Public Health Funding: Who are they trying to kid?

I started my career as an economist 20 years ago trying to improve reintegration and vocational training for workers who had been injured on the job. Our work was mostly shelved.

Honouring Berkeley

I wasn’t there for Berkeley Brean’s funeral. In fact, I hadn’t seen him in decades. I heard he married but I never met his wife, or their sons. I did not know, until I got his obituary, that he endured cancer for three years before he died on Nov. 4, 2006.

Hiding behind kids

Children are the latest hot marketing tool, used not just to sell sugar-coated cereal to Mom, but also to pry open wallets by appeals to the heart from a wide assortment of public lobby groups.

Many ways to help those who are ill

When someone you know has been diagnosed with a serious illness, you may want to reach out to him or her but feel unsure of what to say or do. This uncertainty can keep you away at the time when your help is needed most. The following are some ways to show you care.

Junior’s Great Adventure, or when Harry left home

My oldest son, Harry Jr., recently decided it was time to leave home. Last June he had graduated from high school and had chosen to take a year off before starting postsecondary education. The months since have been somewhat tumultuous, but nothing too extreme.

Charles Taylor matters

Maybe it’s a trifle unCanadian, but let’s give a cheer of national pride on May 2 when Charles Taylor arrives at Buckingham Palace to attend a private ceremony with the Duke of Edinburgh. The Prince Consort will formally bestow the 2007 Templeton Prize for Progress or Discoveries in Spiritual Realties on Professor Taylor.

The inevitable question: why?

Almost exactly seven years ago, in April 2000, I was sent by the newspaper I worked for to Columbine, Colorado, to report on the first anniversary of the high-school shooting rampage that left 12 students and a teacher dead and 23 people injured. It was a harrowing assignment. I found the citizens of this affluent Denver suburb of high earners and hard workers still in shock, battering themselves and each other with the inevitable question: Why?

Ripples of hate

The horrendous violence at Virginia Tech did not end with the 33 fatalities and other wounded. It did not end with the gaping holes left in the lives of the mothers, fathers, siblings, relatives and friends of the victims. It did not even end with the shattering of peace and security at this American university.

False compassion

In challenging the prevailing winds on euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide, the Catholic bishops of Ontario have done the entire country a service. So-called “mercy killing” is a human rights issue, true enough, but it is about the right to live, not the “right” to die.

A matter of life and breath

Do you know what it’s like not to be able to breathe effortlessly? Do you have a loved one who has respiratory problems? Polluted air contributes to these serious problems. We can live without food and water for a period of time but we cannot live without air.

Take your run at religion, but let’s be fair about it

It must seem to most Christians as if attacks on the integrity of their faith — as opposed to bona fide studies, queries and investigations — have become de rigeur. After all, just a cursory glance at the weekly bestseller lists will confirm the suspicions of the besieged that it is an open field when it comes to excoriating religion, in general, and Christianity, in particular.