Feature

In November 2017 people lined up for hours in Lindsay, Ont., in hopes of registering for Ontario’s basic income pilot program.

We are divided, sorted, separated. As the gaps between us grow, society slides into the abstract. Our concrete reality is the opposite of society. Day to day we experience life as individuals. We live in a tight circle of economic security that revolves around our lonely selves.

As restaurants, theatres and stadiums open up again, and as daily COVID case counts dwindle across most of the country, the Canadian Grief Alliance estimates that as many as 4.5 million of us are grieving one or more of nearly half-a-million deaths we have experienced in the last 20 months, nearly 29,000 of them directly from COVID.

On the first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, 6,509 orange ribbons spanned the banisters in the foyer at All Saints Catholic Secondary School in Whitby, Ont., each representing a child from an unmarked grave at a former residential school.

During a recent Daily TV Mass, the homilist mentioned Ignatius Loyola, the saint who used to speak of finding God in all things. Hearing that got me thinking about my garden. As far as I’m concerned, nowhere is the work of His hands more evident than in the birds, blooms and bugs that make the garden a place of delight.

The Season of Creation, which began Sept. 1 and lasts through the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi Oct. 4, has always been a time for prayer, reflection and thanksgiving, a time to open our eyes and see the beauty of God’s creation. But this year our prayers are meant to spur action — concerted, global, political action.

Whether or not reconciliation with Indigenous people lies in the future, such a reconciliation is impossible without an unclouded view of our past, from first contact to the present, Indigenous and Jesuit scholars have told The Catholic Register.

It has been nearly five years since Come From Away debuted and enraptured big-city theatre audiences with its musical depiction of how the people of Gander created a ray of light within the darkness of 9/11 for nearly 7,000 Americans forced to make an emergency landing in the remote Newfoundland town.

When the 2010 earthquake hit Haiti, Jesuit Fr. Jean Francky went with his brother novices out onto the streets of Dumay, on the outskirts of Port au Prince. That night, the young religious men began digging through rubble with their bare hands.

Vatican appointments in August feature two Canadian women – Anne Jamieson and Donna Strickland.