Former Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert has accepted a five-year term as principal of the United Church’s St. Andrew’s Theological College in Saskatoon, effective July 1. He graduated from St. Andrew’s in the mid-1970s and pastored United churches in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan, and Moose Jaw before entering politics in 1986. He served as premier for six years until his NDP government was defeated in 2007. The party is scheduled to choose a new leader in June.

• The Canadian Roman Catholic relief agency Development and Peacehas contributed $600,000 for emergency food, medical aid, school supplies and trauma counseling for some of the 170,000 Sri Lankan Tamils who have left the conflicted province of Vanni in northern Sri Lanka to settle in government-run camps. A longstanding war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam flared in January when government forces seized the northern town of Kilinochchi, the Tamil Tigers’ headquarters. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been caught in the crossfire, and the United Nations estimates that 6,500 civilians have been killed since January.
• The Voice of the Martyrs has a couple of interesting posts up on the Canadian Sri Lankan protests in Toronto. When Civil Disobedience is no longer civil, along with a guide to effective civil protest.
  and Final note on Tamil protests
  
• ChristianWeek  took home three awards from the Canadian Church Press Convention in Winnipeg.
• Ontario Knights of Columbus have passed a resolution vowing to pay to bus in as many  Catholic high school students as possible to the yearly March for Life in Ottawa, so media and Parliament won’t ignore them. According to Stats Can (2001) there are  3,866,300  Roman Catholics in Ontario.
  

  “THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED,” the resolution concludes, “that to effect the much larger numbers required to get Canada’s attention, we must have every District make it a priority, in February each year, to press councils throughout Ontario to partner with their area parishes on this issue.”

  The Knights have resolved to accomplish the goal of boosting the numbers at the march through several means, including encouraging pastors, CWLs, and KofC members to strongly support the march.

  In their most concrete commitment, however, the Knights resolved to subsidize local bus trips to the march as well as bus trips from high schools throughout Ontario.

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