I gave up smoking in 1978 when I became a Christian. Or, rather, God gave it up on my behalf. Before that, I smoked cigarettes – Gauloises were my favourite – a pipe and cigars. All inhaled. On numerous occasions I tried to give them up, to no avail.

I started smoking in university in my existentialist phase: life is meaningless, I decided. Smoking was something to do and trying to give it up gave one a purpose, so why not start. I was right to some extent: trying to give it up did give me a purpose; nevertheless, it was an exercise in futility because I couldn’t manage it.

When I became a Christian, one of my first prayers was to give up smoking. The day after, I woke up a non-smoker: I didn’t want to smoke and still don’t.

That preamble is a longwinded way of saying that I think smoking as a pastime is a bad idea. Still, the following is especially silly:

It is the opening screen to the latest Indiana Jones film.

In most films today we are subjected, without notice, to smooching lesbians, actors and actresses frolicking unclothed in bed, blood, gore, random violence, and the imbibing of unspecified drugs though needles, fumes and inhalation. Almost no film is released without a token homosexual, lesbian, bisexual or sadomasochist. But we simply have to be warned about smoking – tobacco, of course, because marijuana smoking, now legal to buy, sell and use in Canada, is completely harmless.

I think I saw just one lit cigarette in the film.

It takes a lot for Oakville to make the headlines in international news.

And in September 2022 there was, indeed, a lot on display in a local high school. A transgender teacher, who seems to want to give a new slant to the “T” in transgender, appeared on Snapchat wearing giant prosthetic breasts.

Unsurprisingly, many parents were not happy about this: there were protests, demands that the teacher be fired, and claims the teacher is sexualizing children.

The Halton School Board has been deflecting all demands that they do something about this – enforce a dress code, for example. Now, finally, the Board has come up with an answer: they can’t do anything because it would violate Canada’s Human Rights Code, it would be discriminatory and non-inclusive. And the board might get sued.

Is this all an elaborate hoax, as some think? An ingenious advertisement promoting home-schooling? Or a sign that our civilisation is flushing itself down the toilet with ever increasing vigour and enthusiasm?

Read it all here:

Many challenges face employers wanting to implement staff dress codes and chances are, should they try, the policy would fail.

That was the bottom line as Sari Taha, the Halton District School Board’s superintendent of human resources, described for trustees the legal complexities in instituting a staff dress code, at the Nov. 9 meeting of the board.

Motivating trustees to seek clarification on such a policy was the global uproar and parental outrage that followed an Oakville transgender high school teacher’s overtly sexual classroom attire. One of the strongest complaints from the community was the board’s lack of a dress code for staff.

There are major challenges the board would face in instituting a dress code: the dress code must be compliant with the Human Rights Code; and dress codes adversely impact women and other groups disproportionately, often leading to discrimination claims and rendering policies unenforceable, he said.

See below for a selection of books from the children’s section in Chapters.

I grew up with Narnia, Wind in the Willows, The Famous Five, Biggles, Winnie the Pooh and Worzel Gummidge, for which I owe an eternal debt of gratitude to my mother.

I’m so relieved I won’t be around to see the results of this: