The Alberton-Elmsdale United Sunday school in Alberton, P.E.I., has grown to about 25 to 30 children each week despite beginning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Superintendent Moira Shaw and her volunteer team have made participation flexible and welcoming: families face no attendance or worship requirements, and children can attend through a separate entrance. Congregational and financial support helps sustain the program, which aims to address a drop-off among older children by creating a youth group.

Former tenants and Ottawa activists held a public hexing at the Bank Block buildings on Sept. 26, combining pagan ritual and political theatre to protest mass evictions and the landlord's plans to sell the properties. The conflict began in 2023 with N13 eviction notices that put dozens of residents at risk of homelessness and led to confrontations and proceedings involving City Hall and the Landlord-Tenant Board. Although the buildings are now empty, the dispute helped galvanize a tenant movement. Participants burned a mock land deed and an N13 notice, which many regarded as the event's most meaningful act. The story notes that ACORN reported a 545 percent increase in N13 notices in Ottawa between 2017 and 2022, and frames the ritual as a creative response to perceived failures of political, legal and religious institutions.

Grande Cache United’s thrift store grew from monthly basement garage sales into a permanent community hub and an important source of financial support for the small church. It provides affordable household goods and clothing, particularly to newcomers, and volunteers connect people facing hardship with local support. The store brings together volunteers from different churches and countries, has contributed to local schools and Jasper wildfire relief, and helps keep the congregation going.

Maytal Kowalski argues that liberal Zionism should defend Jewish self-determination while also affirming Palestinian freedom and sovereignty. She rejects both messianic Zionism, which she associates with supremacy and territorial maximalism, and anti-Zionism, which rejects Jewish national sovereignty. The Oct. 7 attacks reaffirmed the need for Jewish sovereignty, she writes, while the ensuing Palestinian suffering showed that sovereignty cannot ensure safety if it is used to dominate or deny another people’s aspirations. She calls for a secure, democratic Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state, and says advocacy and Israeli elections can help shape that future.

Saint Luke’s United, a small Toronto congregation in an 1887 heritage building, faced mounting repair costs and financial pressures that threatened its future and its food-bank and meal programs. Support from nearby congregations helped stabilize its ministry. The church has now secured approval for a redevelopment with Kindred Works: a 48-storey mixed-use building with 440 rental units, at least 30 percent below market, while three exterior sides of the original church walls will be retained. Services and outreach will need temporary space during construction, and financing remains to be secured. Congregants expect a period of grief over the historic building but hope rental income will sustain worship and expand community programs, including support for African refugees.

Alberta’s October 19 referendum includes questions on independence and immigration restrictions, prompting sharply divided Christian responses. United Church minister John Pentland and organizer Chris Mah Poy warn that anti-immigrant politics and proposed limits on services risk scapegoating newcomers and deepening racism. Immigrant Outreach Society director Adanech Sahilie describes rising harassment and families’ fears. In contrast, Fairview Baptist Church’s Rory St. John supports independence as a way to advance a more Christian-influenced, conservative society, while pastor Tim Stephens frames separation around biblical values and limited government. Indigenous Treaty rights, which an Alberta court has said separation would violate, are also raised. Progressive faith, labour and community groups are organizing voter education and turnout, pledging to bring 16,000 to 20,000 people to the polls.

The Rover’s editors call on Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada to investigate the police riot squad after journalists William Wilson and Isaac Peltz were injured while covering a protest against an AI summit on September 16, 2026. Wilson, who was wearing press identification, was pepper-sprayed, struck while on the ground and later diagnosed with a concussion; Peltz was tear-gassed and punched. The open letter places the incident within a history of SPVM actions against journalists and allegations of racial profiling, cites previous court rulings and settlements, and says the journalists will pursue legal remedies. Dozens of media workers and other supporters co-signed the demand for an investigation and accountability.

Thousands of families in Gaza remain uncertain whether missing relatives are dead, detained, or alive. The article describes reported disappearances, people believed trapped under rubble, and the challenges of recovering and identifying remains amid limited equipment and forensic resources. Families’ accounts include unanswered inquiries to the Red Cross, while estimates from Palestinian organizations and authorities indicate thousands of missing people and people still beneath rubble. Psychologist Ronda Akram says prolonged uncertainty can cause persistent distress and helplessness. For families, the absence of reliable information or identified remains leaves grief unresolved.

Parti NUL explains its decision to run Dominic Dumas in Quebec’s Chutes-de-la-Chaudière riding, where his name closely resembles that of Conservative Party of Quebec candidate Dominique Dumas. The candidacy is presented as a protest against mass media attention that the party says privileges established parties and can normalize intolerant views. The letter also argues that abstentions and rejected ballots make public dissatisfaction invisible, and calls for reforms including null-vote options, vacant seats for votes of refusal, citizens’ assemblies, recall mechanisms, participatory budgets, and workplace self-management. It concludes that democracy should involve ongoing public participation rather than transferring power to political elites through periodic elections.

The article revisits Sunera Thobani’s controversial 2001 speech, arguing that her questions about U.S. foreign policy, colonialism and racialized security were treated as disloyal even as related concerns emerged in government policy. Ethan Cox connects that backlash to current debates over 9/11, COVID-19, October 7 and Gaza, arguing that explaining the causes and context of political violence is not the same as justifying it. He calls for Canadians to hear disturbing arguments without suppressing them and to scrutinize government foreign policy, concluding that democratic debate must accommodate disagreement and remembrance of the many civilian deaths in conflicts that followed 9/11.