Black History Month: The untold story of ‘Auntie’ Annie Saunders in southern Alberta

By Emily Olsen Global News
Posted February 1, 2021

VIDEO Black History Month: The untold story of ‘Auntie’ Annie Saunders in southern Alberta | Globalnews.ca

This Black History Month feature showcases the story of Black pioneer “Auntie” Annie Saunders who wore many hats at the time of Fort Macleod's creation and helped shape the Lethbridge region as we know it today. As Emily Olsen reports, Saunders’ story is one of many that are slowly being uncovered after years of erasure – Feb 1, 2021


The story of “Auntie” Annie Saunders is one of true grit and independence in the history of southern Alberta.

Saunders’ life prior to moving to Alberta is still largely a mystery, but Belinda Crowson — president of the Lethbridge Historical Society — says it’s the journey she took alone as a Black woman into the Canadian West that indicates her independent spirit and determination to create a better life.

READ MORE: Calgary filmmaker explores what could be Alberta’s first civil rights case

“She called herself ‘Auntie’ and that’s what she always told people is, ‘Call me Auntie,’ so she’s often referred to as ‘Auntie Saunders’ or ‘Annie Saunders,'” Crowson said.

“She was an American, born in the States, and she met Mary Macleod — Colonel Macleod’s wife — on a Missouri riverboat as Mary Macleod was heading west.”

In 1877, Saunders decided to join Mary Macleod and arrived in Fort Macleod to begin work as a nanny or nurse to the Macleod children.

Crowson says this is how she was most often documented, but recent research — through letters and correspondence — suggests that Saunders was a pioneer in her own right, running multiple businesses in Fort Macleod and later in Pincher Creek.


READ MORE: John Ware legacy carries on as Calgary celebrates Black History Month

“She’s associated with a boarding house and being a laundress and running a restaurant,” Crowson said.
“And [with] the boarding house in Pincher Creek, one of the [interesting] things is that when kids from surrounding ranches had to come into Pincher Creek for school, hers was the boarding house many of them stayed at. So she took care of the kids from the neighbourhood as well.”

Crowson says letters from Colonel Macleod show the high regard she was held in with their family and with the community as a result.

With such an essential role in her community, the lack of publicly recorded information about Saunders and her entrepreneurial spirit shows a small snapshot of the pushback she faced as a woman of colour in the late 1800s.

“When you look at a lot of the early records, she is just mentioned as the nurse of the Macleod family. It took a long time and a lot of research for her to get an identity and to get a name attached to her,” Crowson said.

“She certainly reflects an attempt to push aside part of history.”

READ MORE: New documentary showcases Black history in the Prairies

Saunders died in July 1898 at the age of 62 and was buried in Pincher Creek.

Her buried legacy is finally being uncovered.

“We’re encouraged that her story has been found and that researchers have found hers,” Crowson said. “But who else is still out there to be found?”

YOU HAVE A TEACHING TOOL IN YOUR WALLET

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Viola Desmond on the $10 note is a history lesson — but not everyone is learning

Kathy Hogarth remembers the day her then-10-year-old came home from school talking about Viola Desmond.

© Darren Calabrese/CP Wanda Robson, sister of Viola Desmond, holds the new $10 bank note featuring Desmond during a press conference in Halifax on Thursday, March 8, 2018.

"That, for me, represents the significance of highlighting Black figures," says Hogarth, a professor at the University of Waterloo's School of Social Work.

The year was 2018 and Desmond, the Black Nova Scotian who fought racial segregation in her province, had just become the new face of Canada's $10 bill.

READ MORE: Forgotten story of Toronto neighbourhood illustrates lack of Black history education

Hogarth's daughter relished seeing a Black woman on a banknote. Whenever Hogarth spent a $10 bill, her little girl would ask whether she had another one to hold on to.


Nova Scotia reimburses court fees, fine paid by civil rights icon Viola Desmond


Celebrating Black icons on a nation's currency "is a beautiful use of money," Hogarth says. "It goes far and wide, it touches every corner of our society."

For Nova Scotia Sen. Wanda Thomas Bernard, the $10 bill is an opportunity to talk about Desmond's legacy, which goes beyond refusing to leave her seat in the "whites only" section of New Glasgow's Roseland Theatre in 1946.

Video: $10 bill featuring Canadian civil rights icon Viola Desmond unveiled

Desmond's fight for social justice started long before then, Thomas Bernard says. When she found she couldn't train as a beautician in Nova Scotia, she went to Montreal and then continued her schooling in Atlantic City and New York. When she couldn't find beauty products to service her clients of African descent, she made her own.

Seeing her on the $10 bill is a reminder that many African Nova Scotian families trace their histories back to the 18th century, Bernard says.

"It represents the significance of our very early presence here, and it recognizes the contributions that people of African descent have made to the country, to the province and to the world," she says.

Bernard hopes Canada will use its currency again to highlight parts of its Black and Indigenous history.

When asked about who she'd like to see on a banknote or coin, the first name that comes to mind, says Thomas Bernard, is Rita Joe, the Mi’kmaq poet.

