Winter bicycling in Thompson, Manitoba at 55 degrees (north latitude that is, not the temperature in Fahrenheit

Photos courtesy of Jeanette Kimball

I remember back in February 2011 reading about Bruce Krentz’s bet with Harold Smith, a former City of Thompson councillor and executive director for Manitoba Housing and Community Development’s northern housing operations, who challenged him to use active transportation commensurate with getting to his new job as health promotion co-ordinator with the Burntwood Regional Health Authority (now the Northern Regional Health Authority). “He said, ‘Really, you should walk the walk,'” Krentz said at the time. “I sort of made the commitment that I would bike all year.” Smith said he didn’t expect Krentz to use a bike as his method of transportation. “To be honest, when I threw down that challenge I was really thinking about him walking, not cycling,” said Smith, who noted in 2011 he wasn’t surprised that Krentz had stuck with the plan. “Bruce has a history of sticking with things, especially the crazier ones.”

That’s interesting, I thought. Sounds like Bruce. And Harold. Frankly, it didn’t hold any appeal to me personally, although I had been doing a good deal of fair weather riding from mid-April through early November since my arrival in Thompson in 2007.

Early November came last fall (call it winter here in Thompson, no matter what the calendar might say) and I thought about my three most likely routine options for transportation from my home on Juniper Drive to anywhere else in the city. I say routine because I am not a martyr and happily and gratefully borrow Jeanette’s car on occasion, particularly for bulky grocery items, or when I have a large number of places to get to in a fairly compressed time period, regardless of season. But it was routine everyday transportation I was contemplating back in early November. Walking was one option. Taking the bus was another.

The nearest Transit Route 2 bus stop to me, which even has a shelter, is a very short distance away on Maple Street, near Thompson Drive South. A city-owned public footpath beside my next-door neighbour connects the 200-block of Juniper Drive to the back of Southwood Shopping Plaza on Thompson Drive South, so it’s pretty quick and simple to get to it. Which I did do for a couple of winters. I still have fond memories of two Greyhound-contracted city bus drivers in particular. Darwin Graham made a point of trying to be as close to on time as possible because he realized at -35°C or -40°C two minutes makes a big difference when you are standing outside waiting for a bus, even with a shelter. Darwin also didn’t try and rush his route and whiz by early either for the same reason: You might miss the bus altogether and have to wait for the next one, usually in half an hour, which is even worse in cold weather than the bus being a couple of minutes late. I probably read the equivalent of several books, a few pages here, a chapter there, on my many morning bus trips with Darwin at the helm. The other bus driver I got to know was Conrad Hykawy. I didn’t get quite as much reading done on the days Conrad was driving because he loved trading local news items back-and-forth with me and had an opinion on pretty much everything. A good guy to know, as we’d say in the news business, because he knew where the bodies were buried, in a manner of speaking.

Still, I realized this year, taking the bus, at least as a regular thing, really didn’t hold very much appeal. No matter how fond my recollections of Darwin and Conrad, the predominant thought at the front of my mind was just how cold it can be waiting for the bus in Thompson in the winter even if the drivers make heroic efforts to be on time. And walking seemed kind of slow by comparison after months of bicycling … which brought me back to option three … carry on biking around town.

Aside from reading about Bruce’s winter bicycling experiences, I also knew a bit about the topic from Jeanette’s exploits in the area. She took up winter bicycling maybe a year after Bruce. It’s because of Jeanette’s methodical practicality and lessons learned through experience I wear a reflective vest for night riding (which I do comparatively little of in the winter … usually about twice a month, just down the street to St. Lawrence parish hall to join my Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 brothers for a a few hours for a business meeting or to help work a bingo … as I am now fraternally known by my brothers as the “knight on a bike.” My lights, ski goggles (de rigueur attire, I’ve found below about -15°C) and snazzy red bicycle helmet also came to me courtesy of Jeanette.

Bruce is a big believer in using studded winter bicycle tires. Jeanette also rides with Schwalbe Marathon winter studded 26-inch tires. I ride (at least so far) with my regular non-studded mountain bike tires. I’ve tried Jeanette’s bike and studded tires do grip better on ice, which there is no shortage of. Studs or no studs, I haven’t found a bike tire that gives very good traction in loose snow. A pleasant irony, however, is the colder the day the better the traction seems to be on most Thompson streets. Traction is much trickier usually in -5°C conditions in “brown sugar” like snow and ice road conditions than the grip your tires get at -35°C. Two items that I previously owned but which never got much use prior to this winter is  a pair of long johns and a black balaclava (which I try and remember to take off before going into use my ATM at the Bank of Nova Scotia).

