National Post

OTTAWA – The silence was the same.

In this awful pandemic, a year where everything has had to change, the National Remembrance Day ceremony on Wednesday also had to adapt.

Gone were the crowds that normally gather around the Cenotaph in Ottawa and spill out onto adjacent streets. This year they were told to stay home.

The artillery still fired a 21-gun salute, the sound echoing just a bit more off the empty streets. Office windows overlooking the memorial, normally crowded with people taking in the ceremony were empty, but a handful of construction workers watched from the roof of Parliament’s East Block.

The Canadian Armed Forces Central band still played, their shoes shined and uniforms pressed. A few veterans still took in the ceremony their medals polished and salutes still crisp.

In a normal year, more than 30,000 people can flood into downtown Ottawa, watching from the sidewalks and from the eastern side of the Parliament Hill grounds. When 11 a.m. hits, that mass of humanity is always perfectly silent and despite all that has changed in 2020 on Wednesday that silence remained the same.

But much else of the ceremony was different.

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Danny Martin, the Royal Canadian Legion’s ceremony director, said they knew well in advance this year would have to be different due to COVID-19.

“By sometime around June we knew we were going to be affected by it, we knew it wasn’t going away, he said.

Elbow bumps replaced handshakes at the ceremony, the few spectators were in socially distanced chairs with their masks on and the children’s choir brought just three members.

The legion live streamed the ceremony and television networks still broadcast it across the country, but Martin said moving to a completely virtual event was never part of the plan.

“In the spirit of the soldiers that fought, it was a physical thing, and we want this to be a physical thing,” he said.

Health regulations prevented them from having more than 100 people at the site, so they tried to include as many veterans groups as possible. In a normal year, a wide range of dignitaries would lay wreaths, but this year only a few including the prime minister and governor general did so in person during the ceremony. Dozens more were placed at the Cenotaph in advance.

Debbie Sullivan, was also there in person, in the role of Silver Cross mother, honouring her son Lt. Chris Saunders who died onboard the HMCS Chicoutimi, a sub Canada purchased from Britain that caught fire on its voyage to Canada from Scotland.

Martin said for many veterans a live in person ceremony is essential

“They come from a world where the technology isn’t there and they don’t relate to pictures being broadcast over Zoom,” he said.

COVID-19 is particularly deadly to people over 70 and the average age of Second World War veterans in Canada is 94. Martin said with that in mind the oldest veterans in Canada stayed home this year.

“We don’t have any of the World War Two veterans here because it was just too dangerous for them.”

Bill Black, president of the Ottawa chapter of the Korean War Veterans Association, was there representing his 105 member-strong group.

As he stood at the Cenotaph, 26 of his association’s members were at the Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre, in the Ottawa suburbs, a facility that has seen 13 deaths from COVID-19.

Black said the legion did a remarkable job keeping the ceremony as normal as possible. He said hopefully next year everyone will be able to return.

“It would be nice to be back here,” he said.

He said coming to the ceremony had been a constant for many of his colleagues.

“We have got one that will be turning 100 years old next month, but he is still active. He has been coming for many, many years but he couldn’t today.”

Maj-Gen. Guy Chapdelaine, Chaplain General of the Canadian Armed Forces, said COVID-19 had forced distance upon Canadians but it didn’t change the purpose of remembering.

“Our distance from one another diminishes neither our gratitude nor the inspiration we draw from the example of these heroes.”

Rabbi Reuven Bulka also addressed the ceremony and said the pandemic could help us all better relate to the sacrifice soldier went through.

“Today we are not at war, but we are in a battle for our individual and collective health and well being,” he said. “Those of us who never really went through war, now have a better idea of what it means to be separated from loved ones. Everyone one of us has been separated from loved ones.”

Bulka said the sacrifice veterans made was different in one key respect.

“Our veterans, who we remember today and always, they chose to fight for our country, for our freedom; Knowing that it meant separation from their family.”

He said that sacrifice has continued into this year as soldiers were pressed into service to help overwhelmed long-term care facilities.

“When care facilities were short staffed, whom did we call? Our soldiers.”