"That we don't have anyone from the Indigenous communities on a banknote to me signals the fact that that needs to change," Thomas Bernard says.

Joe isn't among the eight iconic Canadians that have so far been shortlisted for the next $5 banknote. But the group does include Inuit artist Pitseolak Ashoona; Indigenous rights advocate and war hero Binaaswi (Francis Pegahmagabow); Siksika chief and diplomat Isapo-muxika, also known as Crowfoot; and Mohawk chief, war veteran and activist Onondeyoh (Frederick Ogilvie Loft).

The selection process followed a script similar to the one the Bank of Canada used for the $10 note, with a call for public input that resulted in submissions from nearly 45,000 people and more than 600 eligible nominees, the Bank told Global News. An independent Advisory Council then narrowed that list to eight candidates. It will be up to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to make a final decision, which is expected to come in early 2021. The new $5 note, however, won't be in circulation for another few years, the Bank of Canada said.

The Bank said it cannot yet speak to what will appear on future notes

Viola Desmond tribute among murals being added to Mulgrave Park in Halifax


There are many names that immediately come to mind as possible candidates for the next Black Canadian to appear on the country's currency, Thomas Bernard says. Her list includes Rosemary Brown, the B.C. politician who became the first Black female member of a provincial legislature. Brown also became the first woman to attempt to reach the helm of a federal party when she ran for the leadership of the NDP in 1975 with the slogan "Brown is Beautiful."

But, Thomas Bernard notes, "this country wasn't quite ready for a Black woman leader of a major political party."

Rev. Donald E. Fairfax, a long-time Nova Scotian pastor of two congregations and recipient of the Order of Canada, would also be an inspirational choice for a banknote or coin, Thomas Bernard says.

READ MORE: Saskatchewan’s Mattie Mayes leaves impact decades after her life

"Through his ministry, he was on the front lines for fighting for social justice," Thomas Bernard says. But not many Canadians know about his advocacy, because it happened behind the scenes, she says.

"He's a person that I would like to see elevated more."

Hogarth's list of possible candidates for the next note or coin includes Lincoln Alexander, the first Black Canadian Member of Parliament, cabinet minister and lieutenant-governor of Ontario; Elijah McCoy, a mechanical engineer and inventor; and Josiah Henson, who fled slavery to Canada in 1830 and founded the Dawn Settlement.

Henson was "integrally involved in the slave movement, (something) that we have divorced ourselves from as a nation ... without an acknowledgment of about 200 years of active slave engagement," Hogarth says.

‘The Queen is in good company’: Viola Desmond’s sister expresses gratitude for new $10 bill


The Royal Canadian Mint has no plans to re-design our current Canadian circulation coins, but has featured Black Canadians on its collector coins, including Desmond in 2019 and Willie O’Ree in 2020. Both were issued in conjunction with the start of Black History Month. For 2021, the Mint's third coin commemorating Black history in Canada commemorates the Black Loyalists.

But collectibles don't hold the potential for learning opportunities that currency — coins and banknotes in everybody's hands — has, Hogarth says.

"Probably the Bank of Canada doesn't necessarily see itself in a teaching role through currency," Hogarth says. "But inadvertently, they are."

But Canada is still failing to teach parts of its history, both Hogarth and Thomas Bernard say.

"We still talk about Black History Month, divorced from Canadian history," Hogarth says. "Black history is Canadian history."

And when Thomas Bernard showed a photo of Desmond's sister Wanda Robson holding the new $10 bill during a presentation for a Grade 3 class in Ajax, Ont. in February of last year, she says only one child knew who the woman on the note was: her grandson.

"We're missing the point if we're not teaching about this woman on the $10 bill," she says.

WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS

Hungary's Viktor Orban and Poland's Jaroslaw Kaczynski defy the EU even as their countries profit from it

© Czarek Sokolowski/The Associated Press, John Thys/Reuters Jaroslaw Kaczynski, left, the leader of Poland's ruling Law and Justice party, and Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán, right, are both staunch nationalists who have resisted the federalist vision of the…

Dozens of newspapers, TV stations and websites blank or black: this was what the national strike of private media in Poland protesting a sudden and crippling government tax on advertising looked like on Feb. 10.

In Hungary the same week, an opposition radio station was ordered by a court to turn off its microphones this coming Monday.

This is the politics of the slow squeeze in Central Europe. It's a strategy designed by two men, the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, and the vice-premier and de facto leader of Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Their countries, both former members of the Soviet bloc, belong to the European Union, and profit from it, but their ideas on democracy and the rule of law, principles their countries agreed to uphold when joining in 2004, are far from those endorsed by EU leaders in Brussels.
'A 21st-century Christian democracy'

For Hungary's Orban, democracy of the liberal kind is a dirty word. He has, instead, vowed to build an "illiberal state."

"We have replaced a shipwrecked liberal democracy with a 21st-century Christian democracy, which guarantees people's freedom and security," Orban proclaimed to the Hungarian parliament in May 2018.

