TORONTO - When she was eight, Rebekah Boscariol wanted to swim across the Pacific Ocean. And while it’s not quite her childhood dream, Lake Ontario — which Boscariol crossed on Aug. 6 — is still no small feat.

Boscariol, a 17-year-old student at Markham's St. Augustine Catholic High School, swam from Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., to the Toronto lakeshore, where she was welcomed by a roaring crowd of supporters as she touched land for the first time in 15 hours.

"I was really happy that I was done and thankful that it's over," said Boscariol shortly after completing the swim, amidst a slew of family, friends, reporters and cameras. "And I just can't believe that I just actually did it."

Boscariol, among the youngest of the 55 registered swimmers to have crossed Lake Ontario, finished only 23 minutes shy of the current women's record. Exhausted, she admitted she was disappointed she didn't beat the record with her time of 15 hours, 33 minutes and 15 seconds.

But she had more motivation than just breaking a record.

TORONTO - Since the days of Terry Fox, it’s not uncommon to find people walking, running or cycling across Canada. What’s unorthodox about the Crossroads walkers is that their cause is life.

This summer, a group of Catholic university age students has been trekking across the country via highways, country roads and city streets, donning t-shirts that read “Pro-life” in large, capital letters. The group, totalling 13 young people from across Canada and the United States, began the 2011 Crossroads Pro-Life Walk in Vancouver on May 21. After traversing six provinces, they will arrive in Ottawa on Aug. 13 where their three-month journey will end with a pro-life rally. The group passed through Toronto July 30-Aug. 1, where they were joined by about 50 local supporters.

“We have to keep awareness of the plight of the unborn and their mothers in the forefront of our complacent society,” wrote John Paul Meenan, a professor at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy, who walked with the group for two weeks. “Crossroads provides just such a witness for life, for the unborn, their mothers and fathers, and all those who may be ignorant of the great and inestimable dignity of each and every human being as a person made in the image of God.”

OTTAWA - At Bishop Raymond Lahey’s sentencing hearing here Aug. 4, his lawyers tried to show his child porn collection was smaller, less sophisticated and less hard-core than others examined by an Ottawa Police detective.

Detective Andrew Thompson, who found 588 child porn images, 60 videos and a file containing fictional stories on the bishop’s laptop and other devices, agreed Lahey’s collection was smaller than some he had investigated which had included hundreds of thousands of illegal images. And while Thompson agreed many of Lahey’s images were on the soft-core end of the spectrum, showing adolescent boys in nude poses, he stressed some were “quite graphic” and included “torture and stuff like that.”

The expert in child pornography investigations and computer forensics admitted he has seen worse child pornography than those in Lahey’s collection, but some of the bishop’s worst images “were right up there.” None of the material depicted infants, for example, but “the explicit images of torture are disturbing,” he said.

He told the court that the unusual combination of images, videos and stories showed that “Mr. Lahey has gone out and searched for stuff like that.”

When she was eight, Rebekah Boscariol wanted to swim across the Pacific Ocean. And while it’s not quite her childhood dream, Lake Ontario – which Boscariol will cross on Aug. 5 – is still no small feat.

Boscariol, 17, will swim from Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., to the Toronto Lakeshore this weekend to satisfy a long-time yearning to do a solo distance swim and to raise money for the cardiac care unit at SickKids Hospital, a familiar locale for the Boscariol family. Rebekah and two of her five younger siblings have stayed at SickKids, including her 4-year-old sister Sophia, who had a successful heart surgery there in July.

In 2009, when a friend from Boscariol’s swim team mentioned the story of Marilyn Bell – the first person to ever swim across Lake Ontario – Rebekah decided she wanted to emulate the accomplishment.

Her mother, however, wasn’t so anxious to have her 14-year-old daughter swim more than 50 km.

Archbishop Francis John Spence, former archbishop of Kingston, died peacefully in his Kingston, Ont., home on the morning of July 27 at the age of 85.

Archbishop Spence, a former president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), served as a priest for 61 years and as a bishop for 44. In 2002, after two decades of leading the archdiocese of Kingston, he retired.

“As an archdiocese, we thank God for the gift of Archbishop emeritus Spence and his unfailing service and witness throughout the years of his priesthood and episcopacy,” read a statement from the archdiocese of Kingston.

