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Hyundai catches fire after routine maintenance
Bang and lightning came out of nowhere when Mike Tennant maneuvered his 2015 Hyundai Sonata into his driveway.
“A big flame shot up over the hood and I jumped out of the car and ran to the door and said, ‘Patty, my car is on fire!’ I was shaking so much I couldn’t call 911,” she said.
His wife, Patty Atwell Tennant, called the fire department and began filming on her phone as the fire spread and engulfed the car.
WATCH | Couple shocked by lack of investigation after Hyundai caught fire:
It had only been about 15 minutes since the Cambridge, Ontario man had picked up his car from the dealership after maintenance.
The firefighters intervened quickly and prevented the flames from spreading or injuring anyone. But Tennant’s top-of-the-line sonata — a 50th birthday gift for himself, which cost about $40,000 — was a cancellation.
More than a year after the fire, there is still no official lawsuit and no agreement on who is responsible.
George Iny, president of the Automobile Protection Agency, says the case is an example of a loophole in the public safety system that is revealed after many of the approximately 10,000 automobile fires that occur across Canada each year.
He says that because automakers aren’t required to report such fires to Transport Canada, models indicating safety flaws could be lost, meaning investigations and recalls could be delayed, putting the public at risk.
Transport Canada is working on proposed new regulations that would require auto manufacturers to collect information about fires and report it to Transport Canada to help identify safety flaws. Read more about this story here.
Game winner
Jeff Robertson)
Kansas City home kicker Harrison Butker is lifted into the air after kicking the game-winning field goal against the Cincinnati Bengals with three seconds left in Sunday’s AFC Championship game in Kansas City, Mo. Kansas City won 23-20 and will face the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl. Read more here.
In short
The federal government admitted it forced Canadians to use the ArriveCAN app even though it knew there were problems choosing which language they wanted to use — French or English — on the iPhone, Radio-Canada has learned. In a report obtained by Radio-Canada that has yet to be made public, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages said Ottawa undermined Canadians’ language rights. The case is now before the Federal Court, where the government will have to explain its handling of the question. Launched in April 2020, ArriveCAN was used to record proof of COVID-19 vaccination for all travelers wishing to enter or return to Canada. The complainant in this case, Darius Bossé, argued that Ottawa should not have enforced the use of the application knowing the problems associated with the display language. He wanted to return to Canada from the US in the summer of 2021 and was using an English version of the application which did not allow him to switch to French. Read more here.
The looming return of suspected ISIS members to Canada has brought shock, concern and fear to people who had been invited to Canada as a safe haven after the terrorist group nearly destroyed their former community in northern Iraq. “When I first heard the news, I felt the strength leave my body,” Huda Ilyas Alhamad told CBC News in his Winnipeg apartment. She is one of 1,200 Yazidi genocide survivors who have been resettled in Canada; she spent years as a slave to ISIS members. The Yazidis are members of an ancient Kurdish-speaking farming community in northern Iraq who practice their own monotheistic religion. They were victims of one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century at the hands of the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist group, which set out to eradicate the Yazidi people in a brutal campaign launched on August 3, 2014. Read more about this story here.
The vast majority of workers in Ontario have experienced nothing like this in their entire working lives: a job market tilted in their favor. Statistics show that unemployment is at an all-time low, record numbers of job vacancies and unprecedented labor force participation rates. The job market is “the tightest in half a century and it’s not unique to Ontario,” says economist Armine Yalnizyan. Politicians and business leaders sometimes portray what is happening as a shortage of workers, but this framing doesn’t sit well with some observers. “I’m not sure it’s so much a shortage of workers as it is a shortage of employers willing to pay the wages needed to make people work for them,” said Don Wright, a former public service chief in British Columbia, now a member of the expert group of the Public Policy Forum. Read more analysis here from CBC’s Mike Crawley.
We are about to see a tangible example of what the next generation of abortion battles might look like in a post-Roe vs. Wade United States. The scene: local pharmacies. Over the next few days and weeks, anti-abortion activists will protest across the United States at dozens of pharmacies whose chains intend to sell abortion pills. It’s their attempt to recreate the familiar decades-old demonstration scenes outside abortion clinics, updated to a new lens. A tandem of new realities explains this unusual protest backdrop: As red states race to ban abortion following a June 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade – a 1973 decision enshrining abortion rights – pills became the primary method of terminating pregnancies in the U.S. And these pills, available online, shipped by mail, and soon sold at participating pharmacies in pro-choice states, threaten to break through these new restrictive walls. Read more of this story from CBC’s Alexander Panetta.
At the open-air winter fair at the main exhibition center in Kiev, there is a game stall where people pay money to shoot an air gun at a paper target with a picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Oleh, an electrical engineer, recently braved -14C temperatures one night to go out with his wife, Tatiana, for a hit. “If we can’t have some fun in this situation, we’ll all just be destroyed,” he told CBC News, as a bullet hit the paper in Putin’s forehead. “We are in a difficult situation, but people need rest.” Since October, Kiev and other Ukrainian cities have come under a relentless onslaught from the skies of Iranian-made cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and drones, all launched by Russia to try to cripple the country’s basic infrastructure. Many have hit home, forcing Ukrainians across the country to endure frequent blackouts, freezing nights and no running water, as Russia’s invasion nears its one-year anniversary on Feb. 24. But Ukrainians have turned a potentially catastrophic situation this winter into a manageable one, into an extraordinary display of collective resilience. Read more here from Chris Brown of CBC Ukraine.
Now for some good news to start your Monday: As an attorney, Carolynne Burkholder-James has written many deathbed wills for clients and their families, and is keenly interested in helping someone who wants to live a longer life. “It really strikes me that we are on this Earth for such a short period of time,” said the female Prince George. That realization is part of what inspired her to give the gift of life to someone she may never meet. After months of medical screening, Burkholder-James flew 700 kilometers north for kidney removal surgery at Vancouver General Hospital on Dec. 1. “It’s really only been a month or so out of my life to have such an impact on other people. I felt really strongly that this was one way I could give back.” Read more here.
Opinion: Canadian newspapers are being plundered by monopoly capitalism
What matters is the journal’s purpose: to provide accurate information to help an informed citizenry make decisions, account for power, get to know each other, and ensure the well-being of their city. Frustratingly, this purpose is constantly being dismantled by the newspaper masters themselves, writes Patricia Elliott. Read the rubric here.
First person: Last year, Canada became my home. Feeling like a Canadian will take a little longer
When Sindhu Mahadevan dreamed of moving to Canada, she never imagined that the feelings of home and belonging didn’t come as a package. Read his column here.
The world this weekend
In this edition, which marks a somber anniversary six years after the Quebec City mosque shootings, remembering Hurricane Hazel McCallion — Mississauga’s longtime mayor who died at 101 — and the Arctic Winter Games make a triumphant return.
Listen here.
Today in History: January 30th
1923: The Grand Trunk Railway, which had been taken over by the federal government, becomes part of the Canadian National Railway.
1948: Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi, popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, is assassinated in New Delhi by a Hindu nationalist. Gandhi, the man who led his country to independence from British rule, was 78 years old.
1979: Iran’s civilian government announced that opposition religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was living in exile in France, would be allowed to return.
2013: Research In Motion announces a name change to BlackBerry.
