Newspaper columns

Spirit of real St. Nick has much to teach us

Dear Editor: I am eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santa Claus?

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Common decency needn’t be a difficult concept

I have had an opportunity to see the recent move of 33 rooming-house residents from Toronto to Aylmer, a transfer equated by some as Toronto “dumping its trash” into rural Ontario, through the eyes of personal experience. My family owned and operated a private rest home for the better part of 20 years, with tenants, patients as we called them, very similar to those at the Aylmer home run by Anne Borden Maxwell.

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People of faith must come out of the closet

I have had an opportunity to see the recent move of 33 rooming-house residents from Toronto to Aylmer, a transfer equated by some as Toronto “dumping its trash” into rural Ontario, through the eyes of personal experience. My family owned and operated a private rest home for the better part of 20 years, with tenants, patients as we called them, very similar to those at the Aylmer home run by Anne Borden Maxwell.

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Can this Pied Piper lead us to the Promised Land?

On a warm day on a busy walkway in a large square in Berlin, a young man sits playing his flute for a pocketful of change. His hair is spiked like the Statue of Liberty and he wears a dark tank top. I draw near to him and see his shirt’s message: “Jesus didn’t die for my sins. He died for His own.”

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A thorny, red rose

(The London Free Press – Saturday, May 10, 1997)

“We are one, after all, you and I. Together we suffer. Together we exist. And forever will re-create each other.”

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 20th century French philosopher

ST. THOMAS, CANADA – Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, the one day of the year I’m vividly reminded I have never held my mother, looked into her eyes and told her I love her. I have never offered a soft kiss on her cheek. I have never even given her flowers.

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