Traditionally, at the end of the ceremony after the dignitaries have left, waves of people walk up to the Cenotaph to take poppies off their jackets and place them on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Despite a plea for them not to come, a small handful of residents lined up on the edges of the ceremony to watch. When the barricades came down they came forward a few at a time, still keeping their distance and added their poppies to the pile.

By the afternoon, there was a pile of red poppies starting to cover the tomb. People stood silently waiting their turn, because the silence remained the same.

• Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com | Twitter: ryantumilty

OTTAWA – The silence was the same.

In this awful pandemic year 2020, a year where everything has had to change, the National War Memorial’s Remembrance Day ceremony on Wednesday also had to adapt.

Gone were the crowds that normally gather around the Cenotaph in Ottawa and spill out onto adjacent streets. This year they were told to stay home.

The artillery still fired a 21-gun salute, the sound echoing just a bit more off the empty streets. Office windows overlooking the memorial, normally crowded with people taking in the ceremony were empty, but a handful of construction workers watched from the roof of Parliament’s East Block.

The Canadian Armed Forces Central band still played, their shoes shined and uniforms pressed. A few veterans still took in the ceremony their medals polished and salutes still crisp.

In a normal year, more than 30,000 people can flood into downtown Ottawa, watching from the sidewalks and from the eastern side of the Parliament Hill grounds. When 11 a.m. hits, that mass of humanity is always perfectly silent and despite all that has changed in 2020 on Wednesday that silence remained the same.

But much else of the ceremony was different.

Danny Martin, the Royal Canadian Legion’s ceremony director, said they knew well in advance this year would have to be different due to COVID-19.

“By sometime around June we knew we were going to be affected by it, we knew it wasn’t going away, he said.

The legion live streamed the ceremony and television networks still broadcast it across the country, but Martin said moving to a completely virtual event was never part of the plan.

“In the spirit of the soldiers that fought, it was a physical thing, and we want this to be a physical thing,” he said.

Health regulations prevented them from having more than 100 people at the site, so they tried to include as many veterans groups as possible. In a normal year, a wide range of dignitaries would lay wreaths, but this year only a few including the prime minister and governor general did so in person during the ceremony. Dozens more were placed at the Cenotaph in advance.

Martin said for many veterans a live in person ceremony is essential

“They come from a world where the technology isn’t there and they don’t relate to pictures being broadcast over Zoom,” he said.

COVID-19 is particularly deadly to people over 70 and the average age of Second World War veterans in Canada is 94. Martin said with that in mind the oldest veterans in Canada stayed home this year.

“We don’t have any of the World War Two veterans here because it was just too dangerous for them.”

Bill Black, president of the Ottawa chapter of the Korean War Veterans Association, was there representing his 105 member-strong group.

As he stood at the Cenotaph, 26 of his association’s members were at the Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre, in the Ottawa suburbs, a facility that has seen 13 deaths from COVID-19.

Black said the legion did a remarkable job keeping the ceremony as normal as possible. He said hopefully next year everyone will be able to return.

“It would be nice to be back here,” he said.

He said coming to the ceremony has been a constant for many of his colleagues and he hopes to be able to return.

“We have got one that will be turning 100 years old next month, but he is still active. He has been coming for many, many years but he couldn’t today.”

Maj-Gen. Guy Chapdelaine, Chaplain General of the Canadian Armed Forces, said COVID-19 had forced distance upon Canadians but it didn’t change the purpose of remembering.

“Our distance from one another diminishes neither our gratitude nor the inspiration we draw from the example of these heroes.”

Rabbi Reuven Bulka also addressed the ceremony and said the pandemic could help all of us better relate to the sacrifice soldier went through.

“Today we are not at war, but we are in a battle for our individual and collective health and well being,” he said. “Those of us who never really went through war, now have a better idea of what it means to be separated from loved ones. Everyone one of us has been separated from loved ones.”

Bulka said the sacrifice veterans made is different in one key respect.

“Our veterans who we remember today and always, they chose to fight for our country, for our freedom. Knowing that it meant separation from their family.”

He said that sacrifice has continued into this year as soldiers were pressed into service to help overwhelmed long-term care facilities.

“When care facilities were short staffed, whom did we call? Our soldiers.”

