Saskatchewan has resurgence of COVID-19: chief medical health officer

Province’s first female dentist took skill, insight wherever needed

Some stories take longer to get around to than others.

In the fall of 2011 I hooked up with Fiona Odlum at an Academy Road Starbucks for a lighthearted feature about people who report on traffic for a living. Odlum, currently a contributor at CBC Saskatchewan, was working for 680 CJOB at the time, clueing rush-hour commuters in on stalls, lane closures and fender-benders they’d be wise to avoid.

Odlum turned the tables at one point by asking a few questions of her own including, “So, what’s your main beat?”

I don’t really have one, I told her, but if pressed, I would probably go with human-interest pieces.

The long and winding road

As theatre goes, it sent a strong message.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, standing in front of microphones and television cameras, holding up his Indigenous status card and saying that he didn’t feel Canada should have “a race-based form of identification in this country, but that is a reality,” adding that it was time to abolish the Indian Act.

“I think it’s time to abolish the Indian Act, get rid of the Indian Act, move past the Indian Act, and it needs to be done with First Nations people and First Nations governments, of course. I think it’s long overdue that we have a relationship with Indigenous Peoples in Canada that reflects who we are as Canadians today,” he said.

The Indian Act — the name alone suggests how out-dated and out of place the law has become. Originally dating from 1876, the law was put in place to “amend and consolidate the laws respecting Indians” and gave the Minister of the Interior the responsibility to “control and management of the reserves, lands, moneys and property of Indians in Canada.”

‘We’re just all thankful to have some baseball’

Driving more than 2,000 kilometres in less than a day might seem like the equivalent of getting a root canal to many. But it's a journey Winnipeg Goldeyes manager Rick Forney was happy to make this week, one that started from his residence in Maryland and ended in his most unusual temporary baseball home of Fargo, N.D.

Unable to play games at Shaw Park this summer owing to COVID-19 restrictions banning large gatherings for sporting events until at least September, the Fish will instead fly in enemy territory. An abbreviated spring training gets underway Thursday followed by an abbreviated 60-game American Association baseball season starting July 3.

Forney's 24th season with the Goldeyes, including the past 15 as skipper, is going to be unlike any other.

"It's not ideal, but it's not a reason to not work. If the Goldeyes are going to operate in any fashion, then I want to be a part of it," Forney said by telephone as he passed the midway point of his solo trek just outside Chicago.

Say What?! Sports guys travel to new destination

Say What?! is an email conversation between sports editor Steve Lyons and sports columnist Paul Wiecek. Look for us regularly but intermittently on the Free Press website.

Steve Lyons: Heya. How you doing? How’s 2020 treating you so far?

Few things to get us started:

Imperialist crusades: 21st-century style

In the 11th century and lasting into the 13th, the papacy launched a series of at least eight military campaigns we now refer to as the Crusades, or Holy Wars. They were an imperialistic call to arms for Christians to retake Jerusalem, which was at the time under Muslim rule.

Spiritual rewards for participation were implied, and other incentives offered, to dull the extra taxation demanded to fund the campaigns. Over time, the “crusades” morphed to become massacres of not only Muslims but also Jews and Christian dissidents — in other words, any enemies of the papacy. If today’s news sounds like déjà vu all over again, it probably should.

The stories keep repeating themselves in many forms. We now know that two 20th century world wars, global in scope, were caused by imperialistic ambitions, changes in the balance of international powers and corresponding arms races. The first was attributed to the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a Bosnian Serb, a kind of “regime change” initiative. The second resulted from rising tensions between Allied and Axis powers, triggered by the rise of European fascism and Japanese militarism. The human toll of both was unimaginable.

In the First World War, 15 to 22 million people, including soldiers and civilians, were killed and another 23 million were wounded. These numbers do not account for those otherwise affected — victims of chemical warfare whose compromised health shortened their lives; of the subsequent Spanish flu epidemic amplified by the displacement of peoples; others who died from other diseases caused by war conditions; and those who were malnourished or starved. Nor do they account for the ongoing trauma and resentments passed on intergenerationally to this day.