{mosimage}A trek to the South Pole helped raise $101,595 for schools within the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board.

Four Hamilton, Ont.-area businessmen — Peter Turkstra, president of Turkstra Lumber, Steve Stipsits, owner of Branthaven Homes, Fred Losani, CEO of Losani Homes, and Mark MacLennan, director of manufacturing for The Econo-Rack Group Inc. — set out on their South Pole for Kids adventure in December in support of 35 charities that would provide help to underprivileged children. They raised $550,000 to support local causes.

Losani said they chose charities where they knew the money would go directly to helping the children. The Catholic school board had been particularly pleasant to work with after the group’s 2006 fundraising trip to the North Pole which Losani, Turkstra and Stipsits had completed with two other men, raising a half-million dollars.

{mosimage}TORONTO - During the early 1980s, in her teen years, Sr. Anna Bodzinska began to learn that history in Poland wasn’t told quite the way it happened. 

The extent of the atrocities of the Second World War, the treatment of Jews in Poland and Christian-Jewish relations were suppressed to suit the communist ideology of the day. But now Canadians will get to hear from Bodzinska about the initiatives for restoration and understanding taking place today.

TORONTO - Sr. Helen Prejean, the American nun renowned for her opposition to the death penalty and for accompanying those about to die in their final steps, captivated a Toronto audience April 20 with the story of her continuing journey.

Prejean’s first experience spiritually accompanying a convicted killer, Patrick Sonnier, was chronicled in a book and made into the 1995 feature film Dead Man Walking.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Dr. Richard Alway has graced the buildings of the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto for almost half a century — first as a philosophy student and later in various administrative roles. As he prepares to retire June 30 from 18 years as president of the college, Alway has said that he will continue to serve the school in some capacity because it has become such a big part of his life.

“The supportive context provided by the religious identity of the university and the presence of the priests and sisters was just very positive for me,” he said. “It obviously worked because I’ve hardly left since.”

{mosimage}TORONTO - A student government decision to ban support for anti-choice clubs on campus at Toronto’s York University has left many Catholic and pro-life groups fearing they will be shut out of campus life.

TORONTO - A York University campus group has launched a formal complaint to the school about the York Federation of Students (YFS), which denied the group space to hold a debate on abortion in March.

In its complaint, under the York University Student Code of Ethics, the Students for Bioethical Awareness (SBA) also address its concern with the motion passed by the Canadian Federation of Students that promised support for any member union that would like to deny resources or space to pro-life student groups.

A spokesman for the SBA, which is not explicitly a pro-life group, said the York federation should not have had the right to prevent the debate from happening in the student centre. The SBA oraganizes debates and discussions on a variety of topics related to bioethics.

Although the university later gave the group an alternate space on campus for the debate, the SBA contends that having to go to a higher power was deplorable.

“I hope that the YFS and Gilary Massa will practise what they preach about with regards to tolerance because they don’t seem tolerant,” said the spokesman. “We are just an educational group.”

In June, the federation unanimously voted to to deny resources and funding to student clubs or individuals “whose primary or sole purpose is anti-choice activity.”

Massa, vice president of the YFS, told The Catholic Register at that time the decision would not affect any club’s ability, including the SBA, to apply for and gain club status. She said the debate was cancelled because it was offensive to many women, which followed the school government’s mandate to work on an “anti-oppressive framework” and on serving minority communities.

However, the SBA is angry that students are “forced to support an organization that (we) personally don’t support.” Students are automatically charged $7.20 on top of their tuition each year by the CFS.

Theresa Matters, executive director of National Campus Life Network, said the administration needs to realize how negatively the CFS’s decisions affect campuses.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Theology students have an important role to play in a society that continues to advocate relativism, Professor Edward J. Monahan told graduating students from the University of St. Michael’s College at its Nov. 8 convocation.

Monahan  and two other professors — William J. Smyth and Janine Langan — were awarded with honorary doctorates, the Doctor of Sacred Letters.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Tensions on Canadian university campuses have intensified this year as pro-life clubs continued fighting for status while others were denied funding.

Yet, while only half a dozen of the 40 or more pro-life clubs on campuses across Canada have butted heads with their student unions, many are worried that the silencing of pro-life speech has expanded to a threat against freedom of speech in general.

{mosimage}Jose Ruba, from the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical reform, says McGill University should be ashamed of students who interrupted a presentation he was invited to give on campus.

Ruba, a defender of the pro-life view, was invited by a university sanctioned club, Choose Life, to present “Echoes of the Holocaust” Oct. 6, only to be interrupted for nearly a full two hours by hecklers who shouted and chanted songs like “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

{mosimage}TORONTO - The inconspicuous yet flourishing school is nearly invisible to passersby — housed in a complex of old townhouses, now joined, that take up the length of an entire block in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood.

But the successful philosophy seminary started in 1989 by the priests of St. Philip Neri Oratory in Toronto is anything but secret. The Oratorians  have seen 100 of their students go on to become priests since 1989 and the momentum only seems to be building.