Dr. James (Jim) McGettigan, a long-time pro-life activist who served as president of the Saskatchewan Coalition for the Protection of Human Life in the 1970s and Campaign Life Coalition Saskatchewan in the 1980s, passed away Nov. 20. As Campaign Life Coalition national president Jim Hughes recalls, McGettigan, who also served on the provincial and national boards of CLC, he was a man he knew for more than a quarter of a century as ... (Continue reading)
Marshall McLuhan is back in the spotlight in a worldwide celebration of 100 years of McLuhan. He wasn’t really gone. What McLuhan – as a cult figure – predicted years ago of an emerging global village, a sort of a Promised Land would arrive. McLuhan, who didn’t think it would necessarily be agreeable or tolerable, was uncannily correct with the ruthless phone-hacking culture that the British tabloid News of the World ... (Continue reading)
On Aug. 26 Toronto Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic passed away at the age of 81 after a lengthy illness. He was a priest for 56 years and bishop for 35, including serving as the ninth archbishop of Toronto from 1990 to 2006. The pro-life movement lost an ally, albeit a complicated one. While some activists have complained to The Interim over the years for the lack of pro-life leadership, the record shows that he ... (Continue reading)
Linda Gibbons will stand trial on Nov. 4 on a charge of disobeying a court order in connection with her latest demonstration outside a Toronto abortion site this past August 4. According to Gibbons’s lawyer, she will be pleading not guilty. The date was set during a recent appearance before a justice of the peace. Although Gibbons has been conducting such peaceful demonstrations since 1994, this is the first time she has been arrested ... (Continue reading)
Since October 1998, Michael Coren has hosted a television show on CTS, the Christian broadcaster based in Burlington. Now, 3022 shows later, the popular print journalist and radio and television host is joining the upstart all-news channel Sun News. Coren’s CTS peak viewership exceeded 100,000 – and CTS is only carried in Ontario and Alberta – plus internet viewers. Shows such as a debate on evolution have garnered more than a half ... (Continue reading)
Retired dentist and long-time pro-life activist Ray Holmes used to say that “you haven’t done enough until you can’t do any more.” Campaign Life Coalition national president Jim Hughes said that Holmes lived that credo until the day he died at the age of 93. Hughes said Holmes was a family man who was married to Rita for 67 years. She passed away in 2010. They had three sons, Jim, David, and Bill, ... (Continue reading)
John J.H. Connors – “The Major” – who died on May 6 answered the prayers of a group of Ottawa pro-lifers when he came into their offices in the 1980s asking how he could help. Karen Murawsky, a long-time Ottawa pro-life activist and former head of Campaign Life Coalition’s public affairs office in the nation’s capital, told The Interim, that the Western Conference of the Grey Nuns wanted to help Alliance for Life ... (Continue reading)
Ten years ago, when I was 28 years old, I was named interim Interim co-editor and three months later the editor-in-chief of Canada’s pro-life and pro-family newspaper. During my tenure as the longest serving editor in the paper’s history there have been changes, both cosmetic and philosophical. Rather than being a paper that published pro-lifers who wrote, we became more a publication that published pro-life writers. We have conceived our mission to be more journalistic than activist – reporting on ... (Continue reading)
Fr. Ted Colleton was a Pro-Life Hero to those who knew him, read about him or met people who who had inspired over the years to take an active role in the Pro-Life movement. Many of us will give him the credit for inspiration and encouragement to make the pro=life issue their lives work as well. Here are four articles about him in the June issue of The Interim. The Lion In Winter Passes In the evening of April ... (Continue reading)
God so loved the world Is this a new discovery? By no means. “Long time ago in Bethlehem …” the world was given a lesson in love which has never been equalled. It took the experts in human psychology 2000 years to arrive at a rediscovery of this lesson. Christ could have come into this world in any way He wished. He could have been a king or a president or one possessed of limitless wealth and power. Instead He chose ... (Continue reading)
“Fr. Colleton was one of us at Campaign Life Coalition. He attended our strategy meetings, helped us plan strategies, and carried them out even to the point of locking the gate at Morgentaler’s abortuary and going to the jail for the unborn. He was an inspiration to all of us by his courage and his conviction. He was a remarkable speaker. He was able to move everyone through his tremendous gift of speaking. He was first and foremost a priest.” Mary ... (Continue reading)
Fr. Ted Colleton dies at the age of 97 In the evening of April 26, Fr. Ted Colleton passed away peacefully in La Salle Manor in Toronto where he had been convalescing for four years. The pro-life movement lost one of its giants. Edward Colleton was born in Dublin on July 20, 1913. Fr. Ted joked, “my mother was there at the time, so I wanted to be there with her.” Born ... (Continue reading)
On Jan. 31, Walter Szetela, who edited the Campaign Life Coalition British Columbia newsletter for two decades, passed away at Vancouver General Hospital. Born in Chicopee, Mass., in 1928, he earned a Master’s degree in Mathematics at the University of Michigan and a doctoral degree from the University of Georgia after serving in the U.S. army. In 1970 he moved to British Columbia with his wife Theresa (now deceased) and children to become ... (Continue reading)
When I heard the news of Myrtle’s accident, I was not prepared to have such a unique fixture in my life taken. And so, when I caught wind that Myrtle had been struck by a car and was in critical condition in the hospital, her absence along my daily route was painfully pronounced. Myrtle was one of the first people I met upon moving to Toronto over two years ago and she remained ... (Continue reading)
Bernard Nathanson, a leading abortionist in the 1970s and later a convert to the pro-life cause, has passed away at the age of 84 following a long battle with cancer. Nathanson was born in New York City and graduated from the McGill University Faculty of Medicine in Montreal in 1949. As a member of the 12-person Planning Committee created by the First National Conference on Abortion Laws in Chicago in 1969, Nathanson was a ... (Continue reading)