Twitter: RyanTumilty
Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com

Warning, videos contain graphic content

Alek Minassian has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder, but the 28-year-old driver has already admitted he rented a van and drove it into pedestrians along a busy stretch of Yonge Street in Toronto in 2018. Minassian maintains that he is “not criminally responsible” for planning and executing the attack. On the first day of the trial, new video was submitted that shows how the deadly attack unfolded and police dashcam and witness footage of Minassian’s harrowing arrest. Watch the videos below.

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The U.S. reached record numbers of hospitalizations from COVID-19 on Tuesday, and has registered a million new cases for November already, the Associated Press reports.

New infection rates now far exceed 100,00 per day, for a total of more than 10 million. Citing the COVID Tracking Project, the AP reports there are 61,964 hospitalized with the virus in the U.S.

“The virus is spreading in a largely uncontrolled fashion across the vast majority of the country,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at Vanderbilt University, told the AP.

California and several states across the U.S. Midwest tightened restrictions on residents on Tuesday as Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, called on Americans to remain vigilant until a vaccine can be approved and distributed.

The new clampdowns were announced as the number of infections surged again with the onset of colder weather, straining hospitals and medical resources in some cities.

“There’s a real thing called COVID-19 fatigue, that’s understandable,” Fauci told CNN in an interview. “But hang in there a bit longer, do the things you need to do and we’ll be OK.”

The U.S. government could begin vaccinating Americans as early as December if Pfizer Inc moves quickly in gaining approval of a vaccine it developed with German partner BioNTech SE, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said on Tuesday.

Pfizer said earlier this week the vaccine was more than 90% effective against COVID-19, based on results from a large, late-stage trial.

Drug maker Moderna Inc said in late October it was on track to report early data from a late-stage trial of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine this month.

California has seen coronavirus hospitalizations spiral by 32% over the past two weeks, Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s health and human services secretary, told reporters at a briefing. Intensive-care unit admissions had spiked by 30%, he said.

Three California counties home to about 5.5 million people – San Diego, Sacramento and Stanislaus – must reverse their reopening plans and go back to the most restrictive category of rules as a result of the spikes, Ghaly said.

Those regulations ban indoor dining in restaurants, as well as indoor activities in gyms and religious institutions.

“We anticipate if things stay the way they are … over half of California counties will have moved into a more restrictive tier” by next week, Ghaly said.

In Minnesota, Governor Tim Walz announced new restrictions as the Midwestern state reported record-high daily COVID-19 hospitalizations, and medical systems said they may struggle to cope with the surge.

Minnesota reported 1,224 coronavirus hospitalizations on Tuesday, up from 1,084 the previous day, according to a Reuters tally.

Beginning on Friday, restaurants and bars in Minnesota must close dine-in services between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. and keep the number of patrons below 50% of capacity. The governor’s order also includes private social gatherings, which must be limited to 10 people from three households or less.

“We’ve turned our dials, we’re going to have to turn them back a little bit today,” Walz told a briefing.
In Illinois, which recorded its highest number of daily cases on Tuesday with 12,626 new infections,

Governor J.B. Pritzker told reporters a majority of the state’s regions were seeing higher hospitalization rates than in the spring.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds also took steps to curb the disease’s spread, limiting the size of social gatherings and imposing a targeted mask-wearing requirement for certain situations.

About 59,000 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized across the United States as of Monday, the country’s highest-ever number of in-patients being treated for the disease. Daily new infections exceeded 100,000 for the sixth consecutive day.

Hospitalizations are a key metric of the pandemic because, unlike case counts, they do not rise and fall with the number of tests performed.

The United States, the world’s third-most populous country behind China and India, has logged the greatest number of cases and deaths, although other countries have higher per-capita totals.

Fauci earlier on Tuesday welcomed the Pfizer vaccine announcement but warned the winter months promised to bring more infections as people stay indoors. Health officials were reporting more infections from small gatherings, an indication the virus is being spread by asymptomatic people, he told MSNBC.
Cases were also spiking in nursing homes, said Mark Parkinson, president and chief executive of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living.

Nursing homes in the hard-hit Midwest had seen a 120% increase in weekly COVID-19 cases since mid-September, the group said.

Trump’s departure from the Oval Office could expose him to a host of lawsuits and investigations, now that he is no longer protected by the presidential “cloak of immunity”, legal experts say.

