Plans to put an outdoor, industrial recycling facility next door to the Martyrs' Shrine have shocked the Jesuits and galvanized a campaign to protect the environmentally sensitive Wye Marsh.

The Jesuits are asking Midland, Ont.'s town councillors to reverse their decision to rezone a site to allow Recycling Specialties Inc. to bring in truckloads of metal, paper, cardboard, wood, plastic and other material for sorting and processing.

Neither the Jesuits who run Martyrs' Shrine nor Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons — a provincial park built around a recreation of the first Christian settlement in Ontario and the graves of St. Jean de Brébeuf and St. Gabriel Lallemant — were notified before the zoning change on April 26.  Previously zoned highway commercial, the land directly across from the front steps of the shrine is now zoned industrial. The direct neighbours of the site fell outside of the Ontario Planning Act's mandatory 120-metre notification zone and on the other side of the town's border with the Township of Tay.

TORONTO - The concept of being open rather than closed to people of different faiths and backgrounds is in some ways more important than traditional left-right political distinctions, former British prime minister Tony Blair told an audience at the University of Toronto Nov. 17.

Standing alongside six young people of the Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Bahá’í faiths who are the Faiths Act "fellows" stationed in Toronto, Blair said he couldn't think of a better place to do interfaith work than in Toronto. Faiths Act is the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's multi-faith social action program with 34 fellows stationed in five countries around the world.

OTTAWA - An all-party Parliamentary committee has named effective palliative care, suicide prevention and elder abuse intervention as the three pillars of care for vulnerable Canadians.

The Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care report entitled “Not to be forgotten” stresses the need for pro-active measures to make end-of-life care available across Canada.

At a news conference releasing the report Nov. 17, committee co-chair and NDP MP Joe Comartin said only 16 to 30 per cent of Canadians have any access to palliative care. 

Former parishioners at two North Bay, Ont., churches have taken their bishop to court in Rome in an attempt to force him to reopen their already closed, deconsecrated and sold churches.

The groups of former parishioners from St. Rita's and Corpus Christi have submitted long-form appeals to the Congregation for the Clergy asking that the churches be reopened for Catholic worship of some kind. The groups argue that their churches were not closed for a valid and grave reason, as required under canon law.

Leader of the Corpus Christi appeal, Phillip Penna, believes they can persuade Rome to rule in their favour because their case is exactly parallel to that of three parishes in Springfield, Mass. In early November the Apostolic Signatura (Rome's highest court) ordered that the three Spingfield churches must remain open for worship.

TORONTO - Over its 10-year history, the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute has developed into a particular kind of voice in the Catholic world, said the institute's founding director, Dr. Bill Sullivan.

As a serious, scholarly and multidisciplinary enterprise, the University of Toronto-based think tank has the potential to engage debate at the leading edge of medical science on the highest levels, Sullivan told the audience attending the institute's 10th anniversary lecture Nov. 16 at Toronto's University of St. Michael's College. Constitutional lawyer Iain Benson delivered the lecture on diversity, accommodation and the law.

But the future depends on the CCBI deepening and broadening its contacts and collaborators, said Sullivan. Housed inside St. Michael's faculty of theology, the CCBI has plenty of philosophers and theologians contributing to its conferences and publications. Sullivan would like to see more scientists and doctors.

TORONTO - The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is concerned its VincenPaul Community Homes program will be lost if the proposed sale of 706 stand-alone housing units by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) board goes ahead.

St. Vincent de Paul leases 11 of the houses TCHC is proposing to sell, said Louise Coutu, executive director of the society’s central council in Toronto. These residences act as peer-monitored recovery programs. The society owns an additional three homes. Out of its 86 beds, 66 of those will be affected, Coutu said.

VANCOUVER - Alexa Loo’s snowboard is in safe storage, likely for the season, as the Olympic snowboarder pursues a new chapter in her life as a mother.

“She or he will be born right when the slopes open for the winter, so I might not go snowboarding this year,” said Loo with a laugh. 

The eight-time Canadian snowboarding champion and three-time World Cup medalist, who placed 12th at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, is not only embracing impending motherhood, she has also thrown her helmet in the ring for a seat on Richmond City Council.

OTTAWA - Canadian pro-life forces are prepared for battle as the latest attempt to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide makes it way through the courts.

On Nov. 14 in Vancouver, the B.C. Supreme Court began hearing arguments in Carter vs. Attorney General of Canada, that challenges Canada’s laws against assisted suicide and euthanasia. The Carter case, brought by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association on behalf of Lee Carter and four others, seeks to have assisted suicide treated as a medical instead of criminal issue.

Previous attempts to legalize euthanasia through Canada’s Parliament have failed.

TORONTO - Br. Alvaro Rodriguez Echeverria came to Toronto in mid-November to encourage the work done by the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools as they continue along their path, sharing their work with their lay brothers and sisters.

The goal of the Superior General’s visit was “to encourage the brothers (by) visiting different communities and apostolates to have a better reading of each institution and to encourage the Lasallian mission, especially at this moment of our history where we are sharing our charism with lay people,” he told The Catholic Register.

OTTAWA - Though Canada has traditionally had a healthy relationship between Church and state, Catholics need to remain alert to protect religious freedom, says Vancouver Archbishop Michael Miller.

There is a secularist agenda that “basically wants to privatize religion and leave it restricted to the private sphere,” Miller said from Vancouver Nov. 10.

Pressures to compress religious freedom into private belief and private worship are not what is intended in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the universal human rights documents, he said.