An alumna of our Newman House chaplaincy at Queen’s University offers an inspiring model of reading — of actual books. 

Dwelling is a strange concept. It’s a place and it sounds like an action: the relevance to Advent is both. 

Thomas Merton, the most influential Catholic spiritual writer of the 20th century, spent the last period of his life trying to find points of common ground between Catholic mysticism and the mysticism of the East. Some might argue that Merton’s efforts were folly, but one cannot deny his influence.

Last summer, Ottawa constitutional lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulos and I were on Ottawa’s Sparks Street when we encountered a sign warning we were entering an abortion safe-access zone.

I love making lists. It is how I fall asleep at night. Sometimes I try to name every baseball club and at least one player from each team, or think of 10 music albums I would bring with me should I ever be sent to an offshore penal colony or to the opera.

I have become used to the cacophony which inhabits the downtown of the city and usually treat it as background noise as I walk around. 

The other day, I went to pay my respects to the widow and two children of a friend and neighbor whom I played pick-up hockey with for several years. He was only 55.

It’s difficult to equate dynamic evangelization with the reality of shrinking numbers of parishes, priests, parishioners and active churches. But evangelization is exactly what the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth hopes to achieve through a strategy called New Parishes: Stronger Together.

As a photographer, I always assumed my interests were odd. My preferred subjects were dilapidated buildings, rusted metals and abandoned spaces. I love detailed closeups of ghost phrases — slogans and ads painted on crumbling surfaces that are still just visible to the eye, decades after the products were available. Driving through the countryside I will often pull over to photograph a collapsed shed, a rusted sign or a crumbling wall. 

When Montreal’s English Speaking Catholic Council hosted a talk on faith and immigration the quintessential church hall basement of St. Kevin’s Parish on Côte-Des-Neiges Road was an obvious choice.