Michael Taube: It’s long been a Christmas tradition in many households, including mine, to read Charles Dickens’ brilliant novella, A Christmas Carol. Interestingly, I read two Christmas stories by Dickens during the festive season. No, it’s not one of his well-known holiday stories like The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth. I’m referring to his superb book intended to be read [...]
From the editor’s desk: In October, Compact published a provocative essay by Helen Andrews titled “The Great Feminization” in which she argued that cancel culture is essentially feminine: “Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field.” The thesis is not Andrews’. She borrowed it from the pseudonymous J. Stone and an essay [...]
Josie Luetke: The sympathetic protagonist trotted out by pro-choicers is the teenager who accidentally gets knocked up. Think Ellen Page in Juno or Shailene Woodley in The Secret Life of the American Teenager (disregarding the bit of trivia that both their characters gave birth). Yet, this stereotype hasn’t reflected reality for a while. According to Statistics Canada, in 1975, girls under 20 [...]
Victor Penney: Interim writer Victor Penney, Sporting Life College basketball has lost one of its impressive figures, and no, it wasn’t a lean, mean, dunking machine — it was a five-foot nun in a wheelchair. I’m talking about Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, who died back on Oct. 9 at the tender age of 106. She was a Sister of Charity [...]
Rory Leishman: In yet another deeply disturbing development in the rapidly evolving science of in vitro fertilization (IVF), Professor Shoukrhat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health and Science University announced in a paper published in Nature Communications on Sept. 30 that a research team led by him has succeeded in transforming human skin cells into human eggs. Mitalipov anticipates that once this technique [...]
Donald DeMarco: I had a terrible dream last night. Maybe it was brought about by that extra slice of “everything on it” pizza I consumed before I retired. It was having its revenge. At any rate, the dream was not only terrifying, but it lasted a long time. I hastened to write it down before I forgot the incidents that rose to [...]
Interim Staff On Oct. 6, the British Columbia legislature debated for an hour a motion condemning Association for Reformed Political Action’s (ARPA) “views and policies.” NDP MLA Rohini Arora (Burnaby East) introduced Motion 38, “Views and Policies of Association for Reformed Political Action.” The motion stated, “That this House condemns the intolerant views of the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA), including [...]
Oswald Clark: Eric Kaufmann of the Centre for Heterodox Social published a report in October, “The Decline of Trans and Queer Identity among Young Americans,” showing that the number of university students identifying as transgender is in steep decline. Using data collected by Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), polling 60,000 undergraduate students, Kaufmann determined that 3.6 per cent of respondents [...]
The contortions that the transgender phenomenon has foisted on the medical profession’s language are myriad—and pernicious. Although 20th-century thinkers had described man as “the symbol-making animal,” we have demonstrated, in our day, that we are symbol-destroying animals as well. The way in which the medical profession has conspired to warp both language and bodies to conform to a series of self-defining fictions [...]
Tanis Cortens Quillette magazine’s podcast released an episode on Oct. 10 entitled “Desexing the Language of Motherhood,” in which maternal and infant health specialist Karleen Gribble joined host Iona Italia to discuss the trend toward gender-neutral terminology in the field of women’s health. Italia and Gribble talked about Gribble’s article, “The Desexing of Language in Women’s Health Research and Care: A Story [...]
Oswald Clark and Paul Tuns On Nov. 4, Liberal Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne tabled the the Liberal government’s 2025 federal budget and after two weeks of kabuki theatre of whether or not enough opposition MPs would cross the floor, vote for the budget, or miss the final vote, it passed on a party-line vote 170-168. With a minority caucus that fell just [...]
Richard Dur, Special to The Interim: She said there was “no evidence.” That was the line in a letter from Alberta’s Health Minister, Adriana LaGrange: “Please know that there is no evidence of live-birth abortions occurring in Alberta.” She may even be right, in the narrowest, most technical sense. There is no medical category called a “live-birth abortion.” On paper, what doesn’t [...]
Paul Tuns: Prolife Alberta launched its “Left to Die” campaign demanding protection for babies born alive after botched abortions. The organization hopes to inform Albertans of the Alberta Health Services policy that allows babies born alive after surviving an abortion to die without receiving any care. The campaign was launched in September but gained publicity in late October and early November, forcing [...]
Paul Tuns: During a discussion about Bill C-9, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places) in the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, the committee’s chair, Liberal MP Marc Miller (Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs) stated certain Bible verses constituted hatred. Derek Ross, executive director and general counsel of the Christian Legal Fellowship, [...]
Paul Tuns The CBC and Sudbury Star reported that Cleo Gratton, 84, was approved for Medical Assistance in Dying after he received terrible medical care at Health Sciences North in Sudbury. Gratton told family that after receiving poor care caused by “hallway healthcare” at the Sudbury hospital, he would rather die than go back to Health Sciences North. His daughter, Lynn, told [...]