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Mary Simon, representing Inuit in Canada, spoke from the floor of the House of Commons to welcome the federal government’s historic 2008 apology to former students of residential schools.
She began in Inuktitut, as a way of showing the Inuit culture remains strong, and said the apology filled her with hope.
“Let us not be lulled into an impression that when the sun rises tomorrow morning, the pain and scars will miraculously be gone. They will not,” she said. “But a new day has dawned, a new day heralded by a commitment to reconciliation and building a new relationship with Inuit, Métis and First Nations.”
Now, 13 years later, as the discovery of unmarked graves on the sites of former residential schools generates a new awareness of this dark chapter of the country’s past, Simon has been named as Canada’s governor-general, the first Indigenous person to hold the role.
Read more:
Inuk leader Mary Simon named Canada’s governor-general, first Indigenous person to hold role
Campbell Clark: Trudeau skirts language symbols to appoint a new governor-general who expresses hope for Indigenous reconciliation
John Ibbitson: Becoming fluent in French will be one of Governor-General Mary Simon’s biggest jobs
Opinion: Mary Simon’s historic appointment as Canada’s next governor-general is worth celebrating
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Opinion: New life, new sunrise with new Governor-General
Open this photo in gallery
Governor General designate Mary Simon poses for a portrait July 6, 2021 at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec.
Dave Chan/The Globe and Mail
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First-dose COVID-19 vaccinations plateau across Canada
The number of people getting their first COVID-19 vaccine doses is plateauing across the country, heightening the need to target harder-to-reach groups if Canada is going to achieve the vaccination levels needed to control the spread of infection.
As of Monday, 78 per cent of those eligible to be vaccinated in Canada have received at least one dose, and 41 per cent were fully vaccinated, making the country one of the most immunized in the world. Among the Group of Seven nations, Canada ranks second next to Britain with the highest number of doses administered per 100 people.
However, within provinces and territories, there are pockets with low vaccination rates across the country.
Read more:
Editorial: Canada’s vaccination rate is better than the Americans’, but it’s still too low
McMaster team closes in on cause of vaccine-related blood clots
Calgary Stampede to be first major Canadian event to ask attendees for proof of COVID-19 vaccination
The Decibel podcast: The case against vaccine passports: Cara Zwibel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association explains why creating a system where fully vaccinated people can travel or get into certain places that unvaccinated people can’t might raise concerns about privacy and freedom.
B.C. Premier defends province’s response to Lytton wildfire
British Columbia’s Premier is defending his government’s handling of the wildfire that destroyed most of the village of Lytton and killed two people, as nearby First Nations continue to raise concerns about the emergency response and aftermath.
Leaders of the Lytton First Nation and the group to which it belongs, the Nlaka’pamux Nation Tribal Council, have criticized what they say was poor communication that hampered evacuation efforts after the fire broke out last week. They have accused the province of not doing enough to help their evacuees.
Leaders of both groups have also objected to the resumption of rail traffic in the area amid widespread speculation among residents that a train may have sparked the fire in tinder-dry conditions. The tribal council has threatened rail blockades if their concerns are not addressed.
Also: Lytton wildfire could result in about $100-million of claims, insurance analyst says
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR Haiti’s President Jovenel Mo？se assassinated: The Haitian President was assassinated in an attack on his private residence, the country’s interim prime minister said in a statement Wednesday. Mo？se, who was 53, had been ruling by decree for more than two years after the country failed to hold elections, which led to Parliament being dissolved. In recent months, opposition leaders demanded the he step down, arguing that his term legally ended in February 2021.
Getting the long-term jobless back to work: For the long-term unemployed, the coming months are a critical window to find work and avoid the type of lasting consequences that policy-makers fret about. Given the nature of the pandemic, in which some industries were shut down fully or partly, a large number of people could not work even if they wanted to. As the health crisis dragged on, so, too, did stretches of joblessness.
Oil sands producers are awash in cash flow again, but ESG concerns weigh on stock valuations: A rapid rise in the price of Canadian crude is putting investors in an unusual position, prompting them to weigh environmental concerns against the copious cash flows that oil sands producers are now churning out.
