As spring turns into summer, Canada is about to face a test of its generosity.

I am writing about a friend. Her name is Tanya Granic Allen. I do not normally write about friends or family, but what happened to her at the hands of supposed political allies needs repeating because it was so grotesque and cowardly. 

“Was this story about love, money, conquest or disaster?” That was the question Gordon Sinclair asked week after week on CBC-TV’s long-running Front Page Challenge. If a news story did not have at least one of those four elements, Sinclair surmised, it might be a story, but it wasn’t news.

When I was 10 years old, I’d spend hours creating posters that screamed out in bold letters: “Save the Whales!” 

Ascension of the Lord, May 13 (Year B) Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47; Ephesians 1:17-23; Mark 16:15-20

Forty years ago, I moved to Alberta from Saskatchewan imbued with the stereotype that my new province was full of cowboys, fundamentalists and wealthy oil barons who cared nothing about the environment. It didn’t take me long to realize that while there was truth in the stereotype, Alberta had numerous people who fell outside this cartoonish caricature.

Calls for reinvigorating religious public life within our seeming secular monoculture have traditionally relied heavily on morally grounded arguments.

A former student sent me a notice that caught my attention, for both artistic and pious reasons. The Cantata Singers of Ottawa will be at St. Joseph’s Church later this month where the entire program will consist of settings of the brief Eucharistic and Marian hymn, Ave Verum, including those of Lassus, Byrd, Mozart, Elgar, Liszt, Saint-Saëns and Poulenc. 

When I started out on the Church on the Street, I gave little thought to some of the logistics of such a ministry apart from determining that it would be 8 p.m. onwards every Thursday evening.