After 61 years Gideon Travel has reached the end of the road. 

It's been a unique start to post-secondary education for many students taking the next step on their educational path in this year of COVID-19.

Tents are being used to expand classroom space in the outdoors at a number of Toronto Catholic schools as they work to ensure staff and student safety while preventing the spread of COVID-19.

If “The Church on the Street” were a weekly contribution to The Catholic Register, then I would frequently have the wrath of the editor on my shoulders as I submit, “Walked around downtown; nothing happened. The end.” Especially in these COVID-ridden times the streets are devoid of much of the activity that unfortunately led one journalist to write-off the area as “plagued by crack addicts, drug dealers and low-rent sex trade workers.”

In a wonderful essay written in 1919, “Das Unheimliche,” Sigmund Freud proposed a theory of the uncanny to explain the sense of unease and even terror that can arise when something presents itself to us as strangely familiar, but not quite.

EDMONTON -- The largest single outbreak of COVID-19 in North America may be one of the biggest lessons in the Catholic social principles of sacrifice, the value of work, care for the common good and solidarity.

Imagine as a university student the sensation at being cited in O, The Oprah Magazine and The Journal of Positive Psychology for a study you designed. 

Saving the open document on my computer, I close my door with intention, mentally leaving the worries of work inside my office. I wish my co-workers a good evening and check in with myself as I walk to daycare to get my littlest one. We drive to school to pick up the big three while I review the evening’s supper plan. My oldest is finally big enough to sit in the front seat and we chat about our days while the small three connect in the back. The days blend together and I am keeping my heart fixed on Barbara Brown Taylor’s question: “What is saving your life right now?”

University campuses are a lot quieter this fall semester as lectures and student club activities have transitioned in large part to the online space. 

You could be forgiven for cursing COVID-19 because it is robbing Toronto Catholics of yet another opportunity to gather and celebrate. But John Ecker doesn’t think that the pandemic forcing the annual Cardinal’s Dinner online Nov. 5 is so bad.

Paul Solarski admitted there were times this past summer when he wondered if physical education would even be offered in 2020-21 at Ontario schools due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 

OTTAWA -- The COVID-19 pandemic may have forced the Catholic Church in Canada to significantly change the way it operates, but the far ranging impact of the global health crisis has reinforced and strengthened the Church’s commitment to its mission, said Archbishop Richard Gagnon.

Outside the St. Brigid’s Out of the Cold shelter on the last official day of summer, as trees in the park are threatening to burst into red and gold, 28-year-old Harley was wondering whether this church basement might be a place where he could stay.

OTTAWA -- The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a challenging learning experience for the Catholic Church in Canada, and that continued when the first-ever online Plenary Assembly of Canada’s bishops began Sept. 21 as bishops from across the nation gathered in front of their computers to get down to business.

MONTREAL -- The Quebec government took religious leaders by surprise by announcing Sept. 20 that the maximum number of people allowed to participate in an event in a place of worship would be lowered from 250 to 50 in all regions of the province, starting Sept. 21.