A year later, he told a summit of students and policy makers that "the essence of illiberal democracy is Christian liberty and the protection of Christian liberty."

"Our task will be to turn against liberal internationalism," he said.

© John Thys/AFP via Getty Images Orbán speaks to the media as he arrives at EU headquarters in Brussels on Dec. 10, 2020. Earlier this month, a Hungarian court ordered the closure of one of Klubrádió, one of the last remaining independent radio stations in the country.

Kaczynski is a devout Catholic but above all a devout Pole.

Late last year, the biggest chain of regional dailies and weeklies in Poland, with a reach of 17 million readers, was bought from a German publishing house by state-controlled petrochemical company PKN Orlen. On Feb. 4, Kaczynski explained that for two decades, the German-owned, or "non-Polish" as he prefers to put it, papers had been "demoralizing" Polish young people.

His government's goal was "re-polonization," and this was a shining example. Others see the deal as a Putin-style approach.

"The consolidation of the state, the oil sector and the media is a well-known manoeuvre in the Russian scenario," Peter Wolodarski, editor-in-chief of the major Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter and of Polish origin himself, wrote in his paper late last year.

"This should be an alarm signal for the world."

© Kacper Pempel/Reuters 'Media without choice' read the headlines on the front pages of Poland's main private newspapers, part of a protest against a proposed media advertising tax that journalists say is politically motivated to consolidate government control over media.

The politics of resentment

Kaczynski, 72, and Orbán, 57, are believers in nationalism and the politics of resentment.

Kaczynski's view is that, in the years after communism crumbled more than 30 years ago, Poland's liberal democratic leaders betrayed the country's Christian principles.

He went on record in 2005 with this apocalyptic prediction: "the affirmation of homosexuality will lead to the downfall of civilization."

When it won elections that year, his Law and Justice party promised a "moral revolution" to root out corruption and a so-called fourth republic, in league with the Catholic Church.

© Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images Kaczynski, seen in the lower house of parliament in Warsaw last May, is a devout Catholic and has promoted the idea of a 'moral revolution' in Poland.

Orban, his country's longest-serving prime minister, posted on Facebook last year a map of a pre-WWI "Greater Hungary." The country was on the losing side of the First World War and stripped of about 70 per cent of its territory. Predictably, the post infuriated neighbouring countries.

Orban's vision is of a Christian Hungary with no Muslim refugees, or "invaders" as he called them in a 2018 interview.

Both Orban and Kaczynski are nationalists who refuse the dreams of a more federal, multicultural Europe and brook little or no criticism of their vision.

Media feel the squeeze

And so, the strike and the radio station.

The sudden tax on advertising threatens the existence of independent Polish media outlets, their editors said.

"This is simply extortion," they wrote in an open letter to the government on Feb. 10.

The Polish prime minister defended the tax as "a fair step," saying the money raised would go toward fighting COVID-19 and would level the playing field between domestic and foreign players and small and big companies.

The editors said that Polish state media, filled with ruling-party loyalists, receive huge subsidies and would likely get more to offset the tax. The independent sector would receive none, they said.

The closure in Hungary of Klubradio is a slight departure from Orban's previous strategy, which involved government allies buying up critical media. In 2019, Reporters Without Borders said the degree of media control under the Orban government was "unprecedented" among EU member states.

© Bernadett Szabo/Reuters An employee of Klubradio works at the station's headquarters in Budapest. The station's licence will expire Sunday after Hungary's broadcast regulator refused to renew it, a move that Orban critics say was intended to silence opposition to his government.

In the spring of 2020, a pro-Orban businessman took a 50 per cent stake in the firm that controls the advertising and revenue of Index, Hungary's biggest news site. The editor-in-chief was soon under fire. Then he was gone. Seventy journalists resigned in protest. And Index is now a tame animal.

Klubradio's licence, which expires Feb. 14, was not renewed last September by the government broadcasting authority for violating broadcasting rules on "six occasions in the last seven years," according to the secretary of state for international communication and relations.

The station argued its infractions were minor and similar to those of other broadcasters that had not had their licences revoked.

The government has called allegations that the closure is part of a government crackdown on press freedom "a fiction" and part of the anti-Orbán agenda of the mainstream liberal media.

State TV decries 'leftist fascism'

In Poland, when the Law and Justice party took power in 2015, its first priority was to fill the top positions in state-financed TV and radio with loyalists.

The result was on display when tens of thousands of women demonstrated in October 2020 against a court ruling that struck down one of the few remaining exceptions to the near-total restriction on abortions.

The state TV channel TVP displayed a banner saying, "Leftist fascism is destroying Poland" on several occasions during its coverage of the demonstrations and opposition parties' protests against the abortion law in parliament.

This bitterly contested ruling was the result of the alliance between the government of the majority Catholic country and the Catholic Church. But first, it required compliant judges.

So, soon after coming to power, the government brought in rules lowering the retirement age for judges, then replacing the departing ones with loyalists on the Constitutional Tribunal. They, in turn, handed down the abortion ruling.