From allegations of tax evasion to potential charges arising out of the Mueller investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, the outgoing president and his legal team can expect to spend some time in court.

Estimates of the number of cases vary, with some experts suggesting that there could be more than a dozen.

That’s not to say that Trump fully evaded scrutiny while in office.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has unsuccessfully fought tooth and nail to avoid the public release of his tax returns, with the Supreme Court rejecting his argument that he has immunity due to his office.

The Mueller report, published after a federal probe into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election, was also fraught with delays and obstructions by the president and his attorneys to prevent interviews being conducted and testimonies coming to light. The final report listed 10 incidents in which the president may have obstructed justice. Mueller, in the end, cited the Justice Department’s long-standing policy that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for criminal offences when investigators decided not to determine whether Trump interfered in the investigation.

However, the immunity is only for actions taken by Trump while he is in office and “it stops there,” David Weinstein, a former Florida federal prosecutor told USA Today .

“The short answer is that once he leaves the office, his cloak of immunity, actual or implied by (Justice Department guidelines), will disappear.”

Which means that like it or not, once Trump steps out of the office on Jan. 20, not only will he have to adjust to the new reality of life as a private citizen, but will also have to quickly find a way to protect himself against a litany of pending lawsuits and investigations, civil and criminal.

“He’s very vulnerable to prosecution,” Jimmy Gurule, a former Justice Department official in the George H.W. Bush administration told USA Today , referring to the investigation into Trump’s tax returns and other financial documents. “I think the threat is very real and very substantial.”

Currently, the two most significant legal threats Trump faces once he leaves the White House are investigations by Manhattan and New York prosecutors into his personal and professional financial dealings.

Prosecutors in Manhattan have subpoenaed eight years of Trump tax returns as part of an investigation that started with a probe into payments made during Trump’s 2016 election campaign and extended  to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump before he became president. Prosecutors are also looking into potential criminal activity within the Trump organization.

During his time in office, Trump has slammed the investigation as a ‘political prosecution’, but his legal pleas to shield his tax returns have fallen on deaf ears within the Supreme Court. In a 7-2 landmark ruling, the court ruled that no one, “not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding.”

Trump has since appealed to the Supreme Court a second time and judges have yet to decide whether to hear the case again.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James is also investigating claims that Trump’s company inflated the value of its assets to secure loans and get tax benefits after Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, claimed to Congress that the president lied about his assets.

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The average prison sentence for tax evasion is three to five years. The maximum fine is $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for corporations.

Cohen, meanwhile, is also suing Trump over the cost of his legal bills, which amounted to more than $2 million. In his suit, Cohen argued that Trump and his company agreed to cover the cost of his bills after Cohen became the focus of investigations by New York prosecutors and the Russia special counsel’s office.

However once Cohen decided to co-operate with prosecutors, he alleged that the Trump Organization immediately stopped paying his bills.

Trump will also face a number of defamation lawsuits, namely from women who have accused him of sexual assault and denigrating them publicly. Trump has repeatedly denied all allegations of assault.

Former Elle magazine writer E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in New York City in the mid-1990s. Trump, in turn, accused Carroll of lying to boost the sales of her memoir which include a description of the incident. In 2019, Carroll sued the president for defamation. She is also seeking DNA evidence from Trump to determine whether his genetic material matches that found on the dress she said she wore during the alleged rape.

Initially the Justice Department intervened on Trump’s behalf, arguing that he was acting in his official duties when he denied the allegations. However, the intervention was perceived to protect the president from legal action in  the middle of a reelection campaign and a federal judge ultimately blocked the intervention, ruling that Trump’s comments about Carroll “have no relationship to the official business of the United States.”

Former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos  filed a similar lawsuit in New York state court, alleging that Trump forced himself on her multiple times a decade earlier by kissing and groping her. After Trump accused her of lying, she filed a defamation lawsuit against him in 2017.

Trump may also face a lawsuit from one of his own family members, his niece Mary Trump, who first entered the spotlight after she released sordid details on her family in a book published earlier this year. In her suit, she alleged that Trump and his siblings cheated her out of millions of dollars in inheritance and gradually removed her from the family business.

“Fraud was not just the family business – it was a way of life,” according to a lawsuit filed in September in New York state court.

