TORONTO – Easter Week is the holiest week of the year for practicing Christians and, one might venture with some legitimacy, Catholic Christians in particular. Good Friday, preceding Easter Sunday, is, even by lapsed Catholics, the most important day of the year for their religion. It seems to have slipped by the attention of the Prime Minister and his staff – nary a discernable message from the office of he who says is Catholic. Wonder why? 

He missed a golden opportunity to draw attention to his ballyhooed respect for religious equality. Must have something to do with the “perception” that Catholics and Christians are a minority in Canada, despite the findings of Census 2021. His loss for resisting the obvious.

Speaking of the obvious… The CBC, “Canada’s” go to medium to learn about Canada (choke, choke…) never misses an opportunity to dump on Catholicism and Catholics. On the weekend it reported that the Pope “skipped” Good Friday events citing ill-health. Ha, Ha, Ha… Anyone familiar with coaching or teaching will tell you the word “skipped” is associated with a deliberate flouting of the rules tantamount to dissing convention and obligation. Then again, what can one expect of a medium that still thinks a special papal visit to Canada in 2022 to render apologies to the country’s First Nations should always be preceded or followed by the question “but, is it enough?”

How about failing to help Canadians understand the international dynamics (tough at the best of times, I know) behind the issues in the Middle East without calling everyone either an Islamophobe or an anti-Semite? In Tel-Aviv, Israel they seem to be approaching a balance… I don’t know… if one judges from their own reporting of tens of thousands taking to the streets to object to Bibi Netanyahu’s handling of a situation that goes to the core of Israel’s reputation world-wide – one that is eroding fast.

Almost as fast as that of the organized, quasi-professional group of disrupters staging impromptu protests everywhere in the name of… well… protest movements lest they fall into disuse. Thanks to them, a ninety degree climb in police security costs can be justified in a city that once used to be known as Toronto the Good.

The police seemed relatively well-prepared last weekend, despite the “street apples” emitted from their steeds. Once again begging the question where they were – or whose orders were they following – when Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Toronto at Prime Minister Trudeau’s invitation. Was it he who called off the visit when those pro-Palestinians descended on the Art Gallery of Ontario?