people-from-ontario

"His tact and firmness and his Catholic faith were of immense service to all in solving many complicated questions of these early days. He was devoted to his Church, and was very charitable but unostentatiously so. He helped many deserving students to a Catholic education."

"I am troubled by your decision to allow the leader of the People's Party of Canada in the debates. It is wrong that Mr. Bernier be given a platform to promote an ideology of hate that spreads prejudice and disinformation. Mr. Bernier has courted racists to run for his party. He frequently promotes damaging conspiracy theories on his social media pages. And he has been photographed with far-right hate groups with neo-Nazi ties."

"I've written a letter explaining how I do not believe he should be allowed, he's someone that's opposed science, that puts out very dangerous and divisive rhetoric, and is someone that is putting out messages that are discouraging the public health response to this pandemic. I think it would be the wrong thing to do - very much the wrong thing to do, to give him a platform to promote very divisive and hurtful, frankly, uh, messaging that is counter to science, counter to people's health, and that would be a wrong thing to do."

"Toronto is a difficult city to manage both for the Church and the State and while I hope to be conciliatory no doubt there will be local religious storms sometimes."

"For the schools to exist without the church they are simply public schools and for the church to exist without the schools we no longer have a means or a voice to the leaders and people of tomorrow and we will very quickly become irrelevant to society and we must not allow either of these to happen."

"We need be proclaimers of the word of God, to do that we need to be listen to the word ourselves."

"Being myself a Father of the Council, I experienced personally the solidarity and collegiality which we felt as we kept on voting on the "aggiornamento" of the Church. The kind of Church which is pictured in the Council documents evidently is a church of communion with a leadership of service, the ideal of a more decentralized and open Church, with intimate relationships between clergy and laity."

"Our patience and the patience of our parishioners will be tested. But we cannot let the pandemic win. Our people need access to the Sacramental life of the Church especially now. Together we can make this work."

"For some, the abstract language of Church teaching is a barrier. Also, emphasis on the ideal can result in discouragement and a sense of exclusion. Pastoral experience indicates the importance of a model of family ministry that is led by families, creates multiple opportunities to experience the link between daily life and faith, and promotes solidarity among families."

"We should have a place in which people, not only in our own diocese but throughout the world and in Canada, can come as they come to the Rockies to see nature's cathedral. They can stop and they can pray and they can experience the great presence of God who comes to dwell in our midst in these humble abodes that we build."

"Anecdotally my sense is there are a lot of ministers who maybe wouldn’t say it as forcefully as Gretta would, but at the end of the day they don’t really believe in anything resembling traditional Christianity."

"We were looking for someone deemed to be progressive-thinking. [West Hill as a congregation that wanted to] explore new roads in its spiritual journey."

"The United Church is the only denomination in the world that could declare the Bible is not the authoritative word of God for all time. And that needs to be said by a major recognized denomination in order to undermine every single statement that is made by any religious extremist group — that their document, whether it’s the Bible, the Qur’an or the Bhagavad Gita, is not a divinely authored piece from some supernatural source."

"What people kept saying is how can a minister who says she doesn’t believe in God be a minister in the Christian church?"

"Whether or not Gretta Vosper is a minister is a decision that is made by a regional body called a conference, and Gretta Vosper is not in London Conference, which is the conference I serve"

"You are stealing the tradition of a noble religion and using it when you are preaching the exact opposite of what they believe"

"Gretta has called herself 'an atheist minister'. While that language is startling to some, the Christian academy knows exactly what she is saying. To refer to oneself as an 'atheist' does not mean that one is asserting that there is no God; it means that the 'theistic' definition of God is no longer operative or believable."

"A minister who is not suitable, cannot be effective. To assess suitability, the review committee may ask the minister to answer the ordination questions again, starting with: Do you believe in God?"

"I feel that anti-Western sentiment was basically trafficked in Quebec by Trudeau for political gain. And, you know, of course, for me, I would be trying to build up every province across the country as opposed to setting one region against another. I think he did that just because he felt he probably wouldn't do well in the West anyway, so he might as well build on this anti-Western sentiment for his own gain in Quebec."

"Overall, the Canadian experience of ecumenism has been a positive one, marked by openness, cooperation and honesty. We rejoice in what has been accomplished and look to the future with hope."

"We as a society have become very independent, and we have become proficient in so many things, I think some of us feel we don't have that reliance on God as much as it was once felt. But the fact is we need (God) more than ever."

"No matter what, light is stronger than darkness, love is stronger than hate, and life is stronger than death. To be clear, it does not mean that there is no more darkness, no more hatred, no more death. It means that they do not have the last word! The birth of this child – and the saving message He offers us – announces that darkness, hatred and death are overcome by acts of kindness, generosity and sacrifice."

"If one happens to be a Catholic, there cannot be a split between one's internal kind of views and thoughts... and what one says publicly. One has a duty, whether he likes it or not, to preach the word of God. This is part of the very mission of the Church, which is not confined to guys like myself who wear this funny Roman collar."

"The world in which we live is dominated by a shallow secular vision of the human person, and of the purpose of life, a vision which is contrary to divine revelation, to reason, and to the profound heritage of Christian faith. It is disappointing when Catholic trustees allow that secular vision to replace the fullness of faith articulated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. We are called to be guided by the Holy Spirit, not by the deceptive spirit of the age."

"I admire much of what I’ve seen in digital painting and drawing, and understand its importance as a new medium with limitless potential, but like synthesized sounds in music, it is telling that it seeks to imitate established art-styles and looks. That’s a practical issue, since it means its traditional-looking artwork can also be transmitted over the internet, and has a life of its own in the cyber realm."

"I’ve realized that as long as I trust in my instincts and love of his work, there is room for much variation in interpretation of even detailed descriptions. Which is a reason to love many other artists’ versions of the scenes, too."

"I don’t really the count hours I put into my paintings, to be quite honest. I suspect I might be surprised at how many it takes for an average artwork, because before I even begin painting I’ll tend to ‘lose myself’ in making the drawings and corrections and variations involved in the preliminary stage."

"I was destined from early childhood. I drew anything and everything. Later when I developed my abilities in high school, I was inspired by storybook illustrations, traditional landscape paintings, surrealism, science fiction art and automotive advertising art. I wanted to use my talents for something along those lines, rather than 'fine art' per se."

"The Honorable Paul Hellyer, who was the National Defense minister of Canada in the ’60s, says the current “state of crisis” in the world has been “engineered by an unelected, unaccountable cabal of rich, ruthless and power-hungry people who have been deliberately keeping the majority of decent hard working taxpayers totally in the dark.” Before we can solve this world crisis, he says we must first “end the private bankers’ monopoly to print [create] money.”"

"We welcome... Paul T. Hellyer, P.C., B.A., who--before his 34th birthday--was sworn of Her Majesty's Privy Council for Canada and Associate Minister of National Defence. Mr. Hellyer was born on a farm near Waterford, Ontario, and, after his high school years there, enrolled at the Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute of Aeronautics in Glendale, California, from which he graduated in aeronautical engineering in 1941 before his 18th birthday. His services were quickly snapped up by Fleet Aircraft Ltd. of Fort Erie, where he progressed from junior draughtsman to group leader in engineering on the Cornell elementary trainers being supplied to the R.C.A.F... On the strength of the private pilot's license he had obtained while in California, Mr. Hellyer joined the R.C.A.F., but its need for pilots ended before he had earned his wings so he promptly left to serve with the Royal Canadian Artillery until war's end. Mr. Hellyer is now President of Curran Hall Limited, home builders, and of Trepil Realty Limited, a land development company. In 1949, he... was elected to the House of Commons... re-elected in 1953..February, 1956, before his 33rd birthday... appointed Parliamentary Assistant to The... Minister of National Defence... April, 1957, he became Associate Minister... Somewhere along the line Mr. Hellyer has found the time and energy to study voice at the Toronto Conservatory; to attend the Banff School of Fine Arts and to participate in operas produced there. He continues to sing as a member of the Westmoreland United Church choir."

"Hellyer says there will never be peace and justice on Earth as long as central banks are privately owned....he claims that there are secret patents on “exotic energy technology” which must be released and made available to the world. “This suppressed technology could make it possible to convert from an oil economy to a clean economy in seven years.” But the big bankers could care less about the environment or our children’s future. Just like the Federal Reserve’s motto “Order out of chaos” which can be seen on the back of the U.S. dollar bill, they have deliberately manufactured a climate crisis and offer their communist New World Order as the solution. The above information is NOT a conspiracy theory and Paul Hellyer is NOT a tin foil hatter. He is an engineer, politician, writer and commentator who has had a long and varied career. He was the youngest person ever elected to the House of Commons in 1949 and now at age 96 holds the title of the longest serving current member of the Privy Council of Canada."

"They are very much afraid we might be stupid enough to start using atomic weapons again and that would be very bad for us and them as well... We are polluting our waters and our air, and we are playing around with these exotic weapons… and they don't like that. They'd like to work with us to teach us better ways, but only, I think, with our consent."

"Decades ago, visitors from other planets warned us about where we were headed and offered to help. But instead we, or at least some of us, interpreted their visits as a threat, and decided to shoot first and ask questions after… The veil of secrecy must be lifted and it has to be lifted now, before it is too late."