With files from the London Daily Telegraph

Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host, raised eyebrows Tuesday night after referring to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham as a “used car salesman” on her show.

Graham had caused a stir in recent weeks after appearing on Fox, begging people to donate to his Senate campaign in South Carolina, which he eventually won, beating Democrat Jaime Harrison.

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Graham said at the time that he was “getting killed financially” by Democrats on the fundraising front, and needed viewers to help out. In a slot on Ingraham’s show after the vote, he said his fundraising push, via her viewers and others, had helped him raise $108 million.

But when Graham started the same routine again on Tuesday night, directing viewers to his website, Ingraham wasn’t as receptive. She told him he sounded “like a used car salesman,” telling him: “enough,” the Daily Beast reported .

LOL

Laura Ingraham finally tells Lindsey Graham to stop hawking his campaign website on Fox News.

"Enough with the LindseyGraham dot com. We get the point. We get the point. This is like a used car salesman after a while." pic.twitter.com/IC65pZRZOd

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) November 11, 2020

Graham, the Daily Beast reports, has pledged $500,000 to efforts by President Donald Trump to roll back the recent election results before President-Elect Joe Biden can be installed in office. Also on his mind, in Georgia, are two Senate run-offs.

Even after Ingraham asked him if there was any other avenue through which viewers could help, like the Republican Super PAC the Senate Leadership Fund, Graham kept going about the website.

“Go to LindsayGraham.com and I will tell you how to help Senators (David) Perdue and (Kelly) Loeffler,” he said, the Daily Beast reported.

“All right, you want to be the clearing house, but enough with the LindseyGraham.com, we get the point, we get the point” she said back. “This is like a used car salesman after a while.”

Pfizer Inc. Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla cashed out 62 per cent of his stock in the company on the same day it announced the success of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine, a regulatory filing showed.

Bourla on Monday sold 132,508 of his shares at an average price of US$41.94 — a total of US$5.6 million — not far off the 52-week high of US$41.99 Pfizer at which the stock traded.

Pfizer’s shares increased in value almost 15% on the day of the vaccine announcement , Business Insider reported .

The sale was part of a routine, pre-determined trade, admissible under a specific rule in the Securities and Exchange Act. Rule 10b5-1 allows major holders in a corporation to prearrange the sale of a fixed amount of shares at a fixed time.

On August 19, 2020, Bourla filed to sell his shares.

“The sale of these shares is part of Dr. Bourla’s personal financial planning and a pre-established (10b5-1) plan, which allows, under SEC rules, major shareholders and insiders of exchange-listed corporations to trade a predetermined number of shares at a predetermined time,” Pfizer said.

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“Through our stock plan administrator, Dr. Bourla authorized the sale of these shares on August 19, 2020, provided the stock was at least at a certain price.”

In October, Bourla said in an open letter that he anticipated data about the vaccine’s safety would come out in the third week of November.

A little more than a week into November, on Monday, Pfizer and German partner BioNTech announced the experimental drug they had been testing in human clinical trials was more than 90 per cent effective in preventing illness.

On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. both accused Pfizer on Twitter of deliberately waiting until after the Nov. 3, 2020, election to release the results of its successful coronavirus vaccine trials.

Bourla, when questioned about the “remarkable” timing of the announcement, told CNN  that the company released it “when the science told us the data was available.”

A Pfizer spokesperson reiterated to Business Insider that the timing  of the announcement “did not have to do with the election.”

An independent body discovered no serious safety concerns in the vaccine and the two pharma companies expect to seek emergency-use authorization from the FDA in order to roll out the vaccine as quickly as possible.

With files from Reuters.

Tom Metzger, one of the most influential White supremacists in the U.S. for the past half-century, died on Nov. 4 at the age of 82.

A notice was posted to his website and a paid obituary made it into the San Diego Union-Tribune. No cause of death was listed in either announcement.

Metzger is credited as a leader of the new generation of White supremacists in the U.S., and a partial founder of the neo-Nazi skinhead movement. He spread his propaganda through a weekly cable television show “Race and Reason,” and by making the rounds on the television circuit. Though not as active in recent years, he still attempted to bloviate through social media and via his website.

