Editor’s note: Michael Bator, director of education for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board , retired this month after 34 years as teacher, principal, superintendent and director. He offers below a reflection on what Catholic education has meant to him.

{mosimage}TORONTO - This summer Fr. Henry Carr Catholic Secondary School is moving a few blocks south to Doomstown — to the corner of the street where 19- year-old Jose Hierro Saez was gunned down June 3 in another case which pits police seeking leads against a community too afraid to break the code of silence. Doomstown is the local nickname for Jamestown, the neighbourhood off Martin Grove Road south of Finch Avenue, and one of Toronto’s poorest and most violent.

{mosimage}MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - For the first time since Ontario’s Catholic schools received full funding in 1984, a publicly funded Catholic school is going private.

{mosimage}TORONTO - As Mass ended under bright sunshine outdoors and teacher-librarian Kathryn Zaleski-Cox announced St. Brigid’s Elementary School had made the grade as an Ontario EcoSchool, a cheer went up. For the 580 students of east-end Toronto’s St. Brigid’s Elementary, their teachers and two dozen parents participating in the May 17 Mass, they weren’t just cheering for something students had accomplished with a year’s worth of litterless lunches, reduced energy consumption and heightened ecological awareness. The cheer also recognized prayers answered.

If C1+ reminds you of a mediocre grade you got in high school chemistry, that’s because you weren’t paying attention in French class either.

Editor’s note: The following is a position paper produced by the Catholic Civil Rights League on “The question of Catholic school funding.” 

As Ontario prepares for an election in October, several groups are trying to raise the question of continued funding for the province’s Catholic elementary and secondary schools. Some claim that all publicly funded schools would be operated more efficiently if there was one, non-sectarian system, with school boards drawn geographically and, in most localities, in French or English streams. Several public school boards have already passed resolutions to this effect.

{mosimage}TORONTO - An Ontario Catholic school board has pulled The Golden Compass and other His Dark Materials novels by outspoken atheist Philip Pullman from school library shelves in response to a U.S.-inspired campaign against both the books and the movie version of The Golden Compass, which opens across Canada Dec. 7.

A timeline of changes to Catholic education throughout Canada's history.

TORONTO - A new DVD series aims to teach students in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board about virtues.

{mosimage}MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - A bruising battle over funding with the provincial government behind it, the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board is now embarking on a thorough re-examination of its Catholic mission for the first time in 15 years.