Making life easier for cyclists in Thompson – year-round, not just in winter – are the paved two-lane multi-use boulevard pathways for pedestrians and cyclists completed last fall. In my case, I can take a multi-use boulevard pathway all along Thompson Drive now from Northern Spirit Manor personal care home all the way down to R.D. Parker Collegiate. Truth be told, there are days when it is still easier and safer this winter to ride along Thompson Drive, but the City of Thompson’s public works department is doing a pretty decent job trying to keep the  multi-use boulevard pathway I am using functional. I was on it most recently Jan. 7 as public works had a big snow clearing operation under way, widening a partially snow-covered portion of the outside lane on Thompson Drive, while also cutting back the snowbank and clearing the pathway. All in all it was a pretty good ride. Even the city-owned public footpath connecting the 200-block of Juniper Drive to the back of Southwood Shopping Plaza on Thompson Drive South, which isn’t a multi-use boulevard pathway, remains quite passable on my bicycle. A water break down around the CIBC last month in the parking lot on the edge of Thompson Plaza when it froze up in the extreme cold was sort of like training for moguls if they expand the event from skiing to bicycling, but one can’t have a smooth ride everywhere and all times in the winter. Likewise, Juniper Drive can be a real challenge for a day or two after a significant snowfall as the city works through its priority plowing schedule.

There have long been folks who rode their bicycles in the winter in Thompson. The first few winters I was here, I’d see an older gentleman, whose name I don’t know, riding in the area of Nelson Road and Oxford Bay. Likewise, I’m told there is a guy from McMunn and Yates Building Supplies who has been winter biking for years. As well, Brian Oliver, a senior process engineer at Vale’s Long Harbour Processing Plant in Newfoundland and Labrador, used to ride his bike to work for a time from his Highland Towers apartment to Vale when he worked for Manitoba Operations a few years ago.

It was Bruce Krentz, however, who put winter bicycling on the map in Thompson. Quite literally in fact with a new walking and cycling map he helped spearhead that was released last October.

While Thompson is making a good start in taking winter bicycling seriously, we have a way to go before we come within sight of Oulu in Finland, which at 65.0167° N is about 1,600 kilometres farther north than Thompson and located just 200 kilometres below the Arctic Circle. Oulu is the sixth largest city in Finland with 141,000 residents and hosted the first-ever two-day international Winter Cycling Congress two years ago. The second congress was in Winnipeg last February.

While they have a warmer climate in northern Finland than Northern Manitoba (the average November temperature in Oulu is -3.1°C), the annual permanent winter snow cover begins on average about Nov. 10, which is pretty much like Thompson, give or take a few days in any particular year.

Anders Swanson, who is from Winnipeg and was a riding force behind last year’s Winter Cycling Congress there, was also at the first conference in Oulu in 2013 and has made a 21:49 Vimeo video called “Winter Cycling for Everyone” about Oulu you can check out here at: http://vimeo.com/67039532

As well, if you are interested in winter cycling you can check out Carly Matthew’s Storify piece, “Wheels don’t stop turning in the winter: The winter cycling trend (with images, tweets)” at: https://storify.com/cematthew/winter-cycling-trend utm_source=story&utm_media=storypage&utm_content=related

Matthew is a multimedia journalist on the staff of The Daily Iowan and majors in journalism and art.

The third Winter Cycling Congress is being held from Feb. 10 to Feb. 12 in Leeuwarden, the capital of Fryslân, in The Netherlands. Leeuwarden has a population of 108,000. The congress is a project of the Winter Cycling Federation, which is based in Oulu.

Oh. And don’t forget. The third annual Winter Bike to Work Day is Friday, Feb. 13, the day after the third Winter Cycling Congress closes in Leeuwarden. Last year, Thompson and Winnipeg were the only two Manitoba cities to officially take part in Winter Bike to Work Day. Want more information on Winter Bike to Work Day? Contact Bruce Krentz by e-mail at: bkrentz@nrha.ca

Bruce will get back to you … well, when he’s not out on his bike.

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With our O antiphons, Smoking Bishops and ‘sinful servants’ we are the Church Militant on Earth

A week from today we again celebrate Christmas, the second most important date on the Christian liturgical calendar, surpassed only by Easter. On Jan. 9, 2013, I wrote that when I looked around St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church here in Thompson, Manitoba, part of the largely missionary Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas, which takes in some 430,000 square kilometres and stretches across the northern parts of three Canadian provinces – Saskatchewan, Manitoba and a small portion of Northwestern Ontario, during the 2012 vigil mass Christmas Eve, and saw Father Guna Sekhar Pothula, robed in his white and gold sacramental vestments, swinging a thurible, a metal censer suspended from chains and holding burning incense – I found the scene comforting and liturgically meaningful in both sight and smell. Too often, we forget that as Catholics we use all our senses in a participatory way in worship.

Take the Great Antiphons, known as the O antiphons, for example, those Magnificat antiphons chanted or recited at Vespers of the Liturgy of the Hours during the last seven days of Advent preparation known as the Octave before Christmas and also heard as the alleluia verses on the same days from Dec. 17 to Dec. 23 inclusive at mass.

They are referred to as the O antiphons because the title of each one begins with the interjection “O”: O Sapientia (O Wisdom); O Adonai (O Ruler of the House of Israel); O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse); O Clavis David (O Key of David); O Oriens (O Rising Dawn); O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations); and O Emmanuel (O God With Us). Taking the first letter of each and reversing the order – Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai, Sapientia – gives the Latin words ero cras, which means “tomorrow I will come.”