Despite his role in inspiring the modern White supremacy movement, Metzger apparently grew to feel that he didn’t fit in the with the movement in recent years. A Democrat, Metzger criticized the White supremacy movement of today as “being controlled by right-wing conservative elements” during an email interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2019 .

He was born in Indiana, but ended up in Southern California, settling in Fallbrook, where he worked as a television repairman. He joined the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. Eventually, he became the grand dragon, or leader, of the group’s section in California.

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Metzger was a radical even within the community of White supremacists. Always outspoken, in 1980 Metzger won a three-man Democratic Party primary for Congress in San Diego’s 43rd District. In response, the party endorsed his opponent, Republican Clair Burgener, who won handily.

After parting ways with the KKK to run, unsuccessfully, for Congress, Metzger started the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), one of the core groups that began to associate skinheads with White supremacy.

“The skinheads literally frightened much of the White supremacist movement,” Morris Casuto, who served as regional director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in San Diego for over 30 years, told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “For these guys, violence was part of their persona, and almost part of their religion. Many racists avoided these guys. Not Metzger.”

Metzger’s hatred-infused swan song came in the highly publicized Portland trial which followed the murder of Mulugeta Seraw, a 28-year-old Ethiopian college student, in 1990.

Though he was not involved in the murder, in 1988, Metzger had sent one of his WAR leaders to Portland to help organize local skinheads. Within weeks, three skinheads had beaten Seraw to death. “Sounds like the skinheads did a civic duty, and they didn’t even realize it,”   Metzger said in a phone message from Jan. 30, 1989 that a lawyer played during the trial. Metzger also said that Ethiopians should get out of the country.

The skinheads who killed Seraw were imprisoned for murder, but the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL didn’t think that was enough. They targeted Metzger and WAR, arguing in a lawsuit that they were the ones who had sent the skinheads and shared in the responsibility.

The case caught the attention of the city, and much of the rest of the U.S. — particularly when a landmark verdict came back: Metzger and WAR were ordered to pay $12.5 million in compensation to the family of Seraw.

“The movement will not be stopped in the puny town of Portland,” Metzger told reporters near the end of the case. “We’re too deep. We’re embedded now. Don’t you understand? We’re in your colleges. We’re in your armies. We’re in your police forces. We’re in your technical areas. Where do you think a lot of the skinheads disappeared to? They grew their hair out, went to college. They’ve got the program. We planted the seeds.”

Jim “Mac” McElroy, a San Diego lawyer who had helped the Southern Poverty Law Center team in Portland pro bono during the case, was the one tasked with collecting the $5 million payment — the portion Tom Metzger owed out of the total $12.5 million. His first step was to sell Metzger’s house.

“I sold it to a nice Latinx family, which I thought was poetic justice,” McElroy told the Times of San Diego. “It was a huge fight, of course. Metzger tried to transfer it to his wife and I had to get that thrown out. He also tried to declare bankruptcy.”

Metzger, broke, moved back to Indiana, before finally relocating back to Southern California to be nearer to his family. He passed away in Hemet, California and is survived by six children, nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

There are early signs that Canada may be experiencing one of the few silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite double the usual volume of laboratory screening for influenza, the number of people testing positive for the virus is “exceptionally” low so far this season, says a Public Health Agency of Canada report.

In fact, only eight positive tests came back in the most recent week of reporting from across the country, and half may have merely been signs of flu vaccination, not actual spread of the virus, says the agency’s latest “FluWatch” report .

Just 12 flu cases were reported between March and October, compared to an average of almost 600 in each of the last six years during the same period.

Southern hemisphere countries like Australia, which have their flu season during the northern hemisphere’s summer, reported unusually little influenza in 2020. Experts suggest that masks, social distancing and more hand washing designed to combat COVID-19 had curbed the other virus, too.

Canada’s season is just starting. But if it enjoyed the same kind of flu respite, it would alleviate fears of a double whammy of COVID-19’s second wave, on top of the regular influenza burden.

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It’s too early to tell yet from the numbers here if we’ll escape such a “twindemic,” but Australia’s experience is a good sign, said Dr. Jeff Kwong, a public health professor at the University of Toronto.

“That’s encouraging,” he said. “COVID is more contagious than influenza, so if we can manage to control COVID, we should be able to control influenza activity.”

