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There will be no large parades and no mass gatherings at cenotaphs to commemorate Remembrance Day this year. COVID-19 is preventing Canadians from participating in these traditional moments of honouring our veterans.
“We’re asking people, no matter where you are, if you are in a store or in your car, at 11 o’clock, pull over, stop what you’re doing and think about it for two minutes,” says Tom Irvine, the Dominion President of the Royal Canadian Legion.
The Globe and Mail talked to veterans across Canada about their plans for Remembrance Day, and what they will be reflecting on this year.
More coverage:
Nathan Greenfield: Even during the pandemic, Ypres residents find ways to commemorate Canada’s war dead
(photos by Alia Youssef, Fred Lum, Blair Gable, Darren Calabrese and Viktor Pivovarov)The Globe and Mail
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Developing a coronavirus vaccine is just the first step – distribution presents a whole new challenge
As Pfizer’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine emerges as the leading candidate to halt the pandemic, a top North American health care distributor is warning Canada’s existing public and private vaccination delivery systems aren’t ready for a successful and widespread vaccination program.
McKesson Corp. says the special handling and storage required for the most promising vaccines and the sheer volume of doses to be distributed threaten to “overwhelm existing infrastructure” in Canada.
“The existing public and private vaccine supply chains in Canada are not equipped to support frozen and/or ultra-frozen COVID-19 vaccines at scale,” Dimitris Polygenis, president of McKesson Canada Pharmaceutical Solutions and Specialty Health, said in a report.
More coverage:
Pfizer, BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine trials raise hopes for ‘early’ 2021 delivery
André Picard: There’s new hope for a coronavirus vaccine, but let’s not celebrate too quickly
Manitoba locks down, Toronto to impose new restrictions as COVID-19 infections surge
Trump campaign files lawsuit alleging Pennsylvania mail-in ballots violate U.S. Constitution
In a bid to block the Pennsylvania results that gave Joe Biden the votes he needed to win the presidency, the Trump campaign yesterday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania alleging that the state allowed an illegal, “two-tiered” system of voting, in which mail-in ballots received less scrutiny of voter identification than in-person voting.
Most of the dozen or more lawsuits filed so far by Republican lawyers have been quickly tossed out of court, but the new lawsuit alleges that the very system of mail-in ballots, as overseen by Pennsylvania election authorities, violates the United States Constitution.
The mail-in ballots are critical because 2.65 million were cast, out of a total of 6.75 million ballots in the state, according to the Trump campaign’s filing. Registered Democrats requested a majority of the mail-in ballots.
More coverage:
Andrew Coyne: There is no limit to what Trump might do, and we have to stop pretending there is
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Peel school board changing specialty program criteria to increase access for Black, Indigenous students: Faced with continuing criticism of its failure to address issues of equity and systemic anti-Black racism in its schools, the Peel District School Board will automatically accept Black and Indigenous students into specialty programs as long as they meet the admission criteria.
Airline industry faces uphill battle in bailout talks with Ottawa: As financial aid negotiations begin this week between Canada’s airline industry and the federal government, Ottawa is making it clear that one of the industry’s requests is completely off the table – cuts in passenger fees collected for airports and Nav Canada.
Ottawa urged to set up hotline for reporting Chinese state-sponsored harassment: Chinese Canadian groups are calling on the federal government to set up a national hotline where they can report intimidation or harassment by agents of the Chinese government. This follows a Globe and Mail story earlier this week that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is warning that undercover Chinese state security officials and “trusted agents” are targeting critics of Xi Jinping in Canada.
Speakers' agency purged some records of Trudeau family events: Some of the documents requested in Parliament’s probe of the WE Charity controversy were purged as part of the “normal course of business” and well before the issue was making headlines, according to the speaking agency that represents members of the Trudeau family.
MORNING MARKETS
World stocks gain as vaccine-inspired rotation continues: Global stocks gained on Wednesday as hopes for a working COVID-19 vaccine outweighed worries over surging infections. Just before 6 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 was up 0.58 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 rose 0.48 per cent and 0.57 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed up 1.78 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slid 0.28 per cent. New York futures were higher. The Canadian dollar was trading at 76.71 US cents.
WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT
Editorial Board: “By the end of March, as the virus was ramping up in Ontario and Quebec, new cases in B.C. had already peaked, and at a low level. In late May, B.C. had fewer than 10 cases a day. Quebec at the time was recording 540 a day and Ontario 340. B.C. Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry was lionized. The economy reopened. In June, some children were back in school. That first-round victory forged a sense of exceptionalism. But the confidence has shattered."
David Rosenberg: “So here’s the deal. If the transition is a smooth one and the Pfizer news has validity, there is no reason why the economy doesn’t then start to turn normal again. Or as close as possible. ... But if the markets have jumped the gun this week, the value trade will quickly morph into a value trap. Which is why some continued diversification in the ‘stay-at-home’ theme – including U.S. Treasuries and gold – is prudent, even if you buy into this latest hope-based market move.”
TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON
carBrian Gable/The Globe and Mail
LIVING BETTER
President-elect Joe Biden’s climate plan includes a plan to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, a pledge to rejoin the Paris agreement, a carbon tariff, and ambitions to boost clean-tech through stimulus measures and regulatory changes. What will a Biden presidency mean for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate agenda? Adam Radwanski and climate policy adviser Sarah Petrevan will take your questions this Thursday at 1:30 p.m. ET on Facebook.
MOMENT IN TIME: NOV. 11, 1918
Resident Marilyn Lahaeu holds up a photo of World War I soldier Pvt. George Lawrence Price, who was killed in the Belgian village of Ville-sur-Haine, in 1918, near her home in Ville-sur-Haine, Belgium, Sunday, Aug. 3, 2014.Virginia Mayo/THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP
A Canadian soldier is fatally shot two minutes before armistice
On this day in 1918, the Great War had been raging for more than four years and artillery, small arms, poison gas or illness had killed more than 20 million combatants and civilians. Then at 10:58 a.m., just two minutes before the Armistice of Compiègne came into force, effectively ending the conflict, a sniper’s bullet took one final life in the Belgian village of Ville-sur-Haine. The last soldier of the British Empire to die in battle during the First World War, as we now call it, was 25-year-old Private George Lawrence Price of Falmouth, N.S. Pvt. Price had enlisted 13 months earlier and served with the 28th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry’s Saskatchewan Regiment. Arthur Goodmurphy, who fought alongside Pvt. Price, once told the CBC he was present when the fatal shot was fired. “We never even thought about the war being over then, you know,” he said. “Poor old Price. He never even knew that it was over.” In 1991, Ville-sur-Haine erected a new footbridge across a canal and named it the George Price Footbridge in his honour. Danielle Adams
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