© Omar Marques/Getty Images A large crowd in Warsaw protests a ruling by Poland's Constitutional Tribunal that struck down one of the few remaining exceptions to abortion restrictions Oct. 30, 2020.

Kaczynski's government, which denies trying to influence the court, proceeds carefully. After the massive demonstrations, it postponed bringing the abortion law into effect. Then, three months later, in the middle of a cold winter, it activated the ruling.

There were more nights of demonstrations by thousands of women, but there was a sense of frustration.

"This pause between the verdict and its coming into effect is typical of how they proceed," one demonstrator named Ania told French daily Le Figaro. "They go slowly, and people get tired."

It was another example of the slow squeeze.

EU intervention comes too late

Orban changed the retirement rules for judges as well, then also packed the courts with loyalists.

He then squeezed Central European University in Budapest, funded by Hungarian-American Jewish financier George Soros, a frequent target of Orban's and the subject of various conspiracy theories and rhetoric widely decried as anti-Semitic.

The university was forced to move to Vienna after the courts said the university was illegal because it was incorporated in the U.S

The EU has tried to fight back, launching cases in the European Court of Justice and winning them. Hungary's actions against Soros's university were ruled illegal under EU law as was its forced early retirement of judges. Poland's new retirement rules for judges were also deemed unconstitutional.

But the cases took several years. New judges were already in place in Poland and Hungary. The university had moved.

© Bernadett Szabo/Reuters People attend a rally in support of Central European University in Budapest in November 2018. The school was deemed illegal because it was incorporated in the U.S., a ruling that the European Court of Justice later found violated EU law.

There are, however, worrying signs for both leaders. In Hungary, six opposition parties have united and polls show their coalition neck and neck with Orban's party, Fidesz.

"Fidesz is gradually dropping, and this is mostly due to the virus's economic impact and the perception that the government isn't handling the crisis as well it should," Tibor Zavecz, head of Zavecz Research, told BNN Bloomberg in December.

In Poland, support for the Law and Justice party has dropped from 47 per cent in May 2020 to 36 per cent in February, according to Politico's poll of polls. Here, too, the pandemic has hurt.

But Orban doesn't face an election until 2022 and Kaczynski not until 2023.

Until then, the work of the "moral revolution" in Poland and of "illiberal democracy" in Hungary will go on.

In a Weird Twist, Scientists Discover Venus Flytraps Generate Little Magnetic Fields

The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is already a fascinating enough plant, but scientists have discovered something else amazing about it: It generates measurable magnetic fields as its leaves snap shut 

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© Marco Klug/500px Prime/Getty Images

And going way beyond D. muscipula, the latest research could teach us a lot about how plant life uses magnetic field signalling to communicate and as an indicator of disease (something we also see in human beings and other animals).

It's well known that plants use electrical signals as a sort of nervous system, but capturing biomagnetism has been tricky.

A 2011 study attempted to detect a magnetic field around a Titan arum (Amorphophallus titanium) – that large, very smelly plant – using atomic magnetometers that are able to detect the smallest of fluctuations.

That study revealed that the plant generated no magnetic field greater than a millionth of the strength of the magnetic field surrounding us on Earth, resulting in the experiment being considered a failure.

The researchers involved in the 2011 study said their next steps, if they were to take any, would be to focus on a smaller plant.

For the new study, a different group of researchers did indeed go smaller.

"We have been able to demonstrate that action potentials in a multicellular plant system produce measurable magnetic fields, something that had never been confirmed before," says physicist Anne Fabricant, from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (JGU) in Germany.


Putting Venus flytraps under observation. (Anne Fabricant)

These "action potentials" are quick bursts of electrical activity, and the Venus flytrap can have multiple triggers: If the plant is touched, injured, affected by heat or cold, or loaded with liquid, then action potentials can be set off.

Here the researchers used heat stimulation to activate the electrical activity, and a glass cell magnetometer to measure magnetic disturbances. This approach not only kept background noise down to a minimum but had advantages over other techniques in that it could be miniaturised and didn't require cryogenic cooling.

The magnetic signals measured went up to an amplitude of 0.5 picotesla, comparable to nerve impulses firing in humans and millions of times weaker than the Earth's magnetic field – a small ripple, but a detectable one.

"You could say the investigation is a little like performing an MRI scan in humans," says Fabricant. "The problem is that the magnetic signals in plants are very weak, which explains why it was extremely difficult to measure them with the help of older technologies."

Besides MRI scans, other techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) are used to measure magnetic fields in humans, potentially identifying problems without any invasive procedures.

With the help of this current research, the same sort of scanning might now be possible with plants too: crops could be scanned for temperature shifts, chemical changes or pests without having to damage the plants themselves, for example.

And we can add the findings to our growing knowledge about how plants send signals both internally and externally, communicating via a hidden network that scientists are only just beginning to properly explore.

"Beyond proof of principle, our findings pave the way to understanding the molecular basis of biomagnetism in living plants," write the researchers in their published paper.