While the exact origins of the polyphonous O antiphons are now shrouded by the mist of time, they probably date back to the late 5th or 6th early century. At the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire in France,  also known as the Abbey of Fleury or Abbaye Saint-Benoît de Fleury, one of the oldest Benedictine abbeys in Western Europe, founded in the 6th century, the O antiphons were traditionally recited by the abbot and other abbey leaders in descending rank, and then a gift was given to each member of the community.

The second O antiphon, which is chanted today, is O Adonai (O Ruler of the House of Israel): “O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, Who didst appear to Moses in the flame of the burning bush, and didst give unto him the Law on Sinai: come and with an outstretched arm redeem us.” But while Catholics are indeed People of the Book, we are also people of song and praise, as you can hear here from the Dominican Friars of England & Scotland (English Province) student brothers at Blackfriars, Oxford eight years ago today on Dec. 18 , 2006 on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvafrxZ_Ww4#t=11

If smell and sound are important to Catholics, so, too, taste. Take the “Smoking Bishop,” a mulled wine wassail,  which in a spirit of ecumenical breaking of bread at table, we have borrowed from our Anglican (also known as Episcopalian and Church of England, depending what country you are reading this post in) brothers and sisters, particularly Charles Dickens, a heterodox Anglican if ever there was one, who wrote A Christmas Carol after he journeyed to Lancashire in the summer of 1843 to see for himself how life was lived in the industrial north of England. He completed the book that fall in six weeks and the book was published on Dec. 19, 1843, the 171st anniversary of which falls tomorrow:

“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of Smoking Bishop, Bob!”

It it is in that spirit we offer you this recipe for a Smoking Bishop, courtesy of Cedric Dickens, a great-grandson of Charles Dickens, published in his 1988 book, Drinking with Dickens:

Smoking Bishop

6 Clementines
1/2 C sugar
30 cloves
8 C moderately sweet red wine
1 bottle ruby port

Bake the oranges in a medium oven for about 20 minutes. Stick cloves into the oranges and then put them into a large bowl. Pour the wine over them and add the sugar. Cover and leave in a warm place for 24 hours. Squeeze the juice from the oranges and mix it with the wine. Add the port and heat the mixture in a pan. Do not boil. Serve hot.

We Catholics also share a collective memory and remember our saints and martyrs in Eucharistic Prayer 1, an essential of the rubrics comprising the Roman Canon or Missal, with origins that reach as far back as the 4th century, and which made an indelible mark on my Catholic boyhood, although it doesn’t have quite the same resonance for most of my Protestant friends, I’ve found.

“In union with the whole Church we honour Mary, the ever-virgin mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and God. We honour Joseph, her husband, the apostles and martyrs Peter and Paul, Andrew, James, John, Thomas, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon and Jude; we honour Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Cosmas and Damian and all the saints. May their merits and prayers gain us your constant help and protection … to us, also, your sinful servants, who hope in your abundant mercies, graciously grant some share and fellowship with your holy apostles and martyrs: with John the Baptist, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia and all your saints: admit us, we beg you, into their company, not weighing our merits, but granting us your pardon….”

Every pope from Peter up to and including Sixtus II, beheaded Aug. 6, 258 under the edict of Roman Emperor Valerian, was a saint and martyr, including Linus, Anacletus (Cletus), Clement I, Evaristus, Alexander I, Sixtus I (also called Xystus I), Telesphorus, Hyginus, Pius I, Anicetus, Soter, Eleutherius, Victor I, Zephyrinus, Callistus I, Urban I, Pontain, Anterus, Fabian, Cornelius, Lucius I and Stephen I. Sixtus II was the 24th pope.

When it comes right down to essentials, Catholics pray for deliverance at Christmas and the remainder of the liturgical year through a series of petitions and pleas for intercession, not so unlike many of our Protestant, and for that matter, non-Christian friends, from myriad faith communities. We just like to do it as part and parcel of a history lesson.

As Pope John XXIII, said in Ad Petri Cathedram (“To the Chair of Peter”), his first encyclical, promulgated June 29, 1959, “…the common saying, expressed in various ways and attributed to various authors [including Marco Antonio de Dominis, a 17th century archbishop of Spalato, Peter Meiderlin (Rupertus Meldeniu), a 17th century German Lutheran theologian, or even St. Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century] must be recalled with approval: in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.”

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Father Prosper Balthazar Lyimo, a member of Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 and temporary visiting priest at St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church in 2011-12, appointed by Pope Francis as auxiliary bishop-elect of the Archdiocese of Arusha in Tanzania

Left, Father Prosper Balthazar Lyimo, in the rectory at St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church in Thompson, Manitoba in August 2011, trying on the fur hat passed onto him by his predecessor, Father Eugene Whyte, and right, receiving his doctorate in canon law from Saint Paul University and the University of Ottawa in June 2012.

Photos courtesy of Archbishop Emeritus of Keewatin-Le Pas Sylvain Lavoie and University of Ottawa

Downtown Arusha, Tanzania.

