October 12, 2022 at 12:08 pm
“The world really is impossible to manage as long as we have nuclear weapons. It really is a terrible way to have to live in this world.” President John F. Kennedy to British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore, 21 October 1962 Over 200 blood-soaked days into Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,Read More
October 12, 2022 at 12:02 pm
Editor’s Note: I received my copy of this open letter, released by the Health for All Network on 12 October 2022, from Dr. Monika Dutt, a public health physician in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland & Labrador whom I’ve interviewed in these pages previously and who stated, in an accompanying pressRead More
September 14, 2022 at 3:04 pm
Author’s Note This month’s ‘War & Peace’ column is dedicated to the memory of Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022), the last leader of the Soviet Union, who grasped—as he told the United Nations in 1988—that in the nuclear age, “disarmament” is “the most important thing of all, without which no other issueRead More
August 10, 2022 at 12:21 pm
One hears the word and wants to know more, but one also wants to forget it. One has heard both too much and not enough about Hiroshima. For the city evokes our entire nuclear nightmare… Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967) Return to Hiroshima on AugustRead More
July 13, 2022 at 11:34 am
1 Witch. When shall we three met again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? 2 Witch. When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won. Shakespeare, Macbeth Shakespeare’s Macbeth opens in the “fog and filthy air” of an “open place,” a no-man’s-land where three witches – theRead More
March 30, 2022 at 12:46 pm
I want to escape from my own threshold. Where to? The street is dark And conscience shows up ahead of me, white, Like salt scattered for pavements. Osip Mandelshtam (1891-1938) On 23 January 2015, 49-year-old Ruslan Kotsaba – journalist and blogger, president of the Ukrainian Pacifist Society and anRead More
March 16, 2022 at 11:51 am
On March 3, Canada announced new emergency measures to support Ukrainian refugees. We have opened a special pathway for Ukrainians which waives all fees and normal visa requirements, we have established a special family reunification and sponsorship pathway for extended family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents, we areRead More
March 2, 2022 at 10:49 am
I assumed my first 2022 contribution to the Spectator would be pretty upbeat, especially since New Year’s Eve was spent in a hilarious re-watching of various episodes of Father Ted that included a few I hadn’t seen before. And thanks to YouTube documentary introducing the actors, I got to seeRead More
November 24, 2021 at 12:49 pm
I didn’t really expect the 2021 Child and Family Poverty report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) to cheer me on a grey day, but I also didn’t expect it to be quite as bleak as it is. The report, by Dr. Lesley Frank, Laura Fisher and Dr.Read More
October 13, 2021 at 11:49 am
Although the Residential Schools have come under attack over the years, the discovery of the graves of children in and around the former schools in May of 2021 resulted in a new and urgent call for apologies from the various churches involved in them. Almost immediately after the graves wereRead More