Is the current challenge to Ontario’s publicly funded Catholic education system a tempest in a teapot? Perhaps, or perhaps not. Regardless, there is never a time when Catholics can be complacent about their cherished separate schools in Ontario, or anywhere in the country.

Mother’s Day is upon us once again (May 13) and we husbands and fathers need to rev up the creative juices to identify that unique gift for our special ladies.

I started my career as an economist 20 years ago trying to improve reintegration and vocational training for workers who had been injured on the job. Our work was mostly shelved.

I wasn’t there for Berkeley Brean’s funeral. In fact, I hadn’t seen him in decades. I heard he married but I never met his wife, or their sons. I did not know, until I got his obituary, that he endured cancer for three years before he died on Nov. 4, 2006.

Children are the latest hot marketing tool, used not just to sell sugar-coated cereal to Mom, but also to pry open wallets by appeals to the heart from a wide assortment of public lobby groups.

When someone you know has been diagnosed with a serious illness, you may want to reach out to him or her but feel unsure of what to say or do. This uncertainty can keep you away at the time when your help is needed most. The following are some ways to show you care.

My oldest son, Harry Jr., recently decided it was time to leave home. Last June he had graduated from high school and had chosen to take a year off before starting postsecondary education. The months since have been somewhat tumultuous, but nothing too extreme.

Maybe it’s a trifle unCanadian, but let’s give a cheer of national pride on May 2 when Charles Taylor arrives at Buckingham Palace to attend a private ceremony with the Duke of Edinburgh. The Prince Consort will formally bestow the 2007 Templeton Prize for Progress or Discoveries in Spiritual Realties on Professor Taylor.

Almost exactly seven years ago, in April 2000, I was sent by the newspaper I worked for to Columbine, Colorado, to report on the first anniversary of the high-school shooting rampage that left 12 students and a teacher dead and 23 people injured. It was a harrowing assignment. I found the citizens of this affluent Denver suburb of high earners and hard workers still in shock, battering themselves and each other with the inevitable question: Why?

The horrendous violence at Virginia Tech did not end with the 33 fatalities and other wounded. It did not end with the gaping holes left in the lives of the mothers, fathers, siblings, relatives and friends of the victims. It did not even end with the shattering of peace and security at this American university.