The Holy Father has appointed Father Prosper Balthazar Lyimo as auxiliary bishop-elect of the Archdiocese of Arusha in northern Tanzania in East Africa, the number two post in the archdiocese, where he will serve under the ordinary, Archbishop Josaphat Louis Lebulu. Father Prosper’s episcopal ordination is to take place Feb. 15. He is currently chancellor and judicial vicar of the Archdiocese of Arusha.

Pope Francis made the appointment at the Vatican Nov. 11, also appointing Father Prosper as the bishop-elect of the Titular Episcopal See of Vanariona in what was Mauretania Caesariensis, a Roman Empire province located in northwestern Africa in what is now present day Algeria, and the Henchir Debik ancient ruin near Ksar Tyr, in neighbouring Tunisia, adjacent east of Algeria.

The Archdiocese of Arusha is an area of 67,340 square kilometres with a population of  2.364 million people, of which 512,073 are Catholics. It has 128 priests. There are 59 diocesan priests, including Father Prosper, and 69 religious from priestly congregations, including the Holy Ghost Fathers, whose presence in the archdiocese dates back to founding a mission station in Mesopotamia in 1926.

The archdiocese is named after the town of Arusha that lays at the foot of Mount Merit, one of the peaks of the Kilimanjaro Mountain Range to the west of Kibo, the highest peak of the range.
Arusha is the largest of all the archdioceses and dioceses in Tanzania, stretching some 400 kilometres southwards over the Maasai Steppes to Kiteto, bordering Morogoro and Dodoma  dioceses; 200 kilometres to the west through  Monduli over the  Ngorongoro Crater along the famous Olduvai Gorge, over the Serengeti Plains and bordering Musoma and Shinyanga dioceses; 400 kilometres northwest to Loliondo bordering Ngong Diocese in Kenya; and  300 kilometres southeastwards, bordering Moshi, Same and Tanga dioceses.

Father Prosper, 50, was born in Kyou-Kilema, Tanzania in 1964 in the Diocese of Moshi and was ordained a priest on July 4, 1997. After his primary school studies in Maua and at the Ngurdoto Primary School in Arusha, he completed his secondary school studies at the minor seminary in Arusha. He studied philosophy at Our Lady of Angels Major Seminary in Kibosho, Moshi, and theology at St. Paul’s Interdiocesan Seminary in Kipalapala, Tabora.

Tanzania, with a population of about 45 million people, is predominantly Christian and the largest Christian denomination is Roman Catholic. Father Prosper comes from a family of 10 and has two brothers who are also priests. One spent time in Germany in Bonn, the other in the United States in Wisconsin.

Father Prosper studied in Rome in 2007-08 for a licentiate in canon law at the Pontifical Urbaniana University, with residence at the Pontifical College of St. Peter. Father Prosper arrived in Canada in 2011 to continue his studies for his doctoral degree in canon law, which was conferred on him jointly by Saint Paul University and the University of Ottawa on June 2, 2012 by University of Ottawa Chancellor Michaëlle Jean, former governor general and commander-in-chief of Canada,  and Vice-Chancellor Allan Rock, a former federal Liberal justice and health minister  and ambassador to the United Nations, who has served as president and vice-chancellor of the University of Ottawa since July 2008. Alex Crescent Massinda, Tanzania’s high commissioner to Canada, attended the ceremony.

“Polygamy poses a major problem to the Church’s evangelizing mission. In many sub-Saharan African societies, it is a socially approved and respected system with deep cultural roots,” Father Prosper argued in his 305-page doctoral thesis, entitled, Polygamy in sub-Saharan Africa and the Munus Docendi: Canonical Structures in Support of Church Doctrine and Evangelization.

Father Prosper’s thesis was supervised by canon law expert John M. Huels, a laicized cleric, who is a former provincial for the Eastern Province of the Chicago-based Servants of Mary religious order, known more commonly as the Servites.

“Although it is rooted in the culture of the people, polygamy has never been recommended or approved by the Catholic Church,” Father Prosper wrote in his thesis. “Some Protestant denominations accept polygamy as legitimate or at least tolerate it, but the Catholic Church has been firm and consistent in its opposition to the practice, leaving no room for doubts or exceptions.

“The conversion to Christianity of polygamists is complicated by deeply rooted cultural values that in some respects run contrary to Catholic doctrine, so there is a need for “pastoral prudence” in implementing all these approaches. Priests and other agents of evangelization should be sympathetic to couples living in these situations and not be too quick to insist that their marital unions be regularized, even while they are catechumens, lest greater harm occur to their nascent faith. Such pastoral prudence requires a thorough knowledge of the customs of the people as well as a careful application of canonical norms in keeping with the circumstances of people and places. It also demands a respect and concern for the other wives, making efforts to avoid any injustice to the dismissed wives and their children.”

While studying at Saint Paul University for his PhD, Father Prosper lived at St. George’s Catholic Church on Piccadilly Avenue in Ottawa and helped out there and at several other Ottawa and area parishes with pastoral duties.

