Features/Features

TORONTO - When Grade 12 student Vanessa Tillner graduates this year, she could be one of the last students to do so at the original site of St. Joseph’s Morrow Park High School.

Next year, the school celebrates its 50th anniversary at its Bayview Avenue site in the northern reaches of the city. But the Toronto Catholic District School Board says if the school’s current lease isn’t renegotiated, there will be a new all-girls school for future graduates.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The conduct of school trustees is an issue that has dogged Ontario’s largest Catholic school board for the past year.

But as a provincial governance review committee considers a mandatory code of ethics and conduct, the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association says these types of codes should be voluntary.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Some call it the “monster” model. For years, critics have charged that MBA schools have been teaching business students the mantra of maximizing shareholder profits with little regard for anything else.

But according to CEO and business ethics researcher John Dalla Costa, it's critical to have a reform of this business mentality now, given the depth of the economic crisis the world is facing.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The chair of a Toronto Catholic parent group says she plans to file a complaint with Ontario’s ombudsman over the potential conflict-of-interest position of the provincially appointed supervisor for the Toronto Catholic District School Board.

In a letter to Education Minister Kathleen Wynne, Murielle Boudreau of the Greater Toronto Parent Network wrote that Norbert Hartmann “is usually in a conflict-of-interest situation whenever he presides over many aspects of the administration of the board” as his wife and daughter are Toronto Catholic school teachers.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Toronto’s Catholics have nearly tripled the number of refugees they’re bringing to Canada, but more parishes need to volunteer if the archdiocese is going to sustain the new level of refugee sponsorships.

In 2008 parishes and religious orders in and around Toronto sponsored 147 families who can’t return to their homelands for fear of war, persecution and chaos. That’s up from 51 in 2007. The number of parishes involved in sponsorship grew to 28 in 2008, up from 22 the year before. There are 32 parishes, out of 224 in the archdiocese, so far on board for sponsorships in 2009.

{mosimage}TORONTO -It’s “discriminatory,” “demoralizing” and should be taken down.

At least that’s what an Ontario Catholic parent group is saying about a new government web site called “School Information Finder. ”

Brian Evoy, president of the Ontario Association of Parents in Catholic Education , said the web site allows parents to choose schools based upon some discriminating indicators such as the percentage of students from lower-income families and those who don’t speak English as a first language. Provincial test scores are also a criteria.

{mosimage}GASPE, Que. - Nothing prepared me for the incredible variety of Catholic churches to be found in the maritime region of Quebec.

Turning south on 132 after visiting Miguasha Park, we drove to where the highway meets Chaleur Bay. In Carleton, a sign pointed to Mont St-Joseph. We drove along a trail which wound up high in the heavens, 555 metres to be exact. We were barely able to discern the mission’s outline in the thick fog. The site was founded by Carleton’s St.-Jean-Baptiste Society in 1878 when it erected a cedar cross, covered in white iron, to protect parishioners and save them from the sea’s dangers. That cross stood until 1918. That year, the statue of St. Joseph was taken in procession from the parish church up a rough trail. In 1935, inspired by Carleton’s parish priest, Abbe Plourde, the construction of a chapel began. Once completed, it became a popular pilgrimage site, due in great part to the Sisters of Charity who had a convent and school in Carleton. Pilgrims come here to pray in the beautiful oratory of the Blessed Virgin. There’s a museum and art gallery here, including an unusual crèche scene in which The Star of Bethlehem is a sea anemone and Baby Jesus rests on a mushroom.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The Gospel, liturgical worship and community witness will be the pillars of a new three-year faith initiative at the Toronto Catholic District School Board.

Toronto’s Archbishop Thomas Collins was scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the April 15 launch of “Nurturing Our Catholic Community through Word, Worship and Witness.”

{mosimage}MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - When gunfire interrupted a funeral and killed Darren Watts’ friend, it was a wake-up call about gangs for the 19-year-old high school student.

“Beware of the company you keep. They can lead to your downfall,” he said during an interview at Ascension of Our Lord Catholic High School in Mississauga.

Watts is describing the message of Mouse, a short film on the dangers of gang lifestyle. He plays Clutch, a fictional gang leader who preys upon a 10-year-old  whom he nicknames “Mouse” and convinces to steal and sell drugs for him and the gang.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The Toronto Catholic District School Board has a new trustee but the same old problem, says a Toronto Catholic parents group.

Murielle Boudreau, chair of the Greater Toronto Catholic Parent Network, says appointing Mary Ann Robillard, a former trustee and one-time assistant to Oliver Carroll, to the seat vacated by Carroll is like appointing her old boss.