My Sun Media colleague Andre Fortin snapped some great pictures of the March for Life. I think they tell a story on their own.
Posts Tagged ‘Ottawa’
The March for Life in photos
Tags: March for Life 2013, Ottawa, pro-life
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VIDEO: Today’s theme song for Ottawa – Town Called Malice
Tags: Ottawa, politics, town called malice
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Ottawa Police have some tough questions to answer….With important update
St. George & St. Anthony Coptic Orthodox Church in Ottawa
UPDATE: This update is important enough to bump to the top.
I just spoke with Father Mikhail Fam from St. George and St. Anthony’s he tells me that the decision to scale back public Christmas celebrations has nothing to do with any security threat and everything to do with solemnly mourning the victims of the bombing in Egypt.
“What we have said is that in view of what happened in Egypt last week we will focus on prayers,” Fr. Mikhail told me on the phone this morning.
Asked directly if Ottawa or any other police service advised scaling back due to security concerns and he was blunt.
“No, never has this happened.”
Mass will still be celebrated tonight for the Orthodox Christmas eve.
Over to you CBC to explain what happened.
Here is the original post
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Just hours after filing a story on the lengths that Ottawa Police and the RCMP went to to apologize and allay fears of Ottawa Muslims, comes a disturbing story that appears to say those same police services are telling Christians they won’t protect them from an Islamic threat.
The key word for now is appears but answers will be demanded on Thursday.
If CBC’s story about Coptic Christians in Ottawa is correct, then Ottawa Police and the RCMP’s A Division have some serious questions to answer. Here’s what the CBC had late Wednesday about the state of Christmas celebrations this week for Coptic Orthodox Christians.
Coptic Christians in Ottawa are trimming their public Christmas celebration plans on the advice of police concerned about the safety of parishioners after the New Year’s Day bombing at a Coptic church in Egypt.
The bombing in Egypt killed 21 and injured close to 100 people. Couple that with the al-Qaida internet list targeting up to 100 Canadian Copts and you can see why some people would be concerned about security.
But this is Canada, not Egypt and we should be able to protect some Christmas celebrations.
I spoke with people who attended the Ottawa memorial service for the bombing victims held at St. George and St. Anthony Church in the city’s east end and there are conflicting stories.
What is agreed on is that Mass will be celebrated on Thursday, the Orthodox Christmas Eve, but receptions, meals and other celebrations are cancelled. The reasons for the cancellation are what appear to be up in the air.
Were these events cancelled because the parish is in mourning over the bombing as some have suggested or is it because police – either Ottawa Police or the RCMP’s A Division, the one responsible for the National Capital Region – advised the Coptic churches in Ottawa to scale back celebrations because of the threat of violence.
If CBC is wrong then they will have to correct and back away from their story which has already been corrected from an earlier version which claimed Christmas was cancelled. If CBC is right then police officials in Ottawa need to explain what happened and fix it.
There is no reason that police in Canada’s capital city cannot protect two Christian churches from terrorist wing-nuts intent on doing harm. And let’s not mince words on who these terrorist wing-nuts are, they are Islamic radicals not Presbyterians intent on forcing Copts to accept the dogma of Sola Scriptura.
The fact that close to 100 Copts were identified on a website for assassination with some personal information included tells us that some of these Islamic radicals are in Canada already and feeding details back to headquarters. That should be reason enough to kick security into high gear.
Both police services, the Mounties and the city, need to be upfront and open on Thursday. Did they advise the churches to cut back celebrations? It won’t do to have the police say that they did not make any decisions, we need to know what they advised the churches. We know that in the end the decision is up to the priest and local leaders but if the police show up and say, “Sorry we can’t protect you” then it sways your answer.
As they say in television, stay tuned…..
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Tags: Christmas, Coptic, Copts, Islamic, Muslim, Ottawa, police, radical, RCMP terrorist
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