With his studies almost complete, when Father Eugene Whyte, an Oblate at St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church in Thompson in Northern Manitoba went on sabbatical in August 2011, Father Prosper, with the permission of Archbishop Lebulu, twice answered now Archbishop Emeritus of Keewatin-Le Pas Sylvain Lavoie’s call for help for a temporary priest here. Father Prosper was in Thompson from the middle of August 2011 until Oct. 2, 2011 when he returned to Ottawa for his doctoral defence.

After successfully defending his thesis,  he returned to Tanzania before Christmas 2011 to be with his parents as they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. He then returned to St. Lawrence in Thompson Feb. 6, 2012 on loan for a second secondment.

Father Prosper joined Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 on April 3, 2012. The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic fraternal benefit organization headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut. Its origins date back to an Oct. 2, 1881 meeting organized by Father Michael J. McGivney, the assistant pastor at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven. The Knights of Columbus, made up of Father McGivney, Matthew C. O’Connor, Cornelius T. Driscoll, James T. Mullen, John T. Kerrigan, Daniel Colwell and William M. Geary, were officially chartered by the general assembly of the State of Connecticut on March 29, 1882, as a fraternal benefit society.

The Supreme Council in New Haven chartered Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 with 59 charter members on May 6, 1967. Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 were the 31st council in Manitoba to receive its charter. Father Prosper served as the Thompson council’s chaplain until June 2012.

The following month, the present co-pastors, Father Subhash Joseph, who likes to be called Father Joseph, and Father Gunasekhar Pothula, who likes to be called Father Guna, both members of the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales in India, arrived. They joined Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 on April 2, 2013 and serve as co-chaplains of the council.

Thompson, which also has eight related mission churches attached to St. Lawrence, mainly  in small and remote First Nations communities in Northern Manitoba,  is by far the largest community in the the largely missionary Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas, which takes in takes in some 430,000 square kilometres and stretches across the northern parts of three province – Saskatchewan, Manitoba and a small portion of Northwestern Ontario.

The farthest point west is LaLoche, Saskatchewan, near the Alberta border. The farthest point north is Lac Brochet here in Manitoba and the farthest point east is Sandy Lake in Northwestern Ontario. There are 49 missions in the archdiocese: 27 in Manitoba, 21 in Saskatchewan and one in Ontario.

Les Oblats de Marie Immaculée, or The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI), established the first mission at Ile-À-la-Crosse, Sask. in 1860. In its most recent statistical picture released in June 2007, the Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas listed 11 Oblates of Mary Immaculate, three diocesan priests and one other religious priest – for a total of 15 priests to serve all of Northern Manitoba, Northern Saskatchewan and part of Northwestern Ontario. The average age of the clergy seven years ago was 69.

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The fine art of cartooning

While I get the appeal of comic books, it really wasn’t my thing as a kid for the most part.

My idea of fun late on a Saturday afternoon at the cottage at Lake Simcoe, near Beaverton, Ontario and down the road a small piece from Orillia and Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock’s somewhat fictional, somewhat true Mariposa setting for his 1912 classic Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, was walking the beach road past the Talbot River and down to the blue Toronto Star “honour” coin box and buying the unbelievably fat Saturday Star.

While I generally didn’t find comic books appealing, I did like some newspaper cartoons, especially editorial page ones. During the week at home, when we read the Oshawa Times, I enjoyed reading the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! cartoon, the longest running cartoon in the world, published since 1918, when Robert Ripley himself was the cartoonist. I also liked Gordon Johnston’s single-panel It Happened in Canada. I have the scrapbooks with both pasted in still.

I think I might have liked former Lynn Lake, Manitoba cartoonist Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse, which she started drawing here in Northern Manitoba in 1979, but it didn’t come along until I was in my early 20s doing other things, so I didn’t really get into it too much. Although I managed to chuckle my way, come to think of it now, through quite a few of Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury cartoons during the same period.

Centennial year was a grand year with the 1967 International and Universal Exposition, or simply Expo ’67. On Saturdays we were all Torontonians and Montréalers and citizens of a larger world for a day a week, reading the Saturday Star with its rotogravure colour-printed Star Weekly magazine insert in 1967, which had lots of comics indeed if that’s what interested you. My interests, however, ran more to the “Insight” section. The cartoons that really interested me were those drawn by the legendary Toronto Star editorial page cartoonist Duncan Macpherson. I’m not sure if that made me a precocious kid or political junkie. Maybe a bit of both.

Last year, after not paying too much attention to cartoons in recent years, I discovered David Wilkie, an Orlando, Florida-based advertising copywriter and artist who creates, with his wife, Katie, and via various media Coffee With Jesus under the banner of a company called Radio Free Babylon. Wilkie grew up Catholic, but is now an evangelical, with the former perhaps explaining that slight tone of cultural irreverence.

I sent a couple of panels on the Rapture and turning water into wine to my friend Pastor Al Bayne, who retired at the end of December as regional director for Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Northwestern Ontario for Alpha Ministries Canada. Alpha was started by Rev. Charles Marnham in 1973 at Holy Trinity Brompton Church, an evangelical Anglican church, in London, England to introduce – or re-introduce – people to Christianity.