"In the future, magnetometry may be used to study long-distance electrical signaling in a variety of plant species, and to develop noninvasive diagnostics of plant stress and disease."

The research has been published in Scientific Reports.

TANKER SABOTAGE IS AN ECO CATASTROPHE 

Fire 'catastrophe' destroys 100 fuel tankers on Afghanistan-Iran border

At least 100 oil and gas tankers have been destroyed by fire in a "catastrophe" at Afghanistan's biggest trade crossing with Iran, causing millions of dollars of losses, officials said Sunday .

© HOSHANG HASHIMI The huge blaze at Islam Qala port has largely been extinguished and an investigation launched into its cause

The huge blaze, which broke out Saturday afternoon at Islam Qala port 120 kilometres (75 miles) from the western city of Herat, has been contained and an investigation launched into its cause.

"We were told that 100 or 200 tankers have been destroyed, but this number could be higher," Jailani Farhad, spokesman for the governor of Herat province, said after visiting the scene.

During the blaze looters descended on the site, stealing goods that were being imported and exported across the border, Younus Qazi Zada, the head of the Herat Chamber of Commerce said.

© HOSHANG HASHIMI

 Islam Qala is one of the major ports in Afghanistan, through 

which most official trade with Iran is conducted

"The catastrophe was much bigger than imagined," he said, adding: "Unfortunately, irresponsible people have looted a large number of goods."

Qazi Zada said initial estimates were of "millions of dollars of losses".

Farhad added that investigators needed more time to examine the extent of damage.

Videos posted on social media on Saturday night showed the towering fire and huge clouds of thick black smoke billowing into the sky.

On Sunday security forces opened fire on a vehicle, killing one man, after the driver failed to stop at a checkpost that had been hastily set up to prevent suspected looters from entering what was left of the customs office compound

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© HOSHANG HASHIMI

Damage to power lines from the incident left large parts of Herat province without power on Sunday

An AFP photographer said hundreds of people had gathered at the site, trying to get access to the trucks.

Video: Huge blasts on Afghanistan-Iran border (Reuters)

Around 20 people were injured in the fire, according to Herat health officials.

The finance ministry said early findings suggested the blaze started in a tanker before quickly spreading and causing "heavy financial losses" -- including fuel, tankers and customs facilities.

Damage to power lines from the incident left large parts of Herat province without power on Sunday.

- Trucks fled over the border -

Islam Qala is one of the major ports in Afghanistan, through which most official trade with Iran is conducted.

Kabul has waivers from Washington allowing it to import oil and gas from Iran despite US sanctions.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the border "was held open for trucks, cars and people running from the fire".

Afghanistan's vice president Amrullah Saleh said hundreds of trucks were allowed to enter Iran to escape the fire.

Traders have been asked to use alternative border crossings.

The Taliban has regularly attacked fuel tankers they suspect of supplying foreign troops in the country.

In 2014, the hardline group destroyed more than 200 fuel trucks on Kabul's outskirts in an attack.

There was no indication that militants were behind Saturday's blaze.

However, insurgents assaulted a nearby security post shortly after the blaze broke out, taking advantage of the situation, Farhad said Saturday.

Security forces have been deployed around the port area.

Afghanistan has been hit by a surge in violence despite ongoing peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government, which have so far failed to achieve a breakthrough.

The rise in violence has led US President Joe Biden's administration to launch a review of a deal signed between Washington and the terror group last year that paved the way for the withdrawal of all American troops in the coming months.

str-mam-us/ecl/je

500 vehicles in flames after fuel tanker explodes on Afghanistan-Iran border

More than 500 vehicles burst into flames at the Afghanistan-Iranian border Saturday afternoon after a fuel truck there exploded, provincial officials told Afghanistan's TOLO News.

© AP Smoke rises from fuel tankers at Afghanistan's Islam Qala border with Iran, in Herat Province, on February 13, 2021.

The blaze took place at the customs office in Islam Qala, in Afghanistan's western province of Herat.

Photos from the scene show tall flames and plumes of thick black smoke, visible even from a distance.

At least 17 people were injured and taken to the Islam Qala clinic and Herat Regional Hospital, according to Mohammad Rafiq Sherzai, spokesman for the Herat public health department. No further information is available yet on casualties.

"Everyone was terrified. They were escaping. Cars were stuck," eyewitness Khalil Ahmad told TOLO News.

Herat Gov. Waheed Qatali said officials had sought help from Iran, as the Afghan side lacked the resources to put out the huge blaze.

Iran will dispatch relief and rescue teams to the region to assist in the emergency response efforts, as requested by Herat officials, according to the Iranian state-run IRNA news agency.

Iranian state-run Press TV reported that the damage was on the Afghan side of the border and did not affect Iranian customs.

"Up to now there has been no report about damage on Dogharoon border terminal," said Omid Jahankhah, supervisor of customs offices in Iran's Razavi Khorasan province, according to Press TV.