"(How do you answer UFO skeptics?) I get them to read my books and others; because there’s so much literature on the subject, that it is just amazing. And the skeptics, by large, have never done any reading on it. And it’s just like, take any other subject, physics or something that you are not familiar with, you can be skeptical of some of the rules and things people say if you haven’t taken time out to learn about it.... You have to read the books and get the evidence, and then you can check it out for yourself."

"There’s all kinds of proof, but only if you know where to look and taken the trouble to go and look... The United States government is the principle villain. Why is a good question, you should ask them, because basically, at a hearing we held a couple of years ago in Washington, the consensus of the witnesses at the hearing, of whom I was one, was that it was power and greed. They cover it up under the cloak of national security, but we all, I think the consensus of all of us who gave evidence there was that it had nothing to do with national security, it was a cover story to keep people from demanding answers, and that the real reasons were power and greed."

"Since the industrial revolution, we have been plagued with periodic recessions and depressions, described as the "lows" of the business cycle. It should be made perfectly clear that these recessions, unlike famines, are not Acts of God, but simply attributable to the folly and inflexibility of man."

"We have learned how to bring a capitalist economy to its knees through non-violent protest in the face of overwhelming, technologically augmented oppression. We are learning how to become ungovernable by either states or markets. Equally important, we have learned new ways to care for one another without waiting for the state or for authorities. We are rediscovering the power of mutual aid and solidarity. We are learning how to communicate and cooperate anew. We have learned how to organize and to respond quickly, how to make collective decisions and to take responsibility for our fate."

"Against all these fateful outcomes there will be those among us who refuse to return to normal, or to embrace the “new normal,” those of us who know that “the trouble with normal is it only gets worse.” Already, in the that the crisis has unleashed, we are seeing extraordinary measures emerge that reveal that much of the neoliberal regime’s claims to necessity and austerity were transparent lies. The God-like market has fallen, again. In different places a variety of measures are being introduced that would have been unimaginable even weeks ago. These have included the suspension of rents and mortgages, the free provision of public transit, the deployment of basic incomes, a hiatus in debt payments, the commandeering of privatized hospitals and other once-public infrastructure for the public good, the liberation of incarcerated people, and governments compelling private industries to reorient production to common needs. We hear news of significant numbers of people refusing to work, taking wildcat labor action, and demanding their right to live in radical ways. In some places, the underhoused are seizing vacant homes. We are discovering, against the upside-down capitalist value paradigm which has enriched the few at the expense of the many, whose labor is truly valuable: care, service, and frontline public sector workers. There has been a proliferation of grassroots radical demands for policies of care and solidarity not only as emergency measures, but in perpetuity."

"Like the heroes of all good epics, we are not ready, our training was not completed, yet fate will not wait. Like all true heroes, we must make do with what we have: one another and nothing else. As the world closes its eyes for this strange, dreamlike quarantine ⁠— save of course for those frontline health, service and care workers who, in the service of humanity, cannot rest, or those who have no safe place to dream ⁠— we must make ready for the waking. We are on the cusp of a great refusal of a return to normal and of a new normal, a vengeful normalcy that brought us this catastrophe and that will only lead to more catastrophe. In the weeks to come, it will be time to mourn and to dream, to prepare, to learn, and to connect as best we can. When the isolation is over, we will awaken to a world where competing regimes of vindictive normalization will be at war with one another, a time of profound danger and opportunity. It will be a time to rise and to look one another in the eye."

"In the wake of the pandemic we can be sure that fascists and will seek to mobilize tropes of ⁠— racial, national, economic ⁠— purity, purification, parasitism, and pollution to impose their long-festering dreams on reality. The vengeful romance of the border, now more politicized than ever, will haunt all of us in the years to come. The “new” authoritarians, whether they emphasize the totalitarian state or the totalitarian market ⁠— or both ⁠— will insist that we all recognize we now live ⁠— have always lived ⁠— in a ruthless, competitive world and must take measures to wall ourselves in and cast out the undesirable."

"It is true that our collective military strength has been a deterrent to communist aggression. It is equally true--now that both sides possess the means of mass annihilation--that military might alone will not solve our problems or protect us from encirclement."

"Those of us now in isolation, in spite of our fear and frustrations, in spite of our grief ⁠— for those who have died or may die, for the life we once lived, for the future we once hoped for ⁠— there is also a sense we are cocooned, transforming, waiting, dreaming. True: Terrors stalk the global landscape, notably the way the virus ⁠— or our countermeasures ⁠— will endanger those among us whom we, as a society, have already abandoned or devalued. So many of us are already disposable. So many of us are only learning it now, too late. Then there is the dangerous blurring of the line between humanitarian and authoritarian measures. There is the geopolitical weaponization of the pandemic. But when the Spring comes, as it must, when we emerge from hibernation, it might be a time of profound global struggle against both the drive to “return to normal” ⁠— the same normal that set the stage for this tragedy ⁠— and the “new normal” which might be even worse. Let us prepare as best we can, for we have a world to win."

