Features/Features

{mosimage} When Fr. Eugene Funken was faced with 10 orphans whose homes had burned down in St. Agatha, Ont., in 1858, he started a charity.

When Sonya Pouyat took over leadership of Funken’s charity in the midst of “slash and burn” Ontario government policies in the 1990s, she started a business.

WASHINGTON - U.S. President George W. Bush June 20 vetoed a bill to expand federal funding for medical research on human embryonic stem cells, saying it “would compel American taxpayers, for the first time in our history, to support the deliberate destruction of human embryos.”

{mosimage}MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — Michael Bator announced his retirement after 34 years in education.

TORONTO - Fully Alive has a new lease on life. A revised and updated second edition of the Ontario Catholic school system’s family life program was launched with a teacher-training seminar on the new Grade 1 and 2 text books in Toronto June 11 and 12.

Editor’s note: Michael Bator, director of education for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board , retired this month after 34 years as teacher, principal, superintendent and director. He offers below a reflection on what Catholic education has meant to him.

{mosimage}TORONTO - This summer Fr. Henry Carr Catholic Secondary School is moving a few blocks south to Doomstown — to the corner of the street where 19- year-old Jose Hierro Saez was gunned down June 3 in another case which pits police seeking leads against a community too afraid to break the code of silence. Doomstown is the local nickname for Jamestown, the neighbourhood off Martin Grove Road south of Finch Avenue, and one of Toronto’s poorest and most violent.

{mosimage}MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - For the first time since Ontario’s Catholic schools received full funding in 1984, a publicly funded Catholic school is going private.

{mosimage}RICHMOND HILL, Ont. - When I arrived at a Richmond Hill house where a cash donation was being made to a Catholic organization for abused children in the Philippines, I was met by young lady in red skirt and black top. I noticed she was petite and beautiful but as soon as she handed me a name tag, I forgot about her.

{mosimage}TORONTO - As Mass ended under bright sunshine outdoors and teacher-librarian Kathryn Zaleski-Cox announced St. Brigid’s Elementary School had made the grade as an Ontario EcoSchool, a cheer went up. For the 580 students of east-end Toronto’s St. Brigid’s Elementary, their teachers and two dozen parents participating in the May 17 Mass, they weren’t just cheering for something students had accomplished with a year’s worth of litterless lunches, reduced energy consumption and heightened ecological awareness. The cheer also recognized prayers answered.

If C1+ reminds you of a mediocre grade you got in high school chemistry, that’s because you weren’t paying attention in French class either.