Between Heaven and Earth: Soul-searching for a New Year

Patrick Gossage • December 28, 2023

These days many Canadians are soul-searching, anxious about wars that don’t feel so far away, people dying daily, hate, political polarization and worry of those among us who are financially unstable, unable to pay bills or feed their families. At this time of year, many of us are in a kind of limbo, a confusing space between the heaven of seasonal family love, abundance and gifts and an earth that seems horribly dark and foreboding. For Christians, the celebrations of the humble birth of a prophet whose arrival was going to change the world, the angel’s announcement of the event “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” seem like a hopeless wish. 

We are left with wondering if we can still eke some optimism out of holidays that were originally “holy-days”. It seems a simple solution, but why don’t we consider preparing for a new year where every one of us is actually contributing to an improved society? Making goodwill a real part of our lives? We may not be able to contribute to solving the war in Ukraine or the Israel-Hamas conflict, but we can ensure that our own communities build bridges of understanding between Jews and Palestinian supporters, that we support new Ukrainian immigrants fleeing the war, and that we find the spiritual support wherever we can to inspire us to kindness and service to our fellow Canadians. 

Having a religious belief helps. Studies over the years demonstrate that people with religious convictions are more philanthropic and more involved in helping the disadvantaged. Christian or not, are we up for challenges that are actually achievable? 


It is the ongoing evidence of ordinary Canadians acting out their concerns for those less fortunate that should give us the kind of hope that infuses the experience of Christmas for believers. Giving is evidenced everywhere in the GTA and across Canada. Since homelessness and hunger top our major community concerns, our generosity and volunteerism often center around feeding the hungry. 


For example, CBC did a great job of covering a very innovative program at restaurants in Kentville, NS . Patrons are encouraged to join the pay forward meal program by paying for a meal and the receipt is pinned on the window and can be exchanged by anyone picking it up. Hundreds of meals have been given to the mostly homeless people. A great program to emulate anywhere. 


North of Toronto, the local online newspaper Newmarket Today continued its fifth annual tradition of marking the giving season by celebrating Newmarket's Community Angels — the people whose kindness, compassion and community spirit help make the town a good one to live in. This time it was a remarkably active Patricia Hawke who despite a long-term disability, has helped organize the annual fundraising holiday dinner for the Ladies Supper Club, and maintained regular volunteer shifts for the Newmarket Food Pantry, Rose of Sharon and Community Living. 


Speaking of volunteers, it takes over 70 to make sandwiches, prepare and serve hundreds of the homeless and needy weekdays for coffee, breakfast and lunch at the “Common Table” at the Church of the Redeemer on Bloor Street in Toronto. They have gone above and beyond to serve people experiencing homelessness and twice a week send out carts with sandwiches to serve those people where they need it most.

The Star did an inspiring story of Edmonton’s Kora-Lee Vidal, who was a victim of domestic violence who has experienced homelessness and now gives back as only someone who has been there can. She fills her car with donations and distributes it to those in need. In 2021 she helped a man living behind a dumpster from the cold by giving him a jacket pillow and blanket. Her act of kindness garnered her video 2 million views. 

Charity Intelligence is a Toronto based research firm that ranks charities by their impact and return of a donor’s investment. In its top ten last year we find a food bank, the Cambridge Food Bank. CFB distributes over 2,500 emergency food hampers each month. In 2022, CFB helped to distribute 1,087,175 pounds of food. It also provided 31,932 meals. For clients in immediate need of food, CFB’s Community Pantry program offers emergency food hampers with a five-day supply of food, provided up to 12 times per year. The Mobile Food Market sells vegetables and fruits at affordable prices and has received almost 8,000 visits. Like many food banks, CFB also runs community gardens to grow fresh, organic produce. It is efficient in terms of overhead – for every dollar donated to the charity, 92 cents go to the cause. Donations hard at work.


