Blog Posts by Steve Mertl

The Post noted it's less than two blocks from a YMCA that in 2006 was pressured to install frosted windows so boys from a nearby Hasidic school would not see women exercising in form-fitting gym clothes the sect considers immodest.Members of Montreal's Hasidic Jewish community have won a victory in their simmering battle with some of their neighbours in the district of Outremont.

The Quebec Superior Court has ruled a technically "illegal" synagogue in a converted duplex home can stay, despite violating municipal zoning bylaws, the National Post reports.

The Congregation Munchas Elozer Munkas house of worship has been in the red brick building for 35 years and its use as a synagogue was well known.

In a decision issued April 18, Justice Andre Prevost dismissed the city's application to end "activities of worship and religion," there. The building may not be sanctioned as a synagogue under zoning rules, but closing it down under a "strick, rigorous and blind application of the bylaw" would create an injustice, the judge concluded, according to the Post.

“It means the individual victory for this particular synagogue, which has been harassed — and that’s the only word I can use — for close to 35 years,” Alex Werzberger,

Tootill was running for the B.C. Conservative Party in the May 14 election in the downtown riding of Vancouver-False Creek, that is until he dropped the H-bomb on Twitter.Perhaps Ian Tootill never heard of Godwin's Law.

Tootill was running for the B.C. Conservative Party in the May 14 election in the downtown riding of Vancouver-False Creek, that is until he dropped the H-bomb on Twitter.

Well, it was more of a time bomb, really. Toothill is an avid tweeter and last October, apparently in some half-forgotten exchange about bullying, he responded to a comment about the impact of Adolf Hitler's infamous Mein Kampf with this:

"Who's really to blame, Hitler or the people who acted on his words?"

The remark, reported in a Vancouver Sun article on Wednesday along with other potentially controversial tweets, brought an instant reaction from the Conservatives. You're out!

“We are a party that believes in a respectful airing of views,” Conservative leader John Cummins said in a news release, according to the Vancouver Province.

“Mr. Tootill’s statements are unacceptable and downright shameful. He has been fired as a candidate.”

Twitter, naturally, went

Griffiths suffers from multiple system atrophy, a rare degenerative neurological disease that robs victims of movement and bodily functions such as eating and bladder control.Susan Griffiths kept her appointment with death on Thursday.

The 72-year-old Winnipeg woman who went to Zurich, Switzerland to seek final relief from a horrifying disease that was slowly enveloping her like a shroud, died after drinking a drug cocktail prescribed by a Swiss doctor under the country's guidelines for assisted suicide, CBC News said..

Griffiths suffered from multiple system atrophy, a rare degenerative neurological disease that robs victims of movement and bodily functions such as eating and bladder control. The disease mainly strikes men and women in their fifties. The cause is unknown and there is no cure, no treatment even to delay its progress.

It made life increasingly hard to bear, Griffiths told CBC News. She used a wheelchair much of the time and had trouble eating because the muscles in her mouth are weakening. She was in constant pain.

"It hurts to wear my clothes," she said. "Against my skin, wherever it touches me, it hurts."

Griffiths did not want to ride her

Ginette Lamarche in Gaza (Radio Canada)Another CBC Middle East correspondent has come under the critical microscope of a pro-Israel group that implies she's guilty of biased reporting about the Jewish state.

The latest target is Ginette Lamarche of Radio-Canada, the public broadcaster's French-language service, according to the National Post.

A group called Honest Reporting Canada got Radio-Canada to issue a correction this week to an April 7 story Lamarche filed earlier this month that termed Israel's 2010 interception and boarding of a blockade-running Turkish ship as an "attack." An international review later deemed Israel's action legitimate.

Lamarche's story was about Israel's recent apology to Turkey for the incident, which resulted in the deaths of eight Turkish activists aboard the M/V Mavi Marmara.

According to Honest Reporting Canada, Radio-Canada has had to correct several previous reports by Lamarche and Radio-Canada's ombudsman, Pierre Tourangeau, had upheld 10 complaints against the reporter since the fall of

Gordon Stuckless is facing 11 more charges after two more alleged victims came forward to Toronto police. The last living scumbag who was part of the notorious Maple Leaf Gardens child-sex ring could be spending the rest of his ugly life in court or prison.

Gordon Stuckless, 64, was hit with another batch of sex charges this week, including one rare count of buggery, the National Post reports.

It brings to 40 the number of new charges related to his activities as an equipment manager at the old Gardens decades ago, resulting from more of his victims coming forward.

There is, of course, a presumption of innocence in these new charges, even for someone like Stuckless. But the fact he's a loathsome child predator is undeniable.

Stuckless was convicted in 1997 of indecent and sexual assault involving 24 boys from the late 1960s to 1988. The Toronto Star noted there were at least 572 separate incidents of molestation of young boys he'd befriended.

[ Related: Stuckless arrested on new sex assault charges ]

Stuckless, along with Gardens usher John Paul Roby and equipment manager George Hannah, lured

I wonder if the captains got out and exchanged insurance information.

Someone will have some explaining to do after a massive U.S. factory-fishing ship being towed out of Esquimalt harbour near Victoria somehow rammed a Royal Canadian Navy frigate docked at the adjacent naval base. Six people were hurt.

The HMCS Winnipeg had just completed an extensive refit and systems upgrade, when the 90-metre-long American Dynasty T-boned her near the bow Tuesday morning, The Canadian Press reported.

The huge trawler remained wedged in the warship's side, looming over the low-slung frigate, all day before being separated. Photos show a big bite taken out of the fishing vessel's bow.

Witnesses on a nearby boat recorded the accident on video.

[ Related: Trawler and navy frigate finally separated after collision in B.C. harbour ]

The Seattle-based Dynasty was being towed to the harbour's repair dock for regular maintenance and repairs when something went wrong, the Victoria Times Colonist reported.

"They

For a country that admits an average 250,000 newcomers each year, according to department stats, that adds up to a pretty long line.The Conservative government has trumpeted its 40-per-cent reduction in pending immigration applications but now we're hearing those who do come here and want to become citizens are also facing a longer wait.

CBC News reports almost 350,000 permanent residents of Canada are waiting to swear their oath of allegiance, according Citizenship and Immigration Canada statistics from last September. That compares with just under 190,000 in 2007, the year after the Conservatives took power.

For a country that admits an average 250,000 newcomers each year, according to department stats, that adds up to a pretty long line. The department says about 160,000 immigrants are granted citizenship each year at 1,900 ceremonies across Canada. So you can see where this is headed.

According to CBC News, the problem seems to be an increase in the length of time it takes to process "routine" applications. In 2008, applications took 12 to 15 months to pass through the system, according to department data cited

Is illegal killing of wild animals to harvest parts for black-market sales behind the death and decapitation of four West Coast sea lions?

Federal Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) officials are investigating the recent discovery of a headless Stellar sea lion washed up on a beach near Campbell River, on Vancouver Island.

"We’ve got another situation of a sea lion that’s died [and] that’s had its body parts removed, head in this case," DFO spokesman Paul Cottrell told CBC News.

It's the fourth such incident on Vancouver Island since late November. Three of the dead and mutiliated animals, apparently shot, were found in the Campbell River area, on the island's east coast, and a fourth further south near Comox, the Campbell River Mirror reported.

“We’re very concerned – we want to find out who’s doing this and put a stop to it,” Paul Cottrell, DFO's marine mammal co-ordinator, told the Mirror.

Sea lions can grow to more than 10 feet long and weigh more than a ton, so decapitating one would not