One of my press gallery colleagues asked me, earlier this week, if I knew whether Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien is religious. My colleague said a radio reporter had made that assertion. Further, the reporter contended, O’Brien’s faith had sustained him in the wake of his current situation. The mayor was charged criminally in connection with allegedly trying to […]
OttawaWatch: Ethics at issue
The Supreme Court of Canada reserved judgment, this week, on an appeal by septuagenarian Vancouver broadcaster Rafe Mair against a BC appeal court finding that he had defamed a socially-conservative political activist. The case has been proceeding upwards in the courts since 1999, when Mair told his then CKNW audience: “I really hate to give Kari Simpson any more […]
Faith legacy sustains rising star Ellington
Taylor Ellington was positioned at defence during the season’s opener last year, on the Everett Silvertips home ice in the Comcast Arena. Out of the corner of his eye, amid the fireworks and light show, Ellington spied a wheelchair near the Zamboni entrance — an unusual on-ice sight. As his eyes adjusted, he was surprised […]
OttawaWatch: A Rocha’s pebble creates a ripple
Markku Kostamo dropped into Ottawa a few weeks ago, to raise awareness in this very political community, for the work of A Rocha. Rocha, a Portuguese word meaning “rock”, became the moniker for A Rocha a quarter-century ago, when a Brit named Peter Harris founded a field study centre known as Cruzinha in that Mediterranean nation. […]
OttawaWatch: The senator’s quiet benediction
The occasion was the first-ever Inter-faith Prayer Breakfast on Parliament Hill. It drew about 100 people to the parliamentary dining room, about one-third of them members of parliament. While the event was considered an unqualified success by its organizers, it needs to be said, in context, that it drew only about one-fifth of the attendance […]
OttawaWatch: Foodgrains vs. the cabinet shuffle
What does the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFB) have to do with this week’s cabinet shuffle? Not too much, on the surface at least, as it turns out. But let’s deal with the comparison, first, before getting into some interesting nitty gritty about the CFB. * * * In church, this past Sunday, I learned a […]
Breaking up the old gang
Some of our older readers will remember a song entitled ‘Those Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine.’ The cheerful dirge points out, in a rather plaintive way, how group relationships can change when a marriage takes place and the parties to the merger become committed to each other more than to […]
OttawaWatch: Of budgets, books and balance
The federal budget passed, this week, not unexpectedly, with the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois voting in favor and the Liberals and NDP, against. It was difficult to escape the irony posed by many of the pundits who suggested that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s plans for the use of taxpayers’ money seemed pretty much to be […]
OttawaWatch: That ‘humdinger’ of a speech
It is always encouraging to learn that some recipients of OttawaWatch read all the way through each week’s missive — or at least read the last paragraph, not just the first. In last week’s piece, I promised to make some references, today, to Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl’s January 18 speech — the 2007 Mel Smith […]
OttawaWatch: Wilberforce and friends
Two Order of Canada appointments caught my attention this week, as I perused the list released Tuesday morning, February 20, by Governor-General Michaelle Jean’s office. The two are Norgrove Penny and the late Harry Lehotsky. Penny, a Victoria medical doctor, is well-known in British Columbia and some parts of Uganda for both his vibrant Christian […]