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Today is the one-year anniversary of the Toronto Danforth shooting
The shooting on Toronto’s Danforth that claimed two lives, injured 13 others, and was felt across an entire city was one year ago today.
Yesterday, a commemoration ceremony marking the anniversary took place in Greektown’s Withrow Park to honour the lives of 18-year-old Reese Fallon and 10-year-old Julianna Kozis, and the 13 people injured in the rampage. Friends and family of the victims, as well as survivors, Danforth residents, first responders, politicians and others who wanted to pay their respects, filled the rows of chairs in front of the stage and the surrounding grass.
Several hundred people attended, including Danielle Kane, one of the 13 injured in the shooting, who now uses a wheelchair. Kane met Detective Tracey Hutchings, an officer who briefly attended to her after a bullet tore through her side and shattered a vertebra, for the first time since last year.
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An NGO and its Canadian founder are building a case for Syrian war crimes
Shrouded in secrecy, Canadian William Wiley and the Commission for International Justice and Accountability are collecting smuggled documents that he says makes the case for the Syrian President’s key role in atrocities, reports Mark MacKinnon, The Globe and Mail’s Senior International Correspondent.
The project is well-known to Western governments, including Canada’s, which collectively provide $8-million in annual funding for the group’s 150 investigators, most of whom are at work on the ground in Syria and Iraq. Mr. Wiley and his team represent a new force in international justice – one that struck a deal with anti-government rebels to keep the evidence from going up in smoke and being lost forever.
CIJA’s files include what Mr. Wiley says is proof that President Bashar al-Assad himself had knowledge of, and approved the actions of, his subordinates. “It’s pretty clear that Assad was not a figurehead. He was in charge, and the senior guys deferred to him.”
Hong Kong police fired tear gas and rubber bullets after protesters targeted a Chinese government office
Hong Kong police took action against protesters in the city yesterday, firing rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters after some of them vandalized the Chinese government’s liaison office. The vandalism was a direct and forceful challenge to Beijing’s authority after a day of peaceful protest.
In a separate clash, masked men dressed in white and wielding sticks assaulted anti-government protesters in a train station late last night in northwestern Hong Kong.
The unrest spiralled out of a march that called for an independent investigation into what protesters said was police brutality in earlier street clashes. The march was peaceful, but thousands of demonstrators later marched past where the police had said the official demonstration should end.
Ontarians are visiting hospital emergency departments for alcohol-related issues at a growing rate
A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal today shows that Ontarians are visiting hospital emergency departments at a growing rate for intoxication and other issues arising from alcohol use, and women and young people account for the sharpest increases.
Researchers examined data for all individuals, aged 10 to 105, living in Ontario between 2003 and 2016. They found that the number of emergency-department visits directly attributable to alcohol use grew by around 7 per cent year over year during that period.
While the majority of these visits were made by men, the rate of visits made by women ages 25 to 29 jumped 240 per cent. And starting in 2007, girls below the legal drinking age (ages 10 to 18) had a higher rate of emergency-department visits because of alcohol use than their male peers.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Tensions in the Strait of Hormuz: In an audio recording released yesterday, a British naval officer insists that a British-flagged oil tanker must be allowed to sail through the Strait of Hormuz as Iranian paramilitary forces demand that the vessel change course before commandeering it. The audio reveals how the British navy was unable to prevent the ship’s seizure Friday – Theresa May will chair an emergency security session today to discuss how to respond.
Simu Liu cast as Marvel’s first Chinese superhero: Canadian actor Simu Liu has been tapped to play the titular character in Marvel’s coming film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Mr. Liu is best known for starring as Jung in the CBC television show Kim’s Convenience.
Vancouver port authority and tenant battle over terminal plans: The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is locked in a bitter fight against one of its own tenants over how best to expand container capacity at Canada’s largest port. The powerful landlord that oversees four container terminals in the Vancouver region is warning that Canada’s West Coast could run out of capacity to handle container shipments within six years.
Gerald Butts taking important role in Liberal re-election campaign: Gerald Butts – formerly one of Justin Trudeau’s closest aides, who left his post in the midst of the SNC-Lavalin affair – is returning to the party to take on what is described as an important role in its re-election campaign, a Liberal Party official confirmed yesterday.
