TheVagabond/Shutterstock.com

Now, Donoghue, 47, has written The Wonder, a story based on “fasting girls” — a crop of pre-adolescent Victorians, some of them religiously motivated, who seemed to survive for months or years on no food and little water. Some were revealed as frauds, some gave up their fast, while others wasted away while family, friends, doctors, and clergy watched.

Ron Csillag 7-14-2016

Image via REUTERS / Mark Blinch / RNS

Canada’s Anglican Church has provisionally voted to amend its rules to allow clergy to celebrate same-sex marriages, a day after it narrowly defeated the measure.

The General Synod will hold a second reading on the measure in 2019. If it passes, the Canadian church will join the Episcopal Church, which formally approved marriage ceremonies regardless of gender in 2015. As a consequence, the Anglican Communion placed temporary restrictions on the Episcopal Church.

Archbishop Terrence Prendergast.

Image via Paul Haring/Catholic News Service/RNS

A leading Canadian Catholic churchman has said that a person who plans to die through assisted suicide can be denied last rites by a priest, a view that may spark debate as assisted suicide laws proliferate and pastors are presented with a new moral quandary. The bottom line, said Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, is that a Catholic who requests assistance in dying “lacks the proper disposition for the anointing of the sick,” as the sacrament is formally known.

12-07-2015

He's trending in Amsterdam, Paris, and Washington, D.C. And he's Canada's new Prime Minister. So what are the P.M.'s priorities for Canada -- and for you? Hear from Green Party leader, Elizabeth May and veteran Liberal MP John McKay. 

LORNA'S WRAP

Christin Taylor 11-02-2015

Image via /Shutterstock.com

In the end, we didn’t choose a house in the sprawling metropolis that is Waterloo. We took a home in a small rural town just outside the city. It reminds me of rural Pennsylvania: quaint, quiet, with lots of room for the kids to run and play. We can walk to school, the library, and the downtown shops. Kids run our streets playing ball hockey, riding bikes — all unattended by adults.

My friends in this town groan about the fact that due to the new practice of locking school doors, they can’t walk their kids all the way into the building anymore.

“I miss being able to help Olivia take off her coat, hang up her bag, and get her ready for class,” Kirsten tells me.

I nod respectfully, but I’ve never gotten to know what they’re now missing.

I want to be smart about my relief. I know there are certainly many ways my children can get hurt, even here. Still, I’m so grateful that my friends don’t know what I’m missing from life down in the States. I’m so glad that when I drop Noelle and Nathan off at the school doors each morning, I leave un-haunted.

Kevin Driedger 8-18-2015

Image via /Shutterstock

It’s a pretty sweet situation to be in. I’ve been mostly satisfied with my lack of national allegiances.

But I am starting to feel that my neither-here-nor-there status is not the responsible choice for me. This land where I’ve lived for 23 years is my home, and I feel like I need to fully claim that fact. I lingered for a long time on the fringes of this community. Living on the edge is nice because I can keep my hands clean of the messiness of American civic life (and it does get messy), but this also keeps my hands out of the activity of helping clean up the mess and build a stronger nation. My hands aren’t stained with the faults of this country, but neither are they calloused from building it up.

Ron Csillag 6-12-2015
Photo via REUTERS / Todd Korol / RNS

Imam Syed Soharwardy speaks at a memorial service in Calgary, Alberta, on Oct. 24, 2014. Photo via REUTERS / Todd Korol / RNS

The government of Quebec has introduced two bills, both aimed at Muslims.

The first would attempt to stanch the radicalization of Muslim youth through a 59-point plan that includes expanding the powers of Quebec’s Human Rights Commission to probe hate speech — enhancing training for police and teachers to recognize signs of radicalization, dedicating a police unit to patrol social media, and establishing a hotline staffed by social workers to advise families and friends of suspected extremists.

Ron Csillag 4-16-2015
Photo via Peregrine981 /  Wikimedia Commons / RNS

The Supreme Court of Canada building. Photo via Peregrine981 / Wikimedia Commons / RNS

Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled that a small town in Quebec may not open its council meetings with prayer.

In a unanimous ruling April 15, Canada’s highest court ruled that the town of Saguenay can no longer publicly recite a Catholic prayer because it infringes on freedom of conscience and religion.

The case dates back to 2007, when a resident of Saguenay complained about public prayer at City Hall.

Just last year, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that legislative bodies such as city councils could begin their meetings with prayer, even if it plainly favors a specific religion.

But the Canadian high court ruled that the country’s social mores have “given rise to a concept of neutrality according to which the state must not interfere in religion and beliefs. The state must instead remain neutral in this regard. This neutrality requires that the state neither favor nor hinder any particular belief, and the same holds true for non belief.”

The court said a nondenominational prayer is still religious in nature and would exclude nonbelievers.

Lani Prunés 4-07-2015

An interactive map showing Canadian mining locations