Features

In Michael Grandsoult’s eighth grade classroom, students are encouraged to use music and rhymes to tell the story of their lives.

Readers may recall my May 2020 article in this publication. I shared how my Dad, Edward Ecker, was coping with the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic while living in a long-term care facility in Brantford, Ont.  

When Sr. Nancy Brown began serving as pastoral counsellor at Covenant House Vancouver in 1998, her eyes were opened to the sex-trafficking crisis happening right under the nose of everyday Canadians.

Human trafficking incidents reported by Canadian police declined from 546 in 2019 to 515 in 2020, according to Statistics Canada, but advocates for victims are under no illusion that the numbers are dwindling.

To anyone who ever thought St. Paul was talking philosophically or theologically when he said “The wages of sin is death,” 18th-century Ecuadorean sculptor Manuel Chili, known as Caspicara, has left a message in wood, glass, metal and paint. Four sculptures called The Fates of Man illustrate St. Paul’s warning in the most immediate, visceral and concrete sense possible.

Steve Simon knows that one of the best tricks in photography is learning how to record the invisible — things like faith, hope, healing, memory, time and wonder. The award-winning photographer, now based in New York, learned this trick early in his career at Lac Ste. Anne.

The legacy of the Lac Ste. Anne pilgrimage stretches back a lot longer than the Church remembers. Lac Ste. Anne was a sacred pilgrimage site for centuries before French Oblate missionaries arrived at Fort des Prairies (later known as Edmonton) in 1843.

Younis Gil is a small man who struggles with English. Years of stress, uncertainty and hard labour have left an imprint. But he squares his shoulders, straightens his back, meets your gaze and smiles. With his wife Saleema Bibi and surrounded by three of his adult children plus a son-in-law, he is a proud pater familias embracing a life that a few months ago was hard to imagine.

Canada can do more to counter Pakistan’s blasphemy law — a law that made refugees of the Younis family and thousands of others, whose lives are on hold in Bangkok and other places around the world — the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief told the All-Party Parliamentary Interfaith Caucus in an online presentation earlier this month.

On May 1, mother of three Linda Murphy began a 900-kilometre hike along Ontario’s Bruce Trail to raise money for domestic violence survivors across Canada.