According to Press TV, Iran is a major supplier of goods to Afghanistan and that the terminals are often packed with fuel tankers.

© AP A fuel tanker exploded on February 13 at the Afghanistan-Iran border.

Lyft, Toyota join forces to boost hydrogen vehicles in Vancouver

The next time you fire up your ride-sharing app in Metro Vancouver, your driver might roll up in a top-of-the-line hydrogen vehicle — guaranteeing your journey, however far, is emission-free.

Lyft partners with Toyota to provide hydrogen vehicles to drivers

That’ll be the intended result of a partnership between Lyft Canada and Toyota Canada, announced this week. Under the deal, Lyft drivers will be able to rent a Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel cell sedan from one of three Toyota dealerships in B.C.’s Lower Mainland for use while picking up fares.

The cost to the driver would be $198 per week plus taxes and fees, and includes insurance, scheduled maintenance, and unlimited kilometres.

“This is highly competitive with car rental and/or car-sharing rates. We’re proud that through the partnership we can make it possible for people who don't own a car and would like to drive with rideshare to do so and earn supplemental income,” Lyft’s GM in B.C., Peter Lukomskyj, told The Weather Network.

Lyft Canada/Toyota Canada

Lukomskyj added that the program was intended to help Lyft reach its goal of a 100 percent zero-emission fleet by 2030.

Hydrogen fuel cells use a chemical process that combines hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity and water, with no greenhouse gas emissions. Earlier versions were used on the Apollo space capsules, providing power and drinking water to the crew.

As for the Mirai, Toyota says it has a range of 500 km, and charges in around five minutes. Lyft drivers will access them through the automaker’s KINTO Share app, and Toyota hopes the collaboration will expose more Canadians to the model.

“This proof-of-concept project ... allows more Canadians to experience hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles first-hand, demonstrating their viability and efficiency, especially for fleets,” Mitchell Foreman, Toyota Canada’s director of advanced and connected technologies, said in a release.

© Provided by The Weather NetworkLyft Canada/Toyota Canada

Neither Toyota nor Lyft received funding from the federal, B.C., or Vancouver governments, but all three were quick to sing the praises of the collaboration, not only for its implications for cutting transportation emissions, but also for its use of hydrogen fuel cell technology over other kinds of electric vehicles.

The federal government recently released its hydrogen strategy, hoping to take advantage of Canada’s abundant resources to cut in on a global hydrogen market that could be worth as much as $11 trillion by midcentury. Ottawa says Canada’s potential share could amount to $50 billion domestically, and employ upwards of 350,000 people by 2050.

As for its own use, the federal government says domestically produced hydrogen has the potential to produce up to 30 per cent of Canada’s energy over the same time frame, from transportation and generation to industrial uses, doing away with as much as 190 megatonnes of emissions.

Quebec-born cheetahs settling in well ahead of release into Zimbabwe wilderness


MONTREAL — A pair of Quebec-born cheetahs are adapting to life under the African sun in preparation to be released in a rare, international "rewilding" project that conservationists hope will help ensure the future of the species.

Big cat brothers Kumbe and Jabari are settling in well after recently making the multi-day journey from Quebec's Parc Safari to the Imire wildlife sanctuary in Zimbabwe.

The siblings are spending 60 days in quarantine before they are released into a 4,500-hectare reserve, and are already starting to act like wild cheetahs — much to the joy of Nathalie Santerre, the zoological director at Parc Safari who helped raise them.

Santerre said within 24 hours of arrival, the cheetahs had already learned to find higher ground — a habit wild animals use to spot prey or danger — and had showed an interest in hunting.

"They're very in tune with every little noise, every little movement," Santerre said in a recent interview.

Kumbe and Jabari were born at Parc Safari in 2019 — conceived through a breeding partnership with the Toronto Zoo — and were chosen for the project based on their strength, size and genetics.

It's hoped they will eventually sire cubs of their own and help restore Zimbabwe's wild cheetah population, which has declined to fewer than 200 animals from around 1,500 in 1975.

Both Park Safari and Canada's Accredited Zoos and Aquariums say they believe Kumbe and Jabari are the first Canadian-bred cheetahs to be released in Africa.

Santerre said Kumbe and Jabari were carefully raised in order to give them the best chance of thriving in the wild. They were kept within sight of their potential prey and fed animal carcasses to teach them how to tear into food.

While cats have a natural, strong hunting instinct — as anyone who's seen a domestic pet stalk a mouse can attest — Kumbe and Jabari's skills and endurance were developed by training them with lures.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the cheetahs will learn to feed themselves successfully in the wild, Santerre said. But so far, she added, "the boys" are exceeding every expectation — chasing small animals that venture into their enclosure and eyeing the larger prey animals they can see from a distance.

"You can see they're keen to get out on those plains and just start running," Santerre said.

The cheetahs will be equipped with GPS collars and monitored by rangers for the first year so they can ensure the animals are eating and finding water.

"Rewilding" is the process of reintroducing animals to an area where their species used to roam in the hope of re-establishing that population, according to a senior conservation biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Federation.