"The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, unfolding around the world as I write these words, will likely be remembered as an epochal shift. In this extended winter, as borders close, as s and multiply, as people succumb and recover, there is a strong sense that, when the spring finally arrives we will awaken in a drastically changed landscape."

"Other times, authoritarianism may come by stealth, cloaked in the rhetoric of science, liberalism and the common good. Meanwhile, there will almost certainly be efforts by those vastly enriched and empowered in the last decades, notably in the intertwined technology and financial sectors, to leverage their influence and resources, as well as the weakness and disarray of traditional institutions, to lead the reorganization of society along neo-technocratic lines. They will continue to generously offer the services of their powerful and integrated surveillance, logistics, financial and data empires to “optimize” social and political life. This corporate dystopia can wear a human face: basic income, for new epidemics, . Already they arrive, bearing gifts to help us in this emergency: tracking disease vectors, banning disinformation, offering states help with data and population management. Underneath the mask will be the reorganization of society to better conform to the hyper-capitalist meta-algorithm which, though driven by capitalist contradictions, will essentially be neofeudal for most of us: a world of data and risk management where only a small handful enjoy the benefits. We will be told it is for our own good."

"and capitalist are panicking, fearful that half a century of careful ideological work to convince us of the necessity of neoliberalism ⁠— the transformation of our very souls ⁠— will be dispelled in the coming weeks and months. The sweet taste of freedom ⁠— real, interdependent freedom, not the lonely freedom of the market ⁠— lingers on the palate like a long-forgotten memory, but quickly turns bitter when its nectar is withdrawn. If we do not defend these material and spiritual gains, capitalism will come for its revenge."

"Meanwhile, the quarantined and semi-isolated are discovering, using digital tools, new ways to mobilize to provide care and mutual aid to those in our communities in need. We are slowly recovering our lost powers of life in common, hidden in plain sight, our secret inheritance. We are learning again to become a cooperative species, shedding the claustrophobic skin of . In the suspension of a capitalist order of competition, distrust and endless, pointless hustle, our ingenuity and compassion are resurfacing like the birds to the smog-free sky. When the Spring arrives, the struggle will be to preserve, enhance, network and organize this ingenuity and compassion to demand no return to normal and no new normal."

"I imagine that struggles to come will be defined by either the desperate drive to “return to normal,” or a great refusal of that normal. But this is no manichean melodrama. On the one hand, there will be those who seek to return us to the order of global revenge capitalism to which we had become accustomed: a nihilistic system of global accumulation that appears to be taking a needless, warrantless vengeance on so many of us, though without any one individual intending any particular malice, and one which breeds the worst kind of revenge politics. Of course, we should expect the demand that we return to the vindictive normal from the beneficiaries of that system ⁠— the wealthy, the political elite ⁠— who have everything to gain from business as usual. But we should also expect it from millions of those oppressed, exploited, and alienated by that system, whose lives have been reduced to slow death under it."

"After months of chaos, isolation and fear, the desire to return to normal, even if normal is an abusive system, may be extremely strong. The stage is set for this desire to be accompanied by a frantic . Will we want someone to blame, especially those of us who lose loved ones? Must there be blood, figurative or literal?: a baptism by fire so that the old order ⁠— which, of course, created the conditions of austerity and inequality that made this plague so devastating⁠ — can be reborn in purified form. Of course, things will never be “normal” again: some of us, the privileged and wealthy, may be afforded the illusion, but this illusion is likely to be carried on the backs of the vast majority who will work harder, longer and for less, suffer greater risks and fewer rewards. The debts of the pandemic, literal and figurative, will have to be repaid."

"Our strength or weakness will depend on our success or failure to attract the loyalty and devotion of men at home and in the uncommitted nations. Our military strength has bought us time--expensive and precious time; time to examine the weaknesses in our private enterprise system and to make corrections--corrections needed to make the system more workable and more attractive to all."

"On the other hand ⁠— or maybe at the same time ⁠— we can also expect that, among the powerful and among the rest of us, there will be calls to reject the “return to normal,” but in order to embrace something even worse. It is likely that the chaos and deaths of the pandemic will be blamed on too much democracy, liberalism and empathy. Now that states are flexing their muscles and taking full command of society, there will be many who do not want the sleeve to be rolled back down. We may yet see, in this crisis, the use of repressive force on civilians ⁠— as it is already being used on migrants and incarcerated people ⁠— and I fear that it will be seen by many as justified, a to feed the Gods of fear."