The real Christmas story does inspire generosity and volunteerism, but also has a strange way of seeping into popular culture even as church attendance declines. Carols and Christmas hymns are backgrounds in manly stores and malls, but perhaps the most impactful is offered in the ever-popular 1965 “A Charlie Brown Christmas."  My former priest in King City used the story in her Christmas eve sermon. “What always brings me back into the Spirit of Christmas is Linus from Charlie Brown. A Charlie Brown Christmas brings me back into the actual spiritual spirit of Christmas. There’s a part when everyone is bickering about the Christmas play and Charlie Brown throws his hands up and yells ‘isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?’ and Linus says, “sure, I can tell you… then he goes to the center of the stage and reads from the Gospel of Luke. He tells the story of Jesus’ birth. When Linus quotes St. Luke: “and the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not: for, behold , I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,’ he lets go of his security blanket, the one he never ever lets go of…because there is something about the angel’s proclamation that gave him the courage to stand alone, without fear, without the need for security, to proclaim to others that Jesus’ birth was a moment of great joy before finally picking up his blanket again and saying to Charlie Brown ‘that’s what Christmas is all about.’ Charles Schulz’s producers were convinced that putting the Bible on TV would be a disaster. It was not.”



I believe hope resides in the good we do for others, and as Mayor Olivia Chow insists - in our working together for a better future for all. The true worth of a country, someone once said, is not in its wealth but in the way it treats the least fortunate in its communities. By this measure, if you look around, we are not doing so badly. Anyone who works for a charity or not-for-profit will tell you that if you ask for help or funds where there is a real need help is always forthcoming. We are generous people. This is what we should ponder on as we end the holy-days and embrace a new year. 

Patrick Gossage Insider Political Views

Well-meaning Assault Weapons Ban and Buyback victim of poor timing and major opposition

By Patrick Gossage • April 14, 2026
In contrast to US inaction after almost weekly mass killings, it took one horrible shooting rampage at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, in 1980, to start the drive for public policy changes around gun control. But years delays between the mass shooting outrage and actual policy to rid the country of assault rifles doomed the eventual gun buyback program. The polytechnique horror was huge news in our relatively massacre-free nation. That December day, 25-year-old Marc Lépine stalked the hallways and classrooms of the École Polytechnique de Montréal with a semi-automatic rifle and murdered 14 women and injured another 13 people before killing himself. A year later, the Coalition for Gun Control was formed to push for stricter gun laws, led by survivors of the Montreal massacre. Later that year, the federal government passed Bill C-17, which imposed safety training and a mandatory waiting period to get a firearms licence-- not an effective means of controlling automatic rifles. Much later, in1996, Parliament passed the Firearms Act, Bill C-68, driven in part by a push for stricter gun laws following the Montreal massacre. The act created a national firearms registry and imposed new rules for obtaining a gun licence, including background checks. The former Conservative government, under prime minister Stephen Harper, abolished the long-gun registry, which it said placed an unnecessary burden on law-abiding gun owners. Quebec subsequently created its own provincial registry to replace it. It took another horrific killing nine years later in Nova Scotia to force Ottawa to take real action on miliary-style guns. On April 18 and 19, 2020, 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman committed multiple shootings and set fires at 16 locations, killing 22 people before he was killed by the RCMP. On May 1, 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, following through on a 2019 campaign promise, announced an immediate ban on some 1,500 makes and models of assault weapons.. The Canadian government sought to follow New Zealand's lead when at the same time it announced the ban it promised a plan to force gun owners to surrender military-style firearms. But while New Zealand acted quickly, in 2019, Ottawa only launched a long awaited buyback program in 2026. In contrast, the government of then New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda announced its firearms buyback program shortly after a white supremacist killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch in March, 2019. In order to move quickly, New Zealand set up mobile units where firearm owners could get refunds in exchange for their firearms. They worked hard to get co-operation from gun owners. Meanwhile, here, the firearms industry and individual gun owners vigorously opposed the project, and it was delayed for years. The program was finally initiated this year with little of the sense of urgency it could have had right after the Nova Scotia killings. It has not been going well. In April, the federal public safety minister's office said more than 67,000 assault-style firearms have been declared by 37,869 firearm owners across Canada. That's just under half of the 136,000 firearms the government had budgeted for when it set aside aside $248.6 million for the program. The precise number of banned firearms in Canada is unknown due to the end of the long-gun registry in 2012. There are other deeper problems. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have indicated they will not assist with the program, meaning police are not co-operating as in New Zealand. Conservative MPs and firearm owners say the buyback is a wasteful exercise that targets law-abiding citizens. The original gun-control advocacy group, PolySeSouvient, blames “weak political leadership” for what it calls “poor participation” in the compensation program. It looks like Ottawa - to put it mildly - has blown the opportunity to really reduce the number of people-killing guns in this country.