Carolyn Callaghan says the cheetahs' journey from Quebec to Africa — the product of a partnership between Parc Safari, the Aspinall Foundation and Imire — is an example of the international effort that is increasingly needed to save vulnerable animals. The partnership also reflects the shifting role of zoos, she said, from displaying captive animals to helping repopulate endangered species.

In particular, she said zoo breeding programs play an important role in ensuring at-risk species maintain as much genetic diversity as possible to keep populations healthy.

"It remains one of (zoos') mandates to connect people with these captive wild animals, but it has grown beyond that to this conservation genetics role and re-establishing population," Callaghan said in a recent interview.

Species have also been successfully reintroduced in Canada, she said, including Vancouver Island marmots as well as bison and whooping cranes.

Callaghan notes, however, that captive breeding and reintroduction are an inferior solution to protecting animals and their habitats in the first place.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2021.

Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press

Quebec-Born Cheetahs Soak Up Sun Ahead Of Release Into Zim Wilderness - NewZimbabwe.com
14th February 2021

CBC

A PAIR of Quebec-born cheetahs are adapting to life under the African sun in preparation for release in a rare, international ”rewilding” project that conservationists hope will help ensure the future of the species.

Big cat brothers Kumbe and Jabari are settling in well after recently making the multi-day journey from Quebec’s Parc Safari to the Imire wildlife sanctuary in Zimbabwe.

The siblings are spending 60 days in quarantine before they are released into a 4,500-hectare reserve, and are already starting to act like wild cheetahs, much to the joy of Nathalie Santerre, the zoological director at Parc Safari who helped raise them.

Santerre said within 24 hours of arrival, the cheetahs had already learned to find higher ground — a habit wild animals use to spot prey or danger — and had showed an interest in hunting.


“They’re very in tune with every little noise, every little movement,” Santerre said in a recent interview.

Kumbe and Jabari were born at Parc Safari in 2019, conceived through a breeding partnership with the Toronto Zoo, and were chosen for the project based on their strength, size and genetics.

It’s hoped they will eventually sire cubs of their own and help restore Zimbabwe’s wild cheetah population, which has declined to fewer than 200 animals from around 1,500 in 1975.

Both Park Safari and Canada’s Accredited Zoos and Aquariums say they believe Kumbe and Jabari are the first Canadian-bred cheetahs to be released in Africa.

Santerre said Kumbe and Jabari were carefully raised in order to give them the best chance of thriving in the wild. They were kept within sight of their potential prey and fed animal carcasses to teach them how to tear into food.

While cats have a natural, strong hunting instinct — as anyone who’s seen a domestic pet stalk a mouse can attest —Kumbe and Jabari’s skills and endurance were developed by training them with lures.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the cheetahs will learn to feed themselves successfully in the wild, Santerre said. But so far, she added, “the boys” are exceeding every expectation, chasing small animals that venture into their enclosure and eyeing the larger prey animals they can see from a distance.


“You can see they’re keen to get out on those plains and just start running,” Santerre said.

The cheetahs will be equipped with GPS collars and monitored by rangers for the first year so they can ensure the animals are eating and finding water.

“Rewilding” is the process of reintroducing animals to an area where their species used to roam in the hope of re-establishing that population, according to a senior conservation biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Federation.

Carolyn Callaghan says the cheetahs’ journey from Quebec to Africa — the product of a partnership between Parc Safari, the Aspinall Foundation and Imire — is an example of the international effort that is increasingly needed to save vulnerable animals. The partnership also reflects the shifting role of zoos, she said, from displaying captive animals to helping repopulate endangered species.

In particular, she said zoo breeding programs play an important role in ensuring at-risk species maintain as much genetic diversity as possible to keep populations healthy.

“It remains one of [the zoos’] mandates to connect people with these captive wild animals, but it has grown beyond that to this conservation genetics role and re-establishing population,” Callaghan said in a recent interview.

Species have also been successfully reintroduced in Canada, she said, including Vancouver Island marmots as well as bison and whooping cranes.

Callaghan notes, however, that captive breeding and reintroduction are an inferior solution to protecting animals and their habitats in the first place.

 

  

‘Poverty is expensive’: 

Toronto doctor says universal basic income actually costs society less

Canadians’ wealth is tied to their parents’ more than ever, StatCan finds

© THE CANADIAN PRESS IMAGES/Bayne Stanley 

A file photo of a $100 bill.

A new study has found that the likelihood of Canadians staying within the same income and wealth class as their parents has increased significantly.

The report, released Wednesday by Statistics Canada, measured the incomes of five different cohorts of children born between the 1960s and 1980s, as well as that of their parents.

It found that intergenerational income mobility -- the degree to which a person's income and wealth could move further from that of their parents -- had declined across all of the cohorts.

Read more: Poverty in Canada was bad pre-coronavirus. Experts worry what will come next

Children born to the wealthiest generation, baby boomers, were more likely to remain in the highest earning income class. On the other hand, children born to the age group which saw a lot of that wealth skip them, Generation X, were even more likely to remain among the bottom wealth bracket of society.

