• Mothers of Invention: Essays on the Community of Jesus and Grenville Christian College

Mothers of Invention: Essays on the Community of Jesus and Grenville Christian College

by Ewan Whyte

August 26, 2025 | ISBN 978-1-998408-23-8 | 200 Pages

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“On November 16, 2023, the sixteen-year class-action lawsuit against Grenville Christian College finally came to a close. As a former student, I could hardly believe it.” Though the school closed in 2007, it was only in 2019 that the lawsuit of roughly 1,350 students finally went to trial. On Feb. 23, 2020, Justice Janet Leiper issued her decision concluding that “the evidence of maltreatment and the varieties of abuse perpetrated on students’ bodies and minds in the name of the COJ [Community of Jesus] values of submission and obedience was class-wide and decades-wide.” In these meticulously documented, yet personal, essays… Read more

Advance Praise

“With elegant and searing prose, Whyte exposes the abuse that too often takes shelter in the name of religion. Poignant and shocking.” – Katherine Stewart, author of Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

“As Ewan Whyte’s dramatic personal history exemplifies, some of the most shocking accounts of systematic child abuse have emerged from institutions administered in the name of religion and compassion. Too often they have been met by disbelief or denial. The impacts for future mental and physical health can be devastating.” – Gabor Maté M.D., author of The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture

Events with Ewan Whyte

  • Ewan Whyte is a writer, art and cultural critic. He has written for the Globe & Mail and the Literary Review of Canada. He is the author of Desire Lines: Essays on Art Poetry & Culture, Shifting Paradigms: Essays on Art and Culture and Entrainment, a book of poetry, and a translation of the rude ancient Roman poet Catullus. His feature essay "The Cult that Raised Me" on the U.S.-based Community of Jesus/Grenville Christian College cult was a finalist for a National Magazine Award.