Category Opinion

What to do with all our stuff

Recently, I was in the car with one of my twins and we were discussing how easy it is to accumulate too much stuff. We’d just had a conversation with a neighbour who mentioned that his sibling had moved into…

From the JI archives … education

Not surprisingly – “People of the Book,” and all – education is an always-relevant topic that has been covered in the Jewish Independent / Jewish Western Bulletin. The paper seems to have steered clear of editorially supporting any particular Jewish…

An ever-changing city

Summer is a time when our routines are happily disrupted. Kids are out of school and many of us take time off from work to enjoy the hometown that draws tourists from around the world. Maybe we wander off the…

Love learning, stay curious

My household’s really into learning. It doesn’t stop during the summer, when there’s no school. Even on vacations, we’re always trying to nurture our kids’ curiosity and feed our own.  When our kids were in preschool, and just toilet-trained, we took…

Flying through our life

It is sunny today. (Some other today!) I am on my balcony watching birds fly. The sky is blue everywhere, unharried by even a wisp of cloud. There are sailboats on the water and there is snow on the mountaintops.…

From the JI archives … BC

It is sometimes hard to look back over the pages of the Jewish Independent and its predecessor, the Jewish Western Bulletin, knowing what has happened since the articles were published. From the 1933 optimism that there was hope for German…

An uplifting moment

Vancouver hosted the largest convention in the city’s history over the weekend. About 50,000 members of Alcoholics Anonymous descended on the convention centre and BC Place stadium. Among the throngs was a booth representing Jewish Addiction Community Services – JACS…

Our Jewish-Canadian identity

Before Passover, a relative of ours in New Jersey asked if we would have problems getting Manischewitz wine. I told her all would be fine. Even though US alcohol had been taken off Manitoba’s shelves, we would just buy other…

Life amid 12-Day War

photo - Several Iranian missile barrages targeted residential areas in Ramat Gan and other areas of Israel

Several Iranian missile barrages targeted residential areas in Ramat Gan and other areas of Israel. (photo by Yoram Sorek / Wikimedia Commons) A missile alert blared! Early Friday morning, like 2 a.m. early, we ran into our saferoom, seemingly to…

From the JI archives … yum

While the odd recipe or food-related article can be found in the Jewish Western Bulletin even before it became the Bulletin, regular food columns or special sections seemed to have become a part of the paper under Sam and Mona…