Features

TORONTO - As a recent graduate from teachers’ college, Guelph, Ont.’s Jesse Lloyd, a non-Catholic, applied to teach at a Catholic school a few years ago.

But he says didn’t get the job because of the requirement to be Catholic.

In his college days, he remembers how a few of his colleagues talked about being lapsed Catholics and having to relearn their Catholicism — or at least put up an appearance of Catholicity — in order to qualify for a teaching position at a Catholic school.

As hints of back-to-school begin to drift into academic consciousness, professors and administrators at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ont., are still in labour negotiations.

The SJU Academic Staff Association was certified as a union by the Ontario Labour Relations Board April 24. The professors said they needed the legal protection of a labour contract in light of changes in how the Catholic college at the University of Waterloo is governed.

“Negotiations are underway, but proceeding slowly,” staff association president David Seljak told The Catholic Register in an e-mail.

TORONTO - With the dawn of the era of all-day Kindergarten for children three-and-a-half to six years old, Ontario will begin to see how much difference an early introduction to formal learning can make in the life of a child.

The program will begin in fewer than 600 schools province-wide when the school year dawns following Labour Day, but should be available in all elementary schools by 2015-2016. By September 2011 up to 50,000 pupils will be enrolled in upwards of 800 schools.

The latest enrolment numbers indicate good times for university level Catholic education, but that doesn’t mean Catholic colleges don’t face long-established challenges, said David Sylvester.

There are no separate statistics for the Catholic institutions, but the liberal arts and humanities numbers are a good indication of where Catholic colleges stand, said Sylvester, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in Canada.

University enrolment grew 3.7 per cent last year to 1.1-million university students across the country.

TORONTO - Toronto’s Catholic schools are keeping some children of non-status immigrant families out of the education system, according to a new report.

The July 14 report  by Social Planning Toronto said the Toronto Catholic District School Board was not implementing or enforcing policies that ensure non-status children can go to school.

“Results of this study demonstrate that TCDSB school staff are largely unaware of the rights of non-status students to public education under the Ontario Education Act,” said “Policy Without Practice,” a report by Social Planning Toronto, an advocacy and research group of 150 community organizations including Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Toronto.

Bruno, Sask. - Nestled in the prairie community of Bruno, the St. Therese School of Faith and Mission, which offers a nine-month Catholic formation program for adults, is proving to be one of the first fruits of the new evangelization as it brings its students into a deep relationship with God.

Sylvie Quiring, a recent alumnus of St. Therese, said the school’s unique programming, with a strong emphasis on both personal sanctity and the duties of the apostolate as an outflow of this, has been an experience of total love and acceptance.

A new Internet domain exclusively for pornography was approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in June.

Although some proponents of the domain say this will make it easier for people to block pornographic content, critics say that unless regulations make the .xxx domain a requirement,  explicit content online will grow since people won’t be required to shut down porn sites on other domains.

Youth Protecting Youth, the student pro-life organization at the University of Victoria, has regained its status as an official school club after being denied funding and recognition for the past two years.

The club filed a petition to the British Columbia Supreme Court against the University of Victoria Students’ Society (UVSS), which had withheld the club’s grants, on May 3. In the petition, it requested its club status and funding be reinstated and that the Students’ Society declare the previous actions of denying it the same rights as other clubs illegal. The UVSS had been retaining grants to Youth Protecting Youth that all university clubs are entitled to on the grounds that the club violated the school’s regulations against harassment.

TORONTO - The Toronto Catholic District School Board unveiled its new plan to get the board’s books in the black for the next three years, and for trustees to regain control of the board from the province.

Provincially appointed board supervisor Richard Alway told The Catholic Register that the budget is financially and educationally “sustainable.”

On June 24, 1610 Mi’kmaq Grand Chief Henri Membertou, hoping to solidify relations with Nova Scotia French settlers, became the first native Canadian baptized into the Catholic Church. He was joined that day by 20 family members and within 50 years the entire Mi’kmaq nation had become Christians.

The 400th anniversary of that historic baptism was celebrated in a public showcase June 24-28 that paid homage to Mi’kmaq culture and the important contribution made by Membertou and the Mi’kmaq nation to the spread of Catholicism in Canada. To this day, virtually every Mi’kmaq is a baptized Christian.