Hong Kong police warn of terrorist threat as national security law stymies protests: Police in Hong Kong have raided what they said was a bomb-making factory, arresting nine people, days after an officer was stabbed in what the force described as a “lone wolf terrorist attack.” Speaking at a news conference yesterday, the city’s senior bomb disposal officer said materials seized during the raid were “consistent with the manufacturing of the powerful, dangerous and unstable high explosive TATP.”
For the Canadiens, the mantra during this Stanley Cup run is never say die: It’s fitting that the Montreal Canadiens will probably have to fly through extreme weather conditions just to make it to Tampa Bay for Game 5 of the Stanley Cup final today. Add Hurricane Elsa, which could bring gusts of up to 115 kilometres an hour to western Florida this week, to the long list of obstacles that is making the Habs’ seemingly never-ending Cup run one to remember.
MORNING MARKETS World stocks dip, Europe gains: World stocks dipped on Wednesday from recent record highs and the U.S. dollar edged towards three-month peaks as investors awaited minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting to see if they confirm a hawkish turn in U.S. monetary policy. Just before 6 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.63 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 gained 0.89 per cent and 0.39 per cent. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.96 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slid 0.40 per cent. Wall Street futures edged higher. The Canadian dollar was trading at 80.37 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT Andrew Coyne: “What’s needed to stimulate more traffic is not more subsidy, but better service, and the best way to improve rail service, as countries across Europe are discovering, is competition. Railways may be a natural monopoly, but the trains that run on them are not. Even if Via were a paragon of efficient, reliable service, it would make no sense to preserve it from competition. But in view of its actual performance, opening the tracks would seem the missing piece of the high-frequency puzzle.”
Rob Carrick: “The clock is ticking on one of the best remaining bargains in Canadian real estate. Oil prices are rising, which generally means good things for the economy of Calgary. Expect to see some strength in a housing market that has completely missed the pandemic real estate boom.”
Simon Houpt: “Still, Sportsnet is in the business of entertainment, and it has to walk a fine line: The potential final game of a pandemic-laced season isn’t the ideal place to bring up a matter as weighty as a sexual assault cover-up, especially in a brief drive-by. It would have just spoiled the fun.”
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON Open this photo in gallery
David Parkins
David Parkins/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER As COVID-19 restrictions begin to lift, take advantage of summer travel deals right across Canada
With many Canadians receiving their COVID-19 vaccines and travel restrictions starting to lift, it might be time to salvage your summer with a trip. Destinations across the country are itching to have visitors back and are offering some great incentives to ensure their return. Before you book any deals, be sure to review local travel regulations since not everything is fully open yet and guidelines differ by region. Ideally, you want to book something that has a flexible cancellation policy in case your plans – or public-health rules – change.
MOMENT IN TIME: JULY 7, 1928 Open this photo in gallery
Slicing and packaging Dempster's Bread at a facility in southern Ontario, May 3, 1991.
John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
Machine-sliced bread is first sold
Otto Frederick Rohwedder, an engineer and inventor, put his skills to work designing and building machinery as a hobby while running his three jewellery stores in St. Joseph, Mo. In 1916, convinced he had a brilliant idea, he sold the stores and moved back to his hometown of Davenport, Iowa, to start work on developing an automatic bread-slicing machine. A fire in his factory the following year destroyed the prototype; it would take 10 years to raise funds and finish a new one. Rohwedder realized his invention would create a new problem: Fresh slices of bread would be exposed to air and quickly go stale. His solution was a machine that would both slice and wrap. The first commercially available slicer was purchased by the Chillicothe Baking Co. in Missouri and, on this day in 1928, sliced bread made its debut. Two years later, the Continental Baking Co. began selling its sliced version of Wonder Bread, and by 1933, American bakeries were selling more sliced bread than unsliced. Rohwedder’s wildly successful time-saving innovation would give rise to the idiom “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” Ian Morfitt
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