Child of Adoption

I’m a child of adoption. I was adopted by my family a couple weeks after my birth in 1983. In 1983, unborn babies still had legal recognition of their Section 7 Charter Rights to life and security of the person. I don’t have enough information about the circumstances surrounding my birth to say whether I would or wouldn’t have been aborted had the procedure been legal, but I’m glad I’ve always lived in a country where I had the right to life, even when I was still being knit together in my mother’s womb. R. v. Morgentaler changed all that, but that didn’t happen until 1988. I have very vague memories of going with my parents to abortion protests when that case was being debated in the Supreme Court, so you could say I’m a child of this issue. This is my issue. I am pro-life.

I’m part of the Redeemer Pro-Life Club. We’re hosting a movie night at the Rec Centre on March 2 at 9:30 PM, where we’ll be showing Juno, an Oscar award winning drama about a unique teenage mother who makes the right decision about her unborn child. In the fall, the club organized Life Chain, an annual North-America wide event where pro-lifers gather in silence to pray for the nation and an end to abortion. I didn’t make it out to that one because I was standing in a Life Chain in front of McMaster Hospital, but I heard it was a success. In the future, we’ll be hosting another movie, this time a documentary called Blood Money, which explores some of the inconvenient facts behind the abortion industry. It’s a good club, we have productive meetings and I think we’re doing really well, because despite the fact that most Redeemer students are probably default pro-lifers, it’s important for all of us to be educated on the issue, and I think that’s something the Pro-Life Club does very well.

The timing of this post is not a coincidence. Recently, a couple of major newspapers have been covering an investigation into Redeemer’s policies surrounding academic freedom. Some of the comments on the editorial pages and web articles about this investigation highlight the concerns of some citizens that Redeemer is a sanctimonious bubble of indoctrination that suppresses dissenting thought. It isn’t, but that’s another article. What we are, however, is an institution that favours one side of this issue. We don’t have a pro-choice club. In the past, we’ve had openly pro-choice speakers such as Stephen Lewis come to the campus. We’ve had debates and dialogue about the issue, and will almost certainly continue to do so. The discussion unlikely to change the institution’s view on the issue or result in a pro-choice club being chartered here, but we're up front about that.

How does our policy stack up with those of other universities? Carleton University’s student association recently revoked the campus pro-life group's club status. Protesters there were arrested after attempts to set up a pro-life display on campus. The Universities of Calgary, Victoria and Guelph and McGill have all taken the similar measure of stripping their pro-life group of its charter. Also at McGill, a pro-life speaker named Jose Ruba was prevented from speaking by disruptive protestors who chanted, sang, and blocked the stage, finally resulting in the arrest of two demonstrators. All around this country, pro-life dissent is being forcibly silenced arguably because pro-choice groups aren't interested in having the same dialogue that we entertain here.

At Redeemer, nobody gets arrested or shouted off campus for having the wrong opinion. Maybe you could make the argument that we suppress pro-choice opinion. As a Christian institution, there’s a small extent to which we probably do, but we stand in stark contrast to some of Canada’s other institutions in one way: we’re honest about it. We're honest about who we are and what we believe, and we're not scared of a little Socratic dialogue.

Snow Day

On February 2, 2011, Redeemer experienced its first snow day for the 2010-2011 school year. Usually, the first thing that crosses a person’s mind when they hear about a university having a snow day is, “Why have a snow day when so many students live on campus?” It’s true. Most students could just bundle up and trudge through the knee-deep snow to get to their classes, but there are three other reasons for having a snow day: 1) many professors and staff members can’t get to the school 2) commuter students don’t want to drive on dangerous roads 3) snow days make every university student happy.

Some students enjoy snow days because it gives them time to work on essays, study for midterms, catch up on sleep, or postpone the test that was scheduled for that day. Other students love snow days because of all the free time. Me, I tend to fall into the “free-time” category. One of the first things my dorm mate and I did on that snow day was play in the snow. It was then that we learned that the area around our dorm has many snow drifts; some as deep as our thighs. Then we heard that some students had made a tunnel in one of the giant snow drifts. That tunnel was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Now, I’m not one for small spaces, but crawling through a snow tunnel is definitely worth it. In fact, my friends and I were so inspired we decided to make our own tunnel. It didn’t turn out as well as we’d hoped, but we had a great time trying to dig it. All in all, that snow day was a much needed break from school and a welcome distraction.

Good People To Work For

I have some news. There's opportunities to do a lot of fun things on this campus. You'll find many of them documented in this blog, and of course there's many more that we haven't yet written about. However, the dominating activity in the life of any responsible university student (and even most of the irresponsible ones) is attending class. Most university advisers will readily tell you that you're going to have to commit at least 40 hours a week to reading and homework if you hope to be successful in post secondary education. 40 hours is a full time job. That's why those extra-curricular activities we write about are referred to as such, because they're extras, indulged in by those of us whose job is to go to class, read books, and learn about the world. Why is choosing this institution for four years of full time work (that's what it is, it's your job) a good decision? Well, going on what I've experienced so far, our professors know their subjects through and through.

For example, the history department has Dr. Kevin Flatt, a younger instructor whose lecture style leaves room for discussion of some of the funnier points of history, like the revolutionary Protestant act of disobedience that would later become known as The Sausage Incident of 1522, or the life and times of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDrunkard. While keeping his lectures humorous and engaging, Flatt manages to provide information that fits into a meaningful modern context, bringing history to life and giving it relevance today.

Then there's Dr. Darren Brouwer, a chemistry professor. Science can be a delicate area for Christians to practice in. Lean too far one way, and you're likely to be ostracized by your fellow scientists, who as a community have adopted a decidedly secular worldview in their studies. Lean too far the other way, and you've adopted that view yourself. When I took chemistry with professor Brouwer, I watched him walk that fine line between those two extremes and produce the most honest presentations of scientific facts I could have hoped for.

There are more outstanding professors. I'll set aside some blog space, someday, to document the outstanding performances of professors Klassen, Boersema, Smid, Koyzis, and the rest. They've all done their part at providing me with a comprehensive, up to date educational experience. If this is my job, I couldn't ask for better bosses. I don't know why I'm here or what I'll be doing when I'm done. My professors can't teach me that, I have to get that from God. But maybe that's what my job actually is: learning what I need to know for whatever it is God has for me next. The professors here are the right people to teach me just that.