Two Opposites – Mark Carney and Donald Trump

By Patrick Gossage • March 12, 2026
One of the major differences between these two men is that Carney understands the value of well-thought-out strategy, abundantly clear in his Davos speech, which laid out one for middle powers to deal with the end of a rules-based international order and the rise of hegemony. Trump's lack of strategic understanding is clear in his bumbling attempts to justify the billion-dollar-a-day Iran war. His overall tactic of “flooding the zone” – mounting a new initiative or major announcement every day, or even several times a day to ensure press and opposition can never catch up. This tactic has served him well – confusing the world and his would-be opponents into submission under a valley of activity and harsh opinions from the leader of the world. Contrast this approach to leadership from Carney. He is systematically building a nation less dependent on US trade by travelling the world building new alliances and trading partners. And in the scare of Australia giving substance to his idea of alliances with middle powers. All laid out in the Davos speech. It is instructive to appreciate how much Trump was irritated by the Davos speech. Carney got a standing ovation; Trump’s rambling lengthy diatribe did not. He won’t soon forget being so upstaged. He surely recognized an intellectual power he could never match. Carney is a realist and pragmatic when he stated recently “We take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.” He is dealing with the world that is being reshaped by an irrational power-mad president, a world the powerful Stephen Miller said “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.” Does Carney sometimes err on the side of supporting Trump likely to ensure that critical talks on free trade and tariffs have some chance of finding a sympathetic ear? Yes; first he seemed to fully support Trump’s war with Iran. He later made his support more nuanced, saying Trump’s actions were against the rules-based international order. He now says we will not get involved unless a NATO ally is threatened. But generally, Carney is highly rational in contrast to Trump’s self-centered irrationality. Take Trump’s bizarre ill-informed letter to the Prime Minister of Norway, who had no role in deciding if he got the Nobel Peace Prize: “I no longer feel obligated to think purely of Peace (he subsequently engaged in an ever expanding war against Iran). He then reiterated his demand for “complete and Total Control, of Greenland. Thank you!”. His late-night rants, complete with caps, on social media show a mind out of control. Thay are dutifully reported on US news media and often astonish with their non sequiturs and nastiness. One of his more unpresidential quotes came as he fingered White House drapes: “I chose these myself. I always liked gold." The big question for Canadians who are more and more disillusioned with the antics of the President: could these two opposite ever sit down and do a deal that works for Canada. The two do text, and Carney has admitted that in private Trump does listen. But there is also evidence that the trade people in the White House do not like Canada, and as Trump has said, we owe our very existence to the US. And we are “difficult”. They have said that the current trade deal is not good for the US and could be trashed entirely and -deals with Mexico and Canada could be separate and the current trilateral deal may be dead.  Canada was at the brink of reducing the heavy sectoral tariffs on steel, aluminum, and lumber when Premier Ford’s unfortunate ads during the Rose Bowl that featured President Reagan speaking against the usefulness of Tariffs led To Trump suspending talks. They only recently resumed. So can our world-renowned businessman and banker hope to sit down with the unpredictable and unstable President and cut a deal? Some hope that if we extend talks, the President, weakened by the midterms, the bad economic fallout from an unpopular war, and the fragmentation of the MAGA movement may be easier to deal with. On the other hand he may badly need a “win,” bullying big concessions out of Canada and reaping so-cabled benefits from a weaker free trade deal. There is a scenario where Trump gets a black eye if Carney simply walks away with the conviction, perhaps easily shared with an increasingly nationalistic and confident Canada that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” In any case, what a decisive and challenging future we face with Canada at play. Can Carney win for Canada against his opposite by losing a deal?"
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