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Robert Brehl is a writer in Port Credit, Ont.

Marge Brehl, seen here in her 1957 high school graduation picture, had a very productive “second life” helping others. She died at age 77.

Comment: Aunt Marge certainly made the most of her 'second life'

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Oscar Wilde famously said “to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

Author W.P. Kinsella, whose death was by assisted suicide.

Words matter: euphemisms and assisted suicide

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Reading through the obituary recently of iconic Canadian author and baseball lover W.P. Kinsella, one paragraph jumped off the pages of the Globe and Mail; dripping with irony.

Bob Brehl writes about the emotions of seeing his cousin go through a successful heart transplant.

Modern medical miracle brings family joy

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Each year, there are more than 5,000 heart transplants around the world — that’s about 14 every single day.

Phyllis Zagano, a senior research associate in the religion department at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., is seen in her office Aug. 2. Zagano, who has written extensively on the subject of women deacons, is one of six women appointed by Pope Francis to a 13-person "Commission to Study the Women's Diaconate."

Diverse, diligent panel gets female deacons talks off on right foot

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The swiftness of Pope Francis setting up a Vatican panel to study the question of women deacons clearly indicates His Holiness wants resolution to the prickly issue.

Law enforcement personnel walk July 17 near the scene where police officers were shot in Baton Rouge, La. Three officers were killed.

America is reaping what it has sown

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Earlier this month, we were driving to Minnesota to visit relatives on the night a black man was shot dead by police in a St. Paul suburb after being stopped for a broken tail light. That was a day after another black man was killed by police in Baton Rouge.

Women praying at St. Michael's Cathedral during a diaconate ordination ceremony in 2012. Bob Brehl it is time to rethink the role of women in Church.

Time to rethink role of women in Church

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Does anybody today believe men are intellectually superior to women because of their gender? The question is not about the intelligence of an individual man or woman, but collectively. Simply put: if you have the Y chromosome does it make you smarter?

MP Carolyn Bennett in Calgary during the 2008 federal election.

Perhaps Carolyn Bennett should check her mirror

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Have you heard the one about the long-time politician preaching to Catholics about morals and obligations?

There was a glimmer of hope but, alas, it was not to be. It ends up that U.S. President Barack Obama is not Bob Brehl’s long lost cousin.

A little girl, a potato and the President

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A long-anticipated trip to Ireland, researching ancestors, a poignant story about children playing with a potato, even the name Barack Obama, all eventually led me to pondering the plight of Syrian refugees and the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace.

A beam of light shines through to the floor of Newgrange in Ireland, one of the world’s oldest tombs.

A question thousands of years in the asking

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Standing recently inside one of the oldest tombs in the world, with about 200,000 tonnes of stone above and around me, strange thoughts manifested in the darkness. The thoughts were not of fear but of perplexity about today’s materialistic, even hedonistic, culture.

Robert and Rita Brehl

My most memorable Christmas gift

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At a recent dinner party, talk turned to most memorable Christmas gifts received. There was a first bicycle, some jewelry and a couple “bucket-list” trips mentioned.

Kim Davis

Pope set-up says plenty about rifts in Church

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Francis caught up in smear job by social ideologues

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