Apr

2016

Mass media fail to explore religious motives

A group of compassionate Canadians had sponsored some Syrian refugees. After meeting one of those refugees, a young single woman, one of the sponsors said in surprise, “She’s Muslim!” Well, doh! Now, I heard that story second-hand. So I don’t know whether the speaker genuinely didn’t realize that most Syrians are Muslim. Or, to give her a little more credit, surprised that an attractive young woman could choose to remain single within a patriarchal culture. Either way, it seems to me, the story illustrates the ignorance of North Americans as a whole to any religion but their own. And perhaps even to their own.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: media, motives, Muslim

Apr

2016

Aboriginal suicides based on loss of hope

Author: Jim Taylor

Only one of my long-term friends ever committed suicide. I found his death much harder to get over, to get reconciled to, than the “normal” deaths of other friends. And so I can’t help wondering about the emotional effect of 11 suicide attempts in a single night. And then a plot by13 more to kill themselves just a few nights later. My mind reels. That’s the situation in Attawapiscat, an aboriginal community about halfway up the western shore of James Bay. A few years ago, Attawapiscat made national headlines when former chief Theresa Spence held a hunger strike near the parliament building in Ottawa. Perhaps the social conditions are worse in Attawapiscat than in other reserves; perhaps they’re not.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: Attawapiscat, suicide, hope

Apr

2016

Five dollars a year keeps girls in school

Author: Jim Taylor

Everyone looks for “tipping points” -- the place in a social structure where the smallest input will have the greatest effect. Malcolm Gladwell popularized the term with his 2000 book by that name. Tipping points can be, and often are, little things overlooked by people obsessed with the bigger picture. In New York, apparently, fixing broken windows and beautifying basketball courts started the city towards renewal. Polio vaccines and Rick Mercer’s mosquito nets have also captured tipping points -- small individual actions that can make a huge difference. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see the obvious.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: Uganda, girls, school

Mar

2016

Re-thinking the Resurrection

Author: Jim Taylor

This is not one of my usual columns. The newspaper which gets “first publication” rights is not publishing today, Easter Sunday. That leaves me free to muse about Easter, in general. Easter, as seen by the secular world, is about bunnies and eggs. And chocolate. And spring in the northern hemisphere. And did I mention chocolate? But in the Christian church, it’s about The Resurrection (with capital letters). When I was much younger, the Rev. Jim Campbell invited his congregation to submit topics they wanted him to preach about. My note said, “Resurrection -- I’d love to see how you handle it!” I knew that Jim was too honest a minister to simply repeat conventional platitudes. He didn’t disappoint me.

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: resurrection, Easter

Mar

2016

A eulogy for disappearing trees

Author: Jim Taylor

I went for a walk in the wood last weekend. But the woods weren’t there anymore. I hadn’t been on that network of trails since autumn rains and winter snows began. When the snow melted, I headed back to my favourite hillsides. The gravel road leading to the trailhead was gone. “Closed,” a sign said. The hillside slopes looked like a testbed for a Mars probe -- not a living thing left anywhere. The developer is expanding his subdivision. Okay, I accept that he has a legal right to do so. I also accept that a municipality cannot collect taxes from trees. But why this obsession with eliminating everything green?

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Categories: Sharp Edges

Tags: eulogy, trees, green

Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

Mass media fail to explore religious motives

Aboriginal suicides based on loss of hope

Five dollars a year keeps girls in school

Re-thinking the Resurrection

A eulogy for disappearing trees

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