Booze Hoo

This Sunday in the sparse, grey village of Dwight, Ontario, Canada, is remarkable for two things:freckles of snow and a liqour store that opens from 1pm to 4pm.It doesn't get much better than this.
Down the road a few klicks in the town of Hunstville, they've been conned again by the Christmas shoebox campaign, One Christmas Child. It's a warm and cuddly thought sending shoeboxes full of our trinkets to kids in poverty stricken countries so they, too, can have a good Christmas. Canada will send about 100,000 boxes this year.What no one is told is that the campaign is run by Samaritan's Purse whose sole aim is not to provide poor third world kids with any happiness but to convert them and their parents to Christianity.Once the shoe boxes reach their destination, Christian literature is handed over as well. Who is behind Samaritan's Purse? Son of Billy, Franklin Graham who has condemned Islam as evil and has called for its overthrow.The British Guardian newspaper has described Graham's evangelical form of Christianity as "particularly toxic."Perhaps clean water, education and shelter might do a bit more than odious, patronising religious zealots trafficking in trinkets for souls.