“Father Al,” as I sometimes jokingly call him, happens to be a former Catholic (he was a parishioner at St. Lawrence Church here in Thompson in the late 1960s and early 1970s) and is also the retired pastor of St. Pierre Bible Fellowship in St-Pierre-Jolys. “I looked at several of the cartoons – not sure what I think of them – some I found very funny,” Bayne wrote back in an e-mail. “Certainly would be very controversial in evangelical circles – definitely irreverent, but thought provoking. Like they say in their disclaimer, they are not for everyone.”

With that caution in mind, you can check out Coffee With Jesus for yourself, should you feel so inclined, at: http://www.radiofreebabylon.com/Comics/CoffeeWithJesus.php

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Alain Huberdeau, senior partner with Law North LLP in Thompson, appointed a provincial court judge

Alain Huberdeau, left, senior partner with Law North LLP in Thompson, has been appointed pursuant to an order-in-council as a provincial court judge for Thompson by Manitoba NDP Attorney General Andrew Swan.

At right is Mario LeClerc, grand knight of Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961, presenting Huberdeau with a plaque last Dec. 7 from local Knights at the council’s annual awards banquet at St. Lawrence Parish Hall, honoring him, and his wife, Andree Catellier, with the 2013 “Family of the Year Award” for having “served as an inspiration to our parish, community and council by supporting and strengthening Christian family life.”

As well, last Jan. 24, the Manitoba Bar Association (MBA), gave Huberdeau its annual Community Involvement Award at its MBA Recognition Awards luncheon in Winnipeg.

Huberdeau, the second provincial court judicial appointment for Thompson in 2½ months, replaces Judge Murray Thompson, who has relocated to Winnipeg. Thompson, appointed a judge of the provincial court on March 26, 2003, served as associate chief judge of the provincial court for seven years, from Aug. 2, 2006 until Aug. 1, 2013.

On July 16, Swan appointed Catherine Louise Hembroff, who had served as supervising senior Crown attorney in The Pas, to the provincial court bench here to replace Judge Brian Colli, who retired at the end of May to relocate to  Cape Forchu, Nova Scotia, near Yarmouth. Colli graduated from Dalhousie University law school in Halifax and was admitted to the bar in 1979 and came to Thompson as a Crown attorney himself that same year. He was appointed a judge of the provincial court by order-in-council on Sept. 21, 1994.

Huberdeau and Hembroff are tentatively set to be officially sworn-in here Oct. 31. They join Judge Doreen Redhead, who also sits on the provincial court judge bench in Thompson. She was appointed to the provincial court on April 4, 2007. Redhead, from Fox Lake Cree Nation, was born in Churchill and is the first aboriginal woman appointed to the provincial court bench in Manitoba. She graduated from the University of Manitoba law school in 1996.

Huberdeau, who was called to the Manitoba bar in 1997, received his law degree from the French language Université de Moncton Faculty of Law,  one of only two law schools in Canada offering a common law legal education taught entirely in French, with the other law school being the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. Huberdeau grew up in St. Lazare is in western Manitoba, close to the Saskatchewan provincial boundary, at the forks of the Assiniboine River and Qu’Appelle River.

Law North LLP, and its predecessor law firms here named after various partners here over the last 50 years since its establishment in 1964, has a distinguished history in having seven of its lawyers go onto serve on the bench as judges, including just in recent years, Colli, Thompson, and Malcolm McDonald, senior partner in the law firm, then known as McDonald Huberdeau, who was appointed as provincial court judge for The Pas by Swan on Feb. 3, 2010.

Manitoba Court of Appeal Justice Holly Beard, also a former city councillor, however, was appointed to the bench from the law firm then known as  Bancroft, Whidden, Mayer and Buzza, known now as Mayer, Dearman and Pellizzaro.   Beard initially received a federal order-in-council appointment as justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench for Manitoba on Nov. 27, 1992, and was elevated to the Manitoba Court of  Appeal on Sept. 9, 2009.  A 1970 graduate of R.D. Parker Collegiate, Beard graduated from law school at the University of Manitoba in 1977 and was called to the bar in 1978.

Her father, Gordon Beard, whom the arena is named after here, was elected as Progressive Conservative  MLA for the constituency of Churchill, which then included Thompson, in 1963. He was re-elected in 1966 but resigned from the Progressive Conservative Party and stepped down as an MLA in 1968, complaining that the government was neglecting Northern affairs. He ran as an independent in the 1969 provincial election, defeating three other candidates, to regain the Churchill seat in the legislature. Gordon Beard suffered a heart attack and died in office at the age of 51 on Nov. 12, 1972.

More recently as well,  Judge Ken Champagne, who became chief judge of the provincial court on July 9, 2009, and was appointed to the provincial bench in 2005, began his legal career by articling in the Crown attorney’s office here in 1993. For many years he worked in Thompson, and was for a time supervising senior Crown attorney.

Huberdeau has been active in the community, including through his work with Our Foundation Thompson, formerly known as the Thompson Community Foundation, which was formed in 1995. With the establishment of the Moffat Family Fund in Winnipeg in December 2001 and the decision the following year to make its grant money more widely available elsewhere in Manitoba, Our Foundation Thompson benefited from that and its resources have grown substantially since then. The Moffat family made their fortune in the cable television business. The foundation describes itself as a “savings account” created by gifts from current and former citizens, businesses and community organizations. The money in the foundation’s endowment is never spent, but managed to produce an annual return that can be invested in local projects and organizations.

