For many Canadian dads, Father's Day is torture.
Law-abiding, healthy men are kept from regularly seeing their children because of custody fights and weighted decisions in family court. It pushes some men to the brink of suicide.
"It is an enormous stress, financially and emotionally, the reaction they have is similar to the stages of death," says Glenn Cheriton, president of the Canadian Equal Parenting Coalition, who sees a surge of desperate fathers showing up at his support meetings around Father's Day. "They often have no money, no way of seeing their children, it is a profoundly dis-empowering experience."
Dave Flook is one such dis-empowered dad.
"The judge looked at me and asked: 'Why should I let you see your daughter?'"
Flook's marriage broke down and his ex-wife won primary custody and moved away with their daughter. Flook quit his job as a college instructor in London, Ont., to move so he could still live near his child.
"I have received several e-mails over the past couple days from dads who want be with their kids this weekend. There is a desperation in their e-mails," says Flook, who now runs the website Not All Dads Are Deadbeats.
The issue of equal parenting has made its way to the House of Commons several times.
"I have heard from so many men and women who have urged me to pursue these reforms," says Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott, who has tried to get his private member's bill passed in past parliaments that would remove the words "custody" and "access" from the terminology and focus on mediation rather than the confrontational environment of a courtroom.
Independent Senator Anne Cools is a life-long advocate for the rights of children and families, and she sees parental alienation as a fundamental wrong.
"Children deserve the emotional, psychological and financial support of both parents. It is unnatural for a parent not to have a communion with their own children," says Cools. "There is an order in nature, just as children are born as an infant, to want to know and be close to both of their parents. The greatest human tragedy is when any parent loses a child, whether it be to death, or to divorce."
Law-abiding, healthy men are kept from regularly seeing their children because of custody fights and weighted decisions in family court. It pushes some men to the brink of suicide.
"It is an enormous stress, financially and emotionally, the reaction they have is similar to the stages of death," says Glenn Cheriton, president of the Canadian Equal Parenting Coalition, who sees a surge of desperate fathers showing up at his support meetings around Father's Day. "They often have no money, no way of seeing their children, it is a profoundly dis-empowering experience."
Dave Flook is one such dis-empowered dad.
"The judge looked at me and asked: 'Why should I let you see your daughter?'"
Flook's marriage broke down and his ex-wife won primary custody and moved away with their daughter. Flook quit his job as a college instructor in London, Ont., to move so he could still live near his child.
"I have received several e-mails over the past couple days from dads who want be with their kids this weekend. There is a desperation in their e-mails," says Flook, who now runs the website Not All Dads Are Deadbeats.
The issue of equal parenting has made its way to the House of Commons several times.
"I have heard from so many men and women who have urged me to pursue these reforms," says Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott, who has tried to get his private member's bill passed in past parliaments that would remove the words "custody" and "access" from the terminology and focus on mediation rather than the confrontational environment of a courtroom.
"Children deserve the emotional, psychological and financial support of both parents. It is unnatural for a parent not to have a communion with their own children," says Cools. "There is an order in nature, just as children are born as an infant, to want to know and be close to both of their parents. The greatest human tragedy is when any parent loses a child, whether it be to death, or to divorce."