But that does not mean that Canadians should eschew the flu vaccine, said Kwong, especially since this country is seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases. If the coronavirus is transmitting broadly, then other respiratory viruses will also spread, he noted.

“There’s little downside to getting (a flu shot), so one more layer of protection is helpful.”

A reduced flu season would also not mean that COVID had simply replaced it on an equal basis; with rates of death and severe illness estimated to be several times higher, the coronavirus is a much more serious threat, said Kwong.

FluWatch is a weekly report that primarily uses a network of labs, hospitals and health practitioners to track laboratory-confirmed cases of the flu. A much larger number of people actually contract the virus but never gets tested. The report also uses a group of “FluWatchers” who report their own respiratory-infection symptoms.

According to the report for the week that ended Oct. 31, only one of the 40 or so regions it designates across country was reporting any flu — those eight cases — and there were no outbreaks.

By contrast, the report on the same week in 2019 reported 107 laboratory-confirmed cases — more than 10 times as many — in 24 regions of 10 provinces and territories.

That was despite 9,033 flu tests being administered during the 2020 week — more than twice the average. The percentage of positive tests was .07 per cent, compared to an average of 3.7 per cent during the previous six seasons — a 52-times difference.

And four of the most recent cases were linked to people receiving a flu shot, which contains an “attenuated” or weakened version of the actual virus. Such “live attenuated influenza vaccine” can be detected with a nasal swab, said the report.

“Despite elevated levels of testing, the percentage of laboratory tests positive for influenza has remained at exceptionally low levels throughout the period of March to October,” the document said.

The numbers could have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, including “changes in health care-seeking behaviour, impacts of public health measures and influenza testing capacity,” it said.

In fact, last flu season ended “abruptly” in March as lockdowns to contain COVID-19 went into effect across Canada.

• Email: tblackwell@postmedia.com | Twitter: tomblackwellNP

OTTAWA — Disability advocates are raising concerns over the Liberal government’s new assisted dying law, saying it lacks safeguards that would protect Canada’s most vulnerable people.

In the House of Commons justice committee on Tuesday, one witness described the “norm-shattering legislation” that would allow patients with non-terminal illnesses to be euthanized.

Their comments come as Parliament studies Bill C-7, which updates the Liberal government’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) regime, first introduced in 2016. The new legislation removes a provision that the natural death of a patient must be “reasonably foreseeable,” in response to a Quebec Superior Court decision in 2019 that the original law unconstitutionally restricted assisted death to terminally ill patients.

But disability advocates say the new law could ultimately lead disabled people in particular to seek euthanasia even in cases where the patient might recover to full health, and called on Ottawa to make adjustments to the proposed bill.

Dr. Heidi Janz, committee chair at the Council of Canadians with Disabilities, expressed her “alarm at the breakneck speed at which this committee is operating,” and called on members to extend public consultations on the legislation.

Taylor Hyatt, who sits on the same committee as Janz and lives with cerebral palsy, described her own personal experience with assisted dying after her long fight with a bad bout of pneumonia.

Hyatt said her doctor at one point suggested the possibility of medically assisted death, an experience that she worries will be replicated many times over if Bill C-7 passes. She eventually recovered from her illness, and says today that medical professionals overlooked the chances that Hyatt, who was then in her 20s, would return to health.

“All the doctor seemed to see, though, was a disabled woman alone, sick, tired and probably tired of living,” she said.

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Assisted dying has for years been a contentious issue in Canada and elsewhere, as policymakers seek to strike a balance between protecting patients and giving them their right to decide when faced with chronic illness. Current laws have twice been challenged in Canada on constitutional grounds.

Many healthcare professionals and advocacy groups support the Liberals’ assisted dying regime, saying it provides humane relief for patients grappling with chronic and often painful illnesses.

Patients who seek euthanasia are overwhelmingly people who have sought any and all alternatives, but who ultimately determine they have no other options, said Julie Campbell, an Ontario nurse who guides patients seeking assisted dying services.

“If I could give my patients anything, I would give them life,” she said. “But life isn’t necessarily the option they’re being presented with.”

“Many of them are choosing between very hard choices, and my wish for them to be better certainly doesn’t make that so.”