Our Foundation Thompson will be holding its annual fall gala Sept. 27  – tomorrow night  – at St. Joseph’s Ukrainian Catholic Hall on Juniper Drive.

Huberdeau has also been an active member of Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961, chartered with 59 members on May 6, 1967.  The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic fraternal benefit organization headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut. Its origins date back to an Oct. 2, 1881 meeting organized by Father Michael J. McGivney, the assistant pastor at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven. The Knights of Columbus, made up of Father McGivney, Matthew C. O’Connor, Cornelius T. Driscoll, James T. Mullen, John T. Kerrigan, Daniel Colwell and William M. Geary, were officially chartered by the general assembly of the State of Connecticut on March 29, 1882, as a fraternal benefit society.

Huberdeau, a long-time member of the Knights of Columbus,  who was the incumbent  financial secretary for the local council, which largely serves the two parishes of St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church on Cree Road and St. Joseph’s Ukrainian Catholic Church on Juniper Drive, is  tendering his resignation from that post because of his judicial appointment. He has also served previously as grand knight for Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 and district deputy for District 5,  made up of councils in The Pas, Flin Flon and Thompson.

Manitoba provincial court judges earn an annual base salary of $230,155.

Huberdeau was selected from a list of candidates recommended by an independent judicial nominating committee, chaired by Champagne. The committee also included three community representatives, representatives of the Law Society of Manitoba, the Manitoba branch of the Canadian Bar Association and a provincial court judge in addition to Champagne.

Unlike superior court justices, such as Beard, judges from the Manitoba Court of Appeal and Court of Queen’s Bench, who are federally appointed, provincial court judges are provincially appointed by Swan upon the recommendation of the judicial nominating committee.

It was the responsibility of the judicial nominating committee to recommend to Swan a list of not fewer than three and not more than six names of individuals for the position to fill the vacancy created by Thompson’s departure.

Applicants must have practiced for not less than five years as a barrister and solicitor in Manitoba, be a member in good standing of The Law Society of Manitoba, and be entitled to practice as a barrister and solicitor in this province, or have other equivalent experience.

They hold office “during good behaviour” and must reside in the province.

Applicants must be willing to reside in Thompson, and be capable of and willing to travel by automobile and small aircraft to circuit courts throughout the province.

Judicial responsibilities include a caseload of criminal cases and child protection matters.

The Provincial Court Act establishes the provincial court of Manitoba. It is a court of record and has primarily a criminal jurisdiction, as well as limited concurrent jurisdiction with the Court of Queen’s Bench in family law matters that originate outside of Winnipeg. More than 95 per cent of all criminal cases in Manitoba commence in the provincial court.

After an individual is charged, the provincial court hears applications for judicial interim release, more commonly known as bail hearings, presides over first appearances for the accused, and holds preliminary hearings to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to order an accused to stand trial. The provincial court also hears all youth court cases in Manitoba.

In addition to cases under the Criminal Code and the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the provincial court hears cases under a variety of other federal statutes, such as: the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, and hears all provincial statute cases, such as those under The Highway Traffic Act and The Liquor Control Act. The court also presides over inquests under The Fatality Inquiries Act, and reviews alleged police misconduct under The Law Enforcement Review Act.

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High school redux

Being a Catholic high school graduate wasn’t high on the list of things top of mind when I moved to Manitoba in 2007. That’s mainly because my high school days were some 30 years behind me – or at least so I thought at the time.

Turns out, however, Sister Andrea Dumont, the longest-serving religious in Thompson, is originally from St. Catharines, Ontario and a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, who – wait for it – just happen to be the same sisters who taught some of my classes from September 1971 to June 1976 when Sister Conrad Lauber was principal and Sister Dorothy Schweitzer taught me several English classes – and Grade 10 general math at Oshawa Catholic High School (previously known as St. Joseph’s High School and later Monsignor Paul Dwyer Catholic High School.) Sister Dorothy also taught high school in Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton, as well as Oshawa.

Trying to teach me high school math must have given real meaning to terms like “long suffering” and “patience of a saint.” As I recall, there were two mathematics “streams” back then: “advanced” and “general.” Since these were in the days before there was much articulation of the concept of “bullying,” many of your classmates had no reservation about saying that “general” math was for “dummies” or “dunces.” Self-esteem aside, I’d have been hard-pressed to argue the point, especially since I struggled with math no matter what the label: algebra, geometry, functions and relations – shoot me now, just remembering the words, much less the symbols and equations. If I had known how many percentages I would have to convert as a journalist, I might have paid more attention to high school math, but perhaps not.

It was only after meeting up with Sister Andrea, who spent 14 years in Guatemala and since returning to Canada has lived in Grand Rapids, Easterville and Thompson, where the main focus of her work is in adult education, which includes training lay presiders for times when there is no priest available, organizing and instructing in the various ministries, sacramental preparation and RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults), when I became a parishioner at St. Lawrence Catholic Church here, that I realized Sister Dorothy and Sister Conrad, more than three decades on, are still alive and active – and that Sister Andrea knows them and often sees them on visits home to Southern Ontario.