Benjamin Tal, CIBC's deputy chief economist of capital markets, attributes this increasing lack of wealth mobility between generations to what he calls "the largest wealth transfer in Canadian history."

According to him, the children of baby boomers most likely saw the benefits of that wealth -- like a better education or money to help pay a mortgage -- aid them in earning as much as their parents. The same effect was felt even stronger by the generation of kids born from parents who were in the lowest income bracket, ultimately widening the income gap in Canada.

Statistics Canada's report found that the probability of a child from the bottom 20 per cent of parental income distribution remaining there increased from 27 per cent from those born between 1963 to 1966, to more than 32 per cent among those born from 1982 to 1985.

Tal said that the already widening gap has been made even worse by the economic turmoil wrought by the coronavirus pandemic. Low-income earners, a majority of which were in the service sector, had their jobs wiped out by the pandemic while higher-earning career opportunities -- that could be worked remotely or from home -- saw a boom since the start of the health crisis.

"In addition, given that many wealthy Canadians are not spending because they cannot, but their income is still there -- in fact, their income is rising and their savings have been rising and rising -- they're sitting on a mountain of cash, roughly $100 billion dollars of excess cash looking for direction and many held by wealthy Canadians," said Tal.

Read more: Coronavirus: Low-income families least likely to be working from home, StatsCan says

"This means some of this money will be spent, some of it will be invested and some of it will go to the kids and will give them an even larger down payment on their house."

According to Tal, the solution to such a complex issue lies in education -- making sure people find the means to get a relevant education as well as breaking the negative stigma related with colleges and trades.

"Canada is the most educated country in the OECD, but Canada is also the number one country in terms of educated people living in poverty because we cannot transfer what we study into good jobs, because some people study the wrong thing that is not practical to the economy," he said.

"For me, that's the only solution."

Video: Data shows Canadian middle class shrinking in big cities

UK
Long-awaited quarantine hotels have 'failed at first hurdle', say unions


The government has been accused of repeatedly ignoring concerns that the quarantine rules for incoming passengers will fail to halt the spread of new coronavirus variants in the UK, unions revealed two days before the measures become law.  

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Hollie Adams/Getty Images

A statement from Heathrow airport reiterated its disquiet over ‘gaps’ in the government’s quarantine measures.

The GMB Union has said its members and airport staff had been telling the Home Office for the past fortnight that they were concerned that passengers from 33 designated high-risk countries were still being allowed to mix with other travellers and staff before entering hotel quarantine for 10 days at a cost of £1,750.

Speaking ahead of the long-awaited quarantine measures in government-designated accommodation, which come into force on Monday, Nadine Houghton, GMB national officer, told the Observer: “If you’ve got people getting off planes from the red list countries, then being crammed into areas with passengers who aren’t going into quarantine – and staff as well - you’ve failed at the first hurdle.

“Our members working at Heathrow airport, the ground staff, security staff, have been raising concerns about this for two weeks now. Heathrow just isn’t safe at the moment.

“We’re talking about the spread of new strains, so people entering from different countries into a small space is not a good look.”

She added that although the government had introduced measures that international arrivals to the UK had to provide evidence of a recent negative coronavirus test, there was still no way of knowing if a negative test was genuine.

Meanwhile the union Unite, which represents thousands of workers in the hospitality and hotel sector, said it still had not heard from the government, despite publicly sharing concerns that the guidelines on quarantine hotels failed to adequately protect workers from potential Covid-19 exposure. On Saturday a Unite spokesperson urged staff not to go to work if they felt unsafe.


Video: What are the new rules for travel? (PA Media)

In a separate development, a statement from Heathrow airport reiterated its disquiet over “gaps” in the government’s quarantine measures, just two days before they become law.

A Heathrow spokesperson said: “Some significant gaps remain and we are yet to receive the necessary reassurances. Ministers must ensure there is adequate resource and appropriate protocols in place for each step of the full end-to-end process from aircraft to hotel to avoid compromising the safety of passengers and those working at the airport.”

Other failings in the measures also emerged late on Saturday when the parents of unaccompanied minors travelling back to school in the UK urged the government to rethink hotel quarantine rules. One father pleaded: “Don’t lock up my children.”

Hundreds of children whose parents live and work overseas but who attend boarding schools in the UK are keen to return when the government allows schools to reopen.

Elsewhere, families complained that they were being treated as “guinea pigs” amid confusion over hotel quarantine rules.

Beckie Morris, 30, planned to repatriate to the UK with her family, but now faces a quarantine bill of thousands of pounds if they do so.

Related: ‘Significant gaps’ in Covid hotel quarantine plans, says Heathrow

The new mother told the Press Association news agency that there was “no information” on the government website about what to do with young children.

Regulations requiring people from “red list” countries to quarantine in hotels were published as late as Friday, telling people how to book their “managed self-isolation package” which includes a hotel, transport and testing.

The Home Office has been contacted for comment.