Some Essays by Douglas Tennant

Take me out to the ball game June 2018 Published in the North Renfrew Times - Deep River ON In case you haven’t noticed there is an amazing resurgence of interest in all things baseball in North Renfrew. While it hasn’t yet reached the fever pitch of the good old days of the North Renfrew Senior Baseball league in the 1950s to 70s, when the Deep River Rockets and the Chalk River Railroaders were active in that league, there is a great deal of baseball being played in the area. Indeed, there are tens and tens of young people, across a wide age spectrum, who are actually, get this, outside playing with other kids on ball diamonds in Deep River and Chalk River. And none of them have their noses stuck to a hand held screen or smart phone. These recreational facilities (baseball and soccer) are funded through the Deep River and Laurentian Hill, and Petawawa recreation organisations, examples of your tax dollars at work in North Renfrew. But more importantly, they are led and coor...

Day tripping in the Valley July 4, 2018 Published in the North Renfrew Times – Deep River ON School is out, Canada Day was celebrated appropriately throughout North Renfrew and the heat is on! All that and more means summer is here! There are many North Renfrew and Ottawa Valley based events scheduled throughout the summer. Don’t spend your hard earned money in the excited states of America, spend your cash locally to employ local entrepreneurs, students and your neighbours and friends. Without spending a lot of cash and to experience something interesting for the whole family, try day tripping in the Valley! It’s local, full of interesting things to do and really economical. Have fun, learn about your local natural and cultural history and you get to sleep in your own bed each night. Go to a local baseball game, order a pizza for a picnic at a local park with your kids. Consider volunteering for Summerfest. Go for a canoe on Corey Lake. Hike the Brent Crater Trail or...

Douglas Tennant B.Sc., B.A., CMMIII Professor Doris Jakobsh RS 202 – Sikhism: Origin and Development                  Friday March 16, 2012 Critical Analysis of “Folk Practices in Punjab” A critical analysis of the article Folk Practices in Punjab is presented in this essay. Given the assortment of folk practices which I have been exposed to and made aware of from my sleepy little northern Ontario village of 800 souls it is intriguing to read about the much more diverse folk practices elucidated by Bhatti and which are explained as “challeng[ing one’s] urbanized sense and confuses the ethnographic observer regardless of …[their]…nationality, ethnicity, or other acquired positionality” (2004, 139). At first read, the article could be misunderstood as a child like ‘bunnies & lights’ story book. However, after a couple of double takes and drilling down one can appreciate that it is an ...

Introduction to Judaism RS#210 Dr. Menachem Feuer November 30, 2010 By Douglas Tennant The Wandering Jews                         That the Jews are wanderers, and in more ways than one, is indisputable. From the earliest of times Abram, wandered his way from Ur and “settled in Canaan some time between the twentieth and nineteenth centuries BCE” (Armstrong 11). Moses and the Israelites ‘wandered’ in the desert for 40 years (Good Exodus 16:35) and the great exiles of 587 BCE and 135 CE (Scheindlin 22, 54) were the genesis of legendary diasporic wanderings.  After these significant exiles, other forced mass migrations and various expulsions (151), the evolution of a large segment of the Jews into the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities at least brought them some geographic stability in eastern and western Europe. Even during these way sta...

Introduction to Judaism RS#210 Dr. Menachem Feuer October 19, 2010 Great Things Jewish Come Out of a Crisis: Abraham to Medieval Times             The faith of the Jewish people has survived, indeed thrived at times, for centuries despite being faced by one crisis or another. Be it a pivotal personal crisis based upon obedience to God, societal enslavement, a function of conquest and exile, or the overshadowing effects of new religions the dynamic and resilient nature of Judaism has allowed great things Jewish to be born out of adversity. Selected specific crises will be examined showing how they arose, how the crisis was dealt with and the concomitant ‘great thing Jewish’ that resulted.             That Judaism has had a significant, if not profound and formative impact, on and around the world can almost be a given understanding. But while the...

Douglas Charles Tennant B.Sc., B.A., CMMIII, Instructor:  Marybeth White RS 121 – Evil, Question #3.  Saturday November 28, 2009 Liberation Theology in Mott Haven Gustavo Gutierrez says the first act in a theology of liberation is the preferential option for the poor. This means one takes the perspective of the poor seriously in both theory and actions (Module 5, section c4). As one takes the side of the poor, an upward based and  liberating theology will be gathered through shared experiences with them, rather than the traditional dominant and oppressive theology (i.e. Ideology) of acquiescence being shoved down from above (Module 5, section c6, c7). Several people from Jonathan Kozol’s study of Mott Haven will be presented showing that they have chosen to be in community with the poor and struggle against a seemingly overwhelming tide of social evil (Kozol 1995 164). In Amazing Grace, Kozol documents incredible social sin/evil through racial injustice an...