Canada

About 700 women die each year in the U.S. as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications.¹ This rate of pregnancy-related death is higher in the United States than the rates in other industrialized nations.

But when the time came for her to leave the community, she didn’t want to leave. Not only did she not want to deliver alone far from her community, but she also had 5 young children that she didn’t want to leave behind. I remember the daily stress of worrying that she would deliver the babies before leaving the community.

This is the first post in Pro-Mama, a 4-part series reflecting on God's gift of life in the first 1000 days of a baby's life--from conception to age 2.

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Eager “hellos” rang in my ears as I greeted my Fulani friends. I had been absent for over a year during which I gave birth to my third child, a daughter, with a midwife in a birthing center.

The Coastal Link pipeline and the planned Kitimat LNG terminal was heralded as the biggest private sector investment in the history of Canada. Prime Minister Trudeau and B.C. Premier Horgan celebrated this investment milestone in a major news conference in October 2018 as an example of getting resource and economic development right - in collaboration with resource and pipeline companies and First Nations along the route.   

Last week, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested peaceful participants of a blockade of a road on traditional Wet'suwet'en nation  territory, based on an injunction order that was issued last month to TransCanada Pipelines. The Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs were blocking access to the land because they have not given their consent to the natural gas pipeline, or two other proposed pipelines coming through their lands. The land is unceded by the Wetsu’wet’en.

I’m an artist and I love painting narrative-laden surreal landscapes.

The image of the sperm whale is a recurring motif in my artwork. Its mysterious qualities and daily practices fascinate me. Its survival is dependant on holding its breath and diving very deep, almost three thousand feet below the ocean's surface, to wrestle the giant squid: its sustenance.

One of the most important tools that advocates have up their sleeves is storytelling. Stories have the ability to inform, inspire, and incite action.

I’m always wrestling with the ethical questions around storytelling.

Whenever I speak or write about human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation, I rely on stories that try to capture all three of these elements:

The following story is a real account of what happened, although for the safety of those involved we have chosen not to use their names. The story can also be found in Spanish below the English version, since the stories were first shared with us in Spanish by the Costa Rican man mentioned in them.

Advent: Middle English, borrowed from Medieval Latin adventus, going back to Latin, "arrival, appearance"

Refugee claimants (people who have fled their countries of origin to make a refugee claim, and do not yet have refugee status) have been arriving in Canada, via plane, boat, train, long before the topic of border crossings was making headlines.

We’ve been hearing a lot of calls for civility recently. Maybe you have too.

People are rightly concerned about the toxicity of our current cultural climate(s). (You too, Canada!) There’s so little space these days for carefully reasoned, nuanced arguments. Each side of the political spectrum seems to have their own vocabulary, and people can be written off as “just a leftist” or “just a right-winger” (or more damning words) simply by using one word over another. Lines have been drawn in the sand, and people are choosing their sides.