One of Canada’s nastiest protest groups, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QUAIA), officially retired from operation at the end of February. Few tears will be shed at its demise. QUAIA wa...
In Ecclesiastes it is written, “There is a time for everything, and a season for everything under the sun … a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. …” ...
Having established a successful base in Toronto seven years ago, the Jewish Defence League of Canada (JDL) is opening a branch in Montreal, announced at a launch Feb 16 attended by about 180 member...
Jews are drawn to what is known as galgenhumor – gallows humour – because it fits so perfectly with their history. An example: Two Jews about to be executed by a Nazi firing sq...
In ancient times, Roman emperors would mount circuses in the Colosseum, featuring the crowd-pleasing spectacle of lions killing Christians. Today we are more civilized: no emperors, Colosseums or lion...
Zunera Ishaq, the Pakistani woman who won’t back down on her right to wear the niqab in her citizenship ceremony, is proving to be a feisty spokesperson for her side of the debate. In an ...
Commentary following last Friday’s Supreme Court decision on assisted suicide has filled the pages of this and other Canadian publications. Opinion for and against the ruling has been int...
I’m so old I can remember when Feb. 14 wasn’t Vagina Day, so named for the play, The Vagina Monologues, productions of which are mounted every Feb. 14 on campuses continent-wide. ...
I return this week to the topic of my last column: Euthanasia, considered until mere decades ago an audacious, immoral notion, has shed its aura of transgression. State endorsement was pioneere...
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has announced that, as part of its restructured sex education curriculum, schools across the province will start teaching students about the nature of sexual cons...
In 1994, Dutch journalist Gerbert van Loenen’s partner Niek underwent surgery to remove what was thought to be a pea-sized brain tumour. More complicated than predicted, the operation res...
Every year, as a recipient of the Governor-General’s award for best fiction in children’s literature, a lucky Canadian writer receives a $25,000 cash prize. This year Raziel Reid, c...
Note: Readers incapable of appreciating parody should stop reading now. The University of Ottawa released two landmark studies this week that are likely to shake public perceptions of com...
Last week University of Ottawa president Allan Rock announced the Gee-Gees men’s hockey team would not be allowed to participate in the 2015-16 season. It would appear that the whole...
In his Jan 14 column in the National Post, Andrew Coyne tackles the much-debated topic of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that deeply offend adherents of all three of the Abrahamic faiths, some of w...
It was with a great sigh of relief that all right-thinking Quebecers saw the PQ crash and burn in last spring’s election. The authors of their own defeat, the PQ’s primary strategy ...
Commenting on the kosher-market pogrom that followed the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, who seems a decent, sensitive fellow, and who has openly acknowledged t...
The pen may be mightier than the sword in the long run, but we live in the short run, and in the short run, the sword is often mightier than the pen. Paris shooters cornered in print...
It is a black day in France for loss of human life and — more important historically — a black day for democracy’s greatest gift to the world: the principle of freedom of spee...
In his Jan. 5 column, “ISIS is watching us,” University of Calgary terror researcher Michael Zekulin offers welcome pushback to the notion, popular amongst liberal commentators, tha...