Newspaper Articles Archive 2020

Unmarried Ontario couple had no children and no house but man must still pay support, appeal court rules

In Ontario, being common-law spouses doesn't necessarily mean having lived in the same home, the court found

The Canadian Press, by Colin Perkel, September 10, 2020

TORONTO - A wealthy businessman will have to pay more than $50,000 a month in spousal support for 10 years to a woman with whom he had a long-term romantic relationship even though they kept separate homes and had no children together, Ontario’s top court has ruled.

Under Ontario law, an unmarried couple are considered common-law spouses if they have cohabited - lived together in a conjugal relationship - continuously for at least three years. But that doesn’t necessarily mean living in the same home, the court found.

"Lack of a shared residence is not determinative of the issue of cohabitation," the Appeal Court said. "There are many cases in which courts have found cohabitation where the parties stayed together only intermittently."

The decision comes in the case of Lisa Climans and Michael Latner, both of Toronto, who began a romantic relationship after meeting in October 2001. At the time, she was 38 and separated with two children, court records show. He was 46 and divorced with three children.

Although they maintained their separate homes, Latner and Climans behaved as a couple both privately and publicly. They vacationed together. He gave her a 7.5-carat diamond ring and other jewelry that she wore. She quit her job and would regularly sleep at his house. They travelled together and talked about living together.

Latner proposed several times and Climans accepted. He often referred to her by his last name. However, he insisted she sign a marriage contract and came up with several drafts. She refused.

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B.C. legislation would keep addicted youth in care for maximum of seven days

VICTORIA - The mother of a teen who fatally overdosed says legislation in British Columbia that would allow youth to be involuntarily hospitalized for up to a week must be backed up with more residential treatment beds.

The Canadian Press, By Camille Bains in Vancouver, June 23, 2020

VICTORIA - The mother of a teen who fatally overdosed says legislation in British Columbia that would allow youth to be involuntarily hospitalized for up to a week must be backed up with more residential treatment beds.

Rachel Staples, whose 15-year-old son Elliot Eurchuk died in April 2018, said short-term emergency care meant to stabilize youth is just a start in addressing the overdose crisis among young people.

"They don't have the facilities to accommodate what's going on in our province," she said Tuesday, adding wait times could be as long as four months.

"A week in a hospital just makes a kid angry. Say they do decide 'Yeah, I want out of this nightmare.' Then what? They need residential treatment where they can be monitored."

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If Black Lives Matter, Black Dads Must Matter

Townhall, USA, Opinion, Dr. Warren Farrell, June 19, 2020

Loving African-American lives as much as we love the lives of others clearly includes addressing systemic racism. And it also means addressing the way America treats black men versus African-American women: African-American men are stopped by, shot by, and killed by police more than 20 times as frequently as African-American women. And the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that African-American men are 25 times more likely to be imprisoned.

If disproportionately killing and imprisoning African-Americans is racist, then disproportionately killing and imprisoning males is sexist. But the real sexism is caring only about the systemic racism, and turning a blind eye to the other half of systemic: the sexism. The other half of "African-American male" is male.

Caring about Black boys and men quickly reveals there is no community that has been harder hit by dad-deprivation than the African-American community. It wasn’t always this way. Between 1880 and 1960, a majority of African-American families consisted of married fathers and mothers. But in the early sixties, nuclear families dramatically decreased. Inner city poverty and crime dramatically increased.

In 1965 sociologist Daniel Moynihan, who served under Presidents Nixon, Kennedy, and Johnson, led an investigation of inner-city life that concluded that the main predictor of growing up poor was not race per se but being born to parents who are not married. Why? A predictable outcome of no marriage was little or no father involvement.

While the Moynihan Report identified the quarter of black children born outside marriage as a crisis in 1965, the government’s counterproductive solution-giving moms money for not being married to dads-has contributed to almost a tripling of unmarried births among blacks (from 25 to 72 percent) and an expansion of the problem to white and Hispanic communities. The percentage of white children born outside marriage is now 36 percent-a nearly twelvefold increase from the 3.1 percent that it was in 1965.

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Boys' next sense of purpose: 'Father warriors'

Opinion - by Dr Warren Farrell, The Washington Examiner, Washington DC, USA, Sunday, June 14, 2019

With Father's Day approaching, we are in need of clarifying how the role of dads in the past and present can prepare us for developing the best dads for our children's future.

Historically, each generation had its war. In each generation, a boy received "social bribes" such as being considered a "hero" if he risked dying so others could live. He soon absorbed that if he risked being disposable, his parents would be proud and that girls were more attracted to an "Officer and a Gentleman" than a "Private and a Pacifist." Serving either in war, or as his family's sole breadwinner, gave a boy his mandate for manhood - his "sense of purpose" as a man.

Today, the good news is both that fewer boys are needed to be disposable in war and that more women are sharing the burdens of the breadwinner role. The bad news is that this has left many boys with a "purpose void." As boys with a purpose void have become less-motivated men, more women are interested in having children without having "just one more child I have to support." Additionally, more children of divorce are raised without dads.

The result has been a global boy crisis in all 56 of the largest developed nations: of boys falling behind girls in virtually every area of academic achievement, mental health, physical health, and economic competence. But there is a gap: Boys with two involved parents are doing fine; boys whose dads are absent are not.

If the boy crisis resides where dads do not reside, this creates a new opportunity for consideration this Father's Day: Our sons can fill their purpose void by being honored as warriors not just if they risk killing and being killed overseas, but also if they become "father warriors" by loving and being loved at home.

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Vancouver police investigating after dead baby found in Downtown Eastside

Vancouver Sun, Tiffany Crawford, April 24, 2020

Vancouver police are investigating after a dead baby was found in a portable toilet in the Downtown Eastside on Wednesday night.

"This is, without a doubt, an extremely tragic incident," said Vancouver police Const. Tania Visintin in a statement Thursday.

Vancouver police investigating after dead baby found in Downtown Eastside on Wednesday night.

"This is, without a doubt, an extremely tragic incident," said Vancouver police Const. Tania Visintin in a statement Thursday.

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