TORONTO - For the 19th year running, the Fairmont Royal York Hotel is offering “room at the inn” for out-of-town families visiting hospitalized relatives at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, Casey House Hospice and Hospice Toronto.

The Room at the Inn program offers families up to 10 guest rooms for a maximum of seven nights free of charge.

“It relieves some financial burden especially at this most difficult time of year for them,” said Eduarda Costa, administrative secretary for the social work office at St. Michael’s Hospital. “It allows families to be at the patients’ bedside offering support for a longer period of time.”

TORONTO - Pro-life activist Linda Gibbons, just two days removed from appearing before the Supreme Court of Canada, was arrested again Dec. 16 outside a Toronto abortion clinic.

Gibbons began her protest around 9 a.m. at the Morgentaler Clinic near Bayview and Eglinton Avenues. Toronto Police arrested her about two hours later.

Gibbons has been arrested multiple times for violating a temporary injunction issued in 1994 that prevents her from protesting within 150 metres of Toronto abortion clinics. Since then, she has served more than nine years in prison for her protests, with judges refusing to grant her bail unless she promises not to continue her protests. She refuses to abide by these conditions.

OTTAWA - Lawyers for oft-arrested pro-life demonstrator Linda Gibbons argued before the Supreme Court of Canada Dec. 14 that using the criminal courts to stop her protests is like using a butcher’s knife where a scalpel would be more appropriate.

Attorney Daniel Santoro told the land's highest court that criminal courts should not be used to enforce an injunction made by a civil court, an injunction that has been used to jail Gibbons repeatedly. Instead, violations of civil injunctions or orders made by family courts or human rights tribunals should go back to the civil courts for enforcement, where there are a wider variety of remedies, including the lifting of the injunction.

TORONTO - Shocking, shameful poverty among Canada’s native people goes far beyond the remote Northern Ontario community of Attiwapiskat. Native poverty is walking the streets and crowding the basement apartments of Canada’s largest cities, according to a new report by St. Michael’s Hospital researcher Dr. Janet Smylie.

Smylie gathered detailed health information from 790 aboriginal Canadians living in Hamilton, Ont., and discovered the greatest, most prevalent risk to their health is poverty. Almost 80 per cent of respondents to Smylie’s survey reported an annual income of less than $20,000 per year.

OTTAWA - Senator Gerry St. Germain knows first-hand the role a good education can play in lifting people out of poverty and despair.

“I grew up in a Métis community where there wasn’t much hope, and there wasn’t a very strong light at the end of the tunnel,” St. Germain said in an interview.

The senator had an aunt who “sort of grabbed me out and helped our family educate me.”

William Zlepnig was flabbergasted when he saw a stamp exhibit dedicated to Blessed John Paul II on display in Ottawa last April. He liked it so much he decided to sponsor the creation of a DVD that would keep the exhibit alive forever while at the same time helping to raise money for the restoration at St. Patrick’s Basilica.

“The basilica did a whole restoration outside and it’s (cost) up in the millions of dollars,” Zlepnig, a member of the St. Patrick’s Basilica Knights of Columbus, told The Catholic Register.

Titled A Stamp Tribute to John Paul II, about $4 or $5 of every DVD sold will go towards the restoration fund, he said.

TORONTO - Celebrity chef Christine Cushing joined youth at Toronto's Covenant House in baking Christmas cookies Dec. 13 to help inspire them achieve their goal of becoming a chef.

“As a chef, I'm so glad to have the chance to work with these youth to encourage them to follow their dreams and share their talents, especially during this season,” said Cushing, host of Fearless in the Kitchen on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Covenant House, Canada's largest shelter for homeless youth, runs a “Cooking for Life” program. In nine weeks, youth graduate from the program where they are trained by a chef instructor from George Brown College.

Ria, a 20-year-old chef-in-training, told The Catholic Register that she enjoyed baking with Cushing at Covenant House's new culinary arts training kitchen.

OTTAWA - As the second anniversary of Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake approaches, a Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops delegation is visiting the country on a solidarity mission Dec. 14-21.

The Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake killed more than 220,000 people, seriously injured more than 300,000 and devastated large sections of Port-au-Prince, Jacmel, Léogâne and other areas. Three million people were left homeless or otherwise seriously affected.

Pope Benedict XVI named two new auxiliary bishops to Quebec Dec. 12 to assist Archbishop Gerald Cyprien Lacroix in Canada’s first and oldest diocese.

The new bishops-elect are Fr. Gaétan Proulx, O.S.M., a Servite religious order member, and Fr. Denis Grondin Jr.

At a news conference in Quebec City carried on the diocese’s ECDQ TV network, Lacroix said he welcomed the Holy Father’s announcement with great joy. The archbishop described the men as pastors who are extremely well-equipped and experienced. He said they are “profoundly spiritual and rooted in the faith” as well as very rooted in the realities of everyday life.

The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace is not alone in its anxious wait for a funding decision from the Canadian International Development Agency.

There are more than 200 non-profit development agencies waiting for the government to say yes or no to new or continued funding, wondering whether they will have to lay off staff and cut off funding to co-operatives, clinics and seed banks in some of the poorest regions of the world.

In November, CIDA told Development and Peace its proposal for $10 million per year in program funding over the next five years had passed through the CIDA approval process and only needed a final yes or no from the Treasury Board. CIDA expected the Treasury Board to deal with the matter by Dec. 1.