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Breakaway Anglicans debut to small audience
And on the first day, barely a dozen of the breakaway Anglican faithful showed up. Far from being disappointed, Brian DeVisser said he considered yesterday's service a historic and successful occasion that bodes well for Ottawa's conservative-minded Anglicans. "It went really well," said Mr. DeVisser, shortly after completing the first service of the Kanata Lakes Fellowship at the neighbourhood's tiny, but venerable Old Schoolhouse.
Ottawa Citizen, January 7
Earlier: Stories about the Anglican schism
Debate goes on a year after birth of sextuplets
Canada's first sextuplets were born at B.C. Women and Children's Hospital a year ago, launching a continuing debate that pits religious beliefs against the government's legal responsibility to protect children. The premature babies, two of whom died shortly after birth, were born to a Jehovah's Witness family whose identity was protected by a court-imposed ban on publicity. Although doctors wanted to give blood transfusions to the four surviving babies, the family protested because the medical procedure contravenes their religious beliefs that Christians must "abstain from blood."
Vancouver Sun, January 7
Earlier: Stories about Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusions
C.W. Jefferys officials face child act charges
Police have charged the former principal and two vice-principals at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate under Ontario's Child and Family Services Act with failing to report an alleged sexual assault on a student, the Star has learned. . . . While investigating conditions at Jefferys, the panel, headed by lawyer Julian Falconer, learned of an alleged sexual assault of a Muslim girl in a school washroom, information that was passed on to Director of Education Gerry Connelly.
Toronto Star, January 7
Advice squad
Olivia Chow is one of the most outspoken MPs in Parliament. Wife of NDP leader Jack Layton, she has taken on Toronto's police department and Environmental Minister John Baird, all in a language she still has trouble with. . . . For Chow, finding her voice meant two things -- moving out of the tumultuous family home and believing in something bigger than herself. "Growing up, the Chinese Baptist Church pulled me through some pretty hard times," she says. "By Grade 12, I had stripped away most of the capital 'R' religion, but what remained is a belief in doing something, not to glorify yourself or give yourself power, but because it's a good thing to do. With that came incredible strength."
National Post, January 7
Earlier: The Trinity, some nuns and a cross -- as political backdrops
Ottawa social worker fights for homeless
Although she points out that she's not a nun or particularly "holy," Canada's version of Mother Teresa can be seen in action on the front lines of the country's poor and homeless in the shadows of the nearby Parliament Buildings. Mary-Martha Hale is a 53-year-old social worker for the Anglican Diocese's Centre 454 -- a drop-in centre in the toughest part of the nation's capital where the disenfranchised go during the day for counselling and training. She has a tiny broom closet of an office there, where she administers the centre while taking on the powers-that-be to improve the lot of the people she serves. Along with being the centre's director, Hale is also the chair of the innovative Alliance to End Homelessness that has come up with ideas so successful in Ottawa that they are being imported by other cities in Canada.
CanWest News Services, January 8
Priest slept nude with boy, court hears
A retired priest and former Vatican official would fondle, shower and sleep nude with a young male at his Wilno cabin and Ottawa apartment, a Pembroke court heard yesterday. Testifying on the first day of Msgr. Bernard Prince's trial on a single charge of indecent assault, the now 44-year-old alleged victim said the sexual conduct began in the summer of 1976 when he was 13 years old.
Ottawa Citizen, January 8
Also: National Post
John McCain for president
In Canada, a perfectly intelligent and respectable politician can be laughed off by the pundit class for no other reason than that he happens to embrace Jesus Christ and the fundamentalist Christian notion that the world is 6,000 years old. In the United States, it is the opposite: Even a total loon can leap to the front of the pack if he preaches his political sermons straight from the Good Book. In Canada, the poster boy is Stockwell Day. His American cousin is Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, Southern Baptist minister, bass guitar player and, as of last week, the leading presidential pick among Iowa's Republican caucus-goers.
Jonathan Kay, National Post, January 8
Islamists take advantage of Pakistani delay
Pakistan was due to hold parliamentary elections yesterday, but the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has disrupted that timetable -- and created new opportunities for Islamist insurgents. Fighters affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaeda are now seeking to consolidate their hold on the troubled tribal areas while expanding their influence across the rest of the country. This comes just months before an anticipated Taliban spring offensive in neighbouring Afghanistan and could signal an even broader line of attack on Pakistan.
Peter Goodspeed, National Post, January 9
Earlier: Stories about Islam and the West
Healing the hurt caused by protest
It was an unusual place for a 48-hour ceremonial reading of Sikh scripture, but the spanking new Brampton Civic Hospital has been nothing if not unusual. Built and operated in a controversial partnership with private interests, Ontario's most modern public hospital sits smack in the midst of a 50,000-and-growing South Asian immigrant community, mostly Sikhs, who have contributed millions toward its construction. And so on a weekend last July, a few months before it opened, more than 15,000 filed into the hospital's sun-washed atrium during an Akhand Paath, or continuous reading of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, the Sikh holy book.
Globe and Mail, January 10
Singh case tests border agency's strength
The Canada Border Services Agency risks the appearance of impotence if it allows public protests to keep driving its agents away from deporting a paralyzed refugee claimant from India, a member of the agency's advisory committee says. Don DeVoretz, also an economics professor at Simon Fraser University, made the comments yesterday after border agents, facing about 300 supporters of Laibar Singh at the Guru Nanak Temple in Surrey, called off a bid to take the 48-year-old man into custody. It was the second time in a month that protest has derailed their plans for Mr. Singh.
Globe and Mail, January 10
January 10/2008
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