He first worked at Kawartha Dairy as an 11-year-old. Now he’s back as CEO: Brian Kerr was just 11 years old when he rode his bike down to Ontario cottage country’s legendary ice-cream company Kawartha Dairy in Bobcaygeon, Ont., to ask for a job. He got it. After a 27-year absence, much of it spent working for a giant U.S. food company, Kerr is back working at Kawartha Dairy. But this time, he is the chief executive and general manager.
Irishman wins first British Open played in Northern Ireland in 68 years: Shane Lowry made the 68 years between British Opens in Northern Ireland worth the wait. The silver claret jug is staying on the Emerald Isle. Lowry, a 32-year-old Irishman, endured the worst weather of the week and the Sunday pressure of a sellout crowd cheering him along to win the British Open by six shots at Royal Portrush.
MORNING MARKETS
Stocks mixed
European stocks struggled higher on Monday, shrugging off dialed-down expectations for a big U.S. rate cut this month, while escalating tensions in the Middle East boosted safe-haven assets and oil prices. Tokyo’s Nikkei fell 0.2 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 1.3 per cent, and the Shanghai Composite 1.2 per cent. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 was up 0.3 per cent, Germany’s DAX 0.1 per cent and the Paris CAC 40 also 0.1 per cent at 6 a.m. ET. New York futures were up. The Canadian dollar was at 76.64 US cents.
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WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Butts is back. Now the question is whether he can renew Trudeau, too
Campbell Clark: “The fact that Mr. Butts is back on Team Trudeau after the SNC-Lavalin affair is a symbol of the big question the Liberals face: Can Mr. Trudeau get past the sense of disillusionment and disappointment that many voters who once supported him seem to feel. Can Gerry Butts help Justin Trudeau get his mojo back?”
Internment and xenophobia isn’t 'how we do things’ in Canada? History says otherwise
Glynis Ratcliffe: “Our political leaders aren’t explicitly telling elected officials and citizens to ‘go home.’ But we should be wary of getting on a high horse. Even beyond Canada’s reprehensible legacy of Japanese internment camps, the Second World War was also marked by a system of lesser-known Canadian internment camps in which innocents, trying to flee persecution in Europe, were detained.” Ratcliffe is the senior writer at Broadview magazine. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Chatelaine and The Walrus.
When art becomes a hashtag, do museums lose their meaning?
Cliff Lauson: “What these often self-labelled museums lack is a sense of autonomous thought and critical-mindedness. To be fair, they don’t propose to be galleries of contemporary art, nor aim to replace ‘traditional’ museum and gallery spaces. The experience that insta-museums offer is perhaps actually not such a new idea; not unlike a prop-filled turn-of-the-century portrait studio, they provide imaginative and surreal backdrops for staged photographs. Instead of wearing formal attire and pretending to board a steamer to cross the Atlantic, people today stick their heads through a giant pizza-slice cut-out that stands in a landscape of toppings and mozzarella.” Lauson is senior curator at the Hayward Gallery in London.
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
David Parkinsdavid parkins/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
Seven water-packed foods to increase hydration
“Most of us know that it’s important to stay hydrated, especially on hot summer days when it’s easier to become dehydrated. Water helps regulate our body temperature, delivers oxygen and nutrients to cells, cushions our joints and nourishes our skin,” Leslie Beck writes. “You don’t need to get all that water from the kitchen tap, though. Roughly 20 per cent of it comes from foods especially fruits and vegetables, which owe at least three-quarters of their weight to water.”
Cucumber, zucchini, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, watermelon, strawberries, and cantaloupe will all help you stay hydrated.
MOMENT IN TIME
(Erik Christensen / The Globe and Mail)ERIK CHRISTENSEN/The Globe and Mail
David Strangway conducts research on lunar samples
For more than 100 years, photographers and photo librarians working for The Globe and Mail have preserved an extraordinary collection of 20th-century news photography. Every Monday, The Globe features one of these images. In July, we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.
Prior to the space age, scientists had a limited understanding of the composition and history of Earth’s moon. The Apollo program changed that. Through six successful lunar landings, U.S. astronauts collected more than 380 kilograms worth of rocks and soil. Among the first to study them was Canadian scientist David Strangway, who took charge of NASA’s geophysics branch starting in 1970. His work on the magnetic properties of the lunar samples helped to show that parts of the moon’s surface formed in a stronger magnetic field than the moon possesses today. As scientists mulled this and other pieces of evidence, a new picture of the moon’s origins emerged – one in which the moon formed out of debris from a giant impact that occurred when a Mars-sized body slammed into Earth early in our planet’s history. Strangway later served as president of the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. – Ivan Semeniuk
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