The death of Alan Nichols took several months to make it into the mainstream news. And as of this writing, it is still a blank spot. His case should have been big news because of what it indicates for the future of this country and the safety of our most vulnerable.

In this federal election, part of me feels like a bystander. If you are like me, an orthodox Christian, someone whose faith is not confined to Sundays, you may feel the same.

I rarely shut up. I also have a loud voice, though most of the time I am not aware how loud I am.

It all started innocently enough when I used the expression “children of God” in a recent column. Apparently in this secularized age it is an expression that some find insulting. 

In the spring I took a course to become a hospice volunteer. After spending 12 years railing against euthanasia, both in newspaper articles and through talks, I thought it was time to put my beliefs into concrete action. 

I read George Orwell’s 1984 when I was in high school. We were still in the midst of the Cold War and were taught it was a book about the evils of communism. 

There is a similar scene in many movies. It is a cliché but one most of us enjoy: the skinny kid, representing good, enters the ring with the brutish bully, representing evil. Think The Karate Kid and the like.

In 2007 I started a new assignment as the National Post’s religion reporter and editor. It was at a time I was digging deeper into Christianity so I thought it would be a perfect fit for me. 

To read statistical surveys of religion in Canada and the United States is to believe organized religion is imploding. 

We are witnessing a collapse of religious freedom in Canada. Anyone who doubts it is naïve or completely uniformed. There may be some who simply cannot believe this is happening in a modern democracy. But it is.