Archbishop Spence was born in Perth, Ont., in 1926. After his ordination in 1950, he spent two years as an associate pastor at Kingston's St. Mary’s Cathedral, where he was the secretary to the archbishop of Kingston. In 1955, Archbishop Spence earned a doctorate in canon law from the Angelicum University in Rome after three years of study. After returning to Kingston, he fulfilled a variety of responsibilities and attended the Second Vatican Council, until his appointment as a bishop in 1967.

OTTAWA - Novalis Publishing celebrated its 75th anniversary at Ottawa’s Saint Paul University July 7 at a reception to honour its authors, editors and past and present staff.

Novalis began in 1936 when Oblate Father André Guay, who founded the Catholic Centre at the University of Ottawa, began publishing pamphlets to help ordinary Catholics better understand their faith in a post-Depression era.

“No organization can achieve the kind of success Novalis has had in 75 years without truly caring and committed people,” said Novalis’ publishing director Joseph Sinasac. “From André Guay until now, Novalis benefited from a tremendous amount of wisdom, of passion, of talent, of devotion from its staff writers, editors and many, many friendly collaborators.”

Guay recognized the way ordinary Catholics lacked an understanding of their faith, said Celebrate Magazine editor Bernadette Gasslein.

McLENNAN, Alta. - The archdiocese of Grouard-McLennan plans to move its offices from the town of McLennan into Grande Prairie.

The move is motivated primarily by transportation and staffing needs, says Archbishop Gerard Pettipas.

“In spite of the cordial welcome and genuine support I have enjoyed in McLennan since becoming archbishop, I have become increasingly aware that this is not the most suitable location for me and the chancery offices at this point in our history,” the archbishop says in a recent letter to Catholics in the northwestern Alberta diocese.

“I have thus began to look seriously at a move to Grande Prairie, which provides the only air transportation by national carriers within the archdiocese, as well as a suitable large population base from which to hire office staff.”

McLennan is a small agricultural community of about 825 people.

TORONTO - “No snail mail: Who cares?” read a newspaper headline on the morning of June 3, when Canada Post began its rotating postal strikes. It may have been a sentiment shared by many Canadians, but certainly not by registered charities.

For them, it was a “nightmare,” according to Jim Hughes, president of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), a pro-life charity that simply wouldn’t be able to operate without mail donations.

“We rely upon donations of up to $5,000 a day in order to keep our doors open,” said Hughes, adding that, conservatively, CLC lost $75,000 worth of donations as a result of the strike.

Donations that weren’t sent in June were not made once postal workers were sent back to work on June 27, he said. Instead of having regular contributors “double up” their gifts, the donations were simply lost.

Associate Editor Michael Swan of The Catholic Register was recently awarded one first-place and two second-place prizes for outstanding writing at the annual awards banquet of The Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada.

In total, The Register won five awards in the North American wide competition of Catholic newspapers. Those honours follow the 14 awards, including best religious newspaper in Canada, The Register won earlier this year at the Canadian Church Press awards ceremony.

Swan’s first-place prize was in the category of Best Personality Profile for a front-page feature titled “Deacon Judge Rules with Conviction.” [read article here]

It explored how Alf Stong, a deacon in the Church, relies on his Catholic values in adjudicating the law.

OTTAWA - Montreal auxiliary Bishop-elect Christian Lépine never envisioned becoming a bishop, or even a priest, though as a child he wondered about becoming a saint.

Growing up in 1950s Quebec, when the whole province was steeped in the Catholic faith, Lépine recalls kneeling at the age of five with his French-Canadian family every evening and reciting the rosary “like all of Quebec.” He recalls reading the lives of the saints when he was eight. “I was not thinking so much of being a priest, but I was thinking about being a saint,” he joked.

The oldest of four brothers and one sister, Lépine remained certain he would marry. It wasn’t until he was 25, sitting in his favorite rocking chair at Christmas, wondering what he was searching for, that he entertained the thought of becoming a priest. “What am I thinking about?” he wondered.

By then he had attended the Royal Military College in Saint-Jean, pursued an engineering degree at the École Polytechnique in Montreal and, after a year working at an engineering firm, returned to school to study economics and politics. He decided to wait for a couple of months to see if the desire for priesthood remained strong.