Sister Conrad Lauber, ministry director for Fontbonne Ministries’ Village Mosaic in Etobicoke, described as an “unsung hero,” was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal in June 2012. Village Mosaic’s focus is always, Sister Conrad says, “about relationship building, bringing participants together to form community.”

I remember Sister Conrad, then my principal, sitting in her office my last year of high school, as she showed me her debating awards, after I had once again been defending some decidedly non-Catholic propositions in inter-high school debating tournaments. She got it. She understood the intellectual exercise. But unlike me at the time, she also understood more was at stake. She didn’t ask me to stop debating, but only if I could perhaps tone down some of my rhetoric a bit when representing the school in public at debates.

I had a wonderful e-mail reply from Sister Dorothy several years ago, where she said in part: “You write very well (this is your former English teacher speaking!) and astutely. And thank you for your kind words – it’s comforting to know, so many years later, that my efforts were not all in vain!”

A wonderful flash, indeed, of Sister Dorothy’s characteristic good humour, not to mention perhaps a diplomatic or discreet indirect reference to Grade 10 general math class.

For any of you reading this who may have grown up in the Durham Region of Southern Ontario, just east of Toronto, or still live there, and are interested especially in Catholic post-secondary education in the 1960s or 1970s,  Ken Bodnar’s blog called My OCHS at http://myochs.blogspot.ca/ is the first and last word on our high school days and years. Ken has it all: history, both official and unofficial, trivia, the arcane, milestones, biographical sketches and old photos from his own archive of old negatives, yearbooks and other sources. Ken is the unofficial archivist for all things relating to St. Joseph’s High School, Oshawa Catholic High School, or Monsignor Paul Dwyer Catholic High School, as students now call its hallowed halls. You can contact Ken by e-mail at: ochsblogger@rocketmail.com

We’re caught in a trap: Suspicious minds

Way back when, 20 or more years ago, when I decided religion was a subject journalists should take seriously if they wanted to understand the world around them and what animates many people, I happened to read a book called Faith, Hope, No Charity: An Inside Look At the Born Again Movement in Canada and the United States, published 30 years ago in 1984 by Judith Haiven, now an associate professor in the Department of Management at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.

At about the same time, a body of scholarly work was starting to emerge from academics at various think tanks and universities, arguing that while Protestant and increasingly evangelical Protestant Americans made up about the most Christian nation on Earth (at least in terms of self-identification) aside from tiny Catholic Malta, journalists were not only an ornery lot, but they were also decidedly secular and out-of-step with many of the ordinary people and even end-time politicians with real political power they were covering. Journalists were more liberal than their readers for the most part. Journalists didn’t go to church, unless it was for a wedding or funeral. The religion beat was largely a ghetto, relegated to the back pages of the Saturday daily newspaper, the least read day of the week. A similar situation prevailed in Canada. When Lois Sweet applied for the position of religion and ethics reporter at The Toronto Star, a number of her colleagues took her aside and asked, “Are you really prepared to throw your career away?”

Secular journalists and the clergy they cover are still often talking a different language – or at best – talking past each other. Or they simply don’t even know who each other are.

Journalist Marci McDonald’s 2010 book, The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, put faces on the often largely invisible evangelicals supporting Canadian Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper behind the scenes. Who in the secular world of journalism knows whom Faytene Grasseschi Kryskow of The Cry is? McDonald, a former bureau chief for Maclean’s magazine in Paris and Washington, is a notable exception, as is Lloyd Mackey, in the religious press, an Ottawa correspondent for CanadianChristianity.com.

Sixteen years ago, 270 participants on both sides of the great divide, interested in the intersection of religion and politics and religion in the public square, attended the first-ever Faith in the Media conference at the Carleton University School of Journalism in Ottawa for three days from June 7-9, 1998.

Toronto’s Roman Catholic archbishop at the time, Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic, noted that the Church makes truth claims and demands, which are absolute, while the media tends to be liberal, and, as such, opposed to absolutes. “(The) media are adept at showing the ills of society, but not the remedies … Most of our media are not interested in Christ’s self-emptying death, only in sweating and weeping Madonnas. The media love religious kitsch.” But Ambrozic quickly added, “We, the religious professionals, are not very forthcoming sometimes, perhaps out of a fear of sensationalism. Nor do we always explain ourselves well. At other times we kowtow to the media when we should question its mindset.”

Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas Archbishop Murray Chatlain, writing on March 31, 2013 in the St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church bulletin – less than two weeks after he himself was installed as archbishop in this archdiocese and 2½ weeks after the conclave from the College of Cardinals chose Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina, who became Pope Francis – wrote on Page 2 of the Easter Sunday bulletin for his Easter message: “Many changes in a hurry. Let us pray for Pope Francis. The media will try to paint Pope Francis in a certain way. It is not too important what he has done before. What is important is how he responds to our Lord today….”