As Britain remembers the 200th anniversary of the legislation abolishing the slave trade this year, calls for reparation have gone forth from Africans on both sides of the Atlantic.

What could we accomplish if Canada made a real effort to significantly reduce poverty in our country? Societies can reduce the rate of poverty and the depth of poverty. The key rests in the political commitment to develop an integrated and comprehensive action plan to combat poverty.

“Sometimes we overlook life’s small joys while searching for the big ones.”  Unknown

The recent March break was a low-key one for our family — very unstructured for a change.

Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from a brief presented to the Ontario Legislature’s standing committee on finance and economic affairs last month by Catholic Charities. The next provincial budget is expected to be revealed March 22.

There is a crisis that continues to grow in our midst. It is one that affects the poor and marginalized and the most vulnerable in our society.

World Water Day, March 22, affords us the opportunity to stand up, speak out and act to ensure our earth’s fresh water is protected as a public trust. Water is a right for the common good of all life forms, not a commodity for buying and selling to the rich by the rich.

This is my brand new day starting now
Letting go of the ways that I fall down
The old can be made new, the lost can be found.
Superchick, Christian band
 
There’s a wealth of contemporary Christian music being produced these days, and I tune in to it whenever I can. Often, too, I hear it wafting (or blasting) out of my daughter’s bedroom stereo. Lately these lyrics by one of her favourite bands, Skillet, have been stuck in my head: “Rebirthing now/I wanna live my life, wanna give you everything/Breathe for the first time now/I come alive somehow.” The song, “Rebirthing,” is about finding meaning and purpose in Christ and feeling fully alive as a result.

Like many Register readers, I read the news of Msgr. Tom Raby’s retirement from The Little World column with sadness. Unlike most Register readers though, for me Msgr. Raby is not only a byline and a photo; he is a brother priest in the archdiocese of Kingston, an occasional advisor and confessor, and a model of priestly evangelization in the newspaper world.

At the recent meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in Washington, discussion was rife in the corridors and around the dining table on the relationship of reason and faith. The times demand it.

Conventional wisdom can only take you so far. Take the notion that talk is better than fighting. On the surface it seems obvious. With experience you learn that it all depends on the nature of the talk and the people doing the talking. The perfect lesson for this took place at Innis Hall at the University of Toronto on Feb. 6.

I have long been a keen student of writers from Atlantic Canada. Wayne Johnston, Alister MacLeod and Lisa Moore are but a few of the more recent novelists who have managed to capture not only a national but an international audience. And their work is good. Very good.