A recent Angus Reid poll, commissioned by Cardus, found that 77 per cent of Canadians considered access to MAID to be a basic human right. However 48 per cent of those respondents were “cautious supporters” citing concerns around potential abuses of the system, particularly for aging and vulnerable people.

The federal Conservatives are divided on the legislation. Opposition leader Erin O’Toole and 77 other MPs voted against Bill C-7 at second reading, with 43 MPs voting in favour.

Conservative members of the justice committee last week grilled several Liberal MPs about the bill, and questioned why Ottawa did not appeal the Quebec Superior Court decision.

Changes under the new bill would reduce the number of witnesses required from two to one, and drop a requirement that a patient must be able to give consent a second time immediately before taking their lives. Another provision drops the requirement that a person must wait 10 days after being approved for the procedure.

Dr. Ewan Goligher, assistant professor at the University of Toronto, echoed other criticisms on Tuesday by saying the new legislation implicitly singles out people with disabilities, and could lead to otherwise preventable deaths.

“Bill C-7 declares an entire class of people, those with physical disabilities, as potentially appropriate for suicide — that their lives are potentially not worth living,” he said. “Indeed were it not for their disability, we would not be willing to end them. I cannot imagine a more degrading and discriminatory message for our society to communicate to our fellow citizens living with disabilities.”

Others suggested that the changes to MAID are currently premature, as broader supports for people with disabilities remain inadequate, and therefore put vulnerable people at risk of misuse of the system.

“Until we’re committed to making sure that everybody has an equal opportunity to live a good life, then medically assisted death on the basis that disability is not the solution,” said Krista Carr, executive vice-president of Inclusion Canada.

In its 2019 decision, the Quebec Superior Court took issue with the original MAID law on the grounds that the requirement for natural death to be “reasonably foreseeable” was an arbitrary one, in which “suffering takes a backseat” to the question of how far away a patient might be from death.

“This is a flagrant contradiction of the fundamental principles concerning the autonomy of competent people, and it is this unequal recognition of the right to autonomy and dignity that is discriminatory in this case,” the decision said.

• Email: jsnyder@postmedia.com | Twitter: jesse_snyder

Marco Muzzo, who was sentenced to a decade behind bars for a drunk-driving crash that killed four people, has had his day parole extended for another six months, the National Post has learned.

“It is the Board’s opinion that you will not present an undue risk to society if released and that your release will contribute to the protection of society by facilitating your reintegration into society as a law-abiding citizen,” says the Parole Board of Canada’s decision, released Tuesday.

Muzzo, who pleaded guilty in 2016 to four counts of impaired driving causing death, and two of impaired driving causing bodily harm, was first released on day parole in May 2020, having served four years of his jail sentence. On Nov. 3, the parole board extended his day parole, and called for a parole hearing to discuss full parole.

“The Board has questions related to your offending and community behaviour that it would like to explore with you in a hearing setting,” says the decision.

The impaired driving charges stem from September 2015 , when Muzzo returned to Toronto on a private jet; he had flown in from Miami, where he’d been attending his bachelor party. He picked up his Jeep Cherokee, and drove towards his home in Woodbridge, despite having awoken in Miami feeling dazed and consuming three or four drinks on the plane.

Muzzo blew a stop sign in Vaughan, hitting the driver’s side of a minivan. The crash killed nine-year-old Daniel Neville-Lake, his five-year-old brother Harrison, and two-year-old sister Milly. The children’s 65-year-old grandfather, Gary Neville, was also killed.

The children’s grandmother and great-grandmother were injured in the crash.

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There were several restrictions placed on Muzzo when he was first let out on day parole, including avoiding bars and abstaining from alcohol and avoiding certain areas in the region of Toronto. He has been living in a halfway house; he will remain there and the restrictions also remain in place.

“Since release, there have been no known breaches of any conditions of your release,” says the decision.

The date of the full parole hearing — full parole was recommended by Correctional Service Canada, the board says — has not yet been set.

Jennifer Neville-Lake, the mother of the children killed and daughter of Gary, said in a statement posted to Facebook that she was “not surprised by their decision as I have come to expect little from the justice system overall.”

“As the man who destroyed my family gets closer to joining his, I face a holiday season that I no longer celebrate,” she wrote. “Now I go back to the endless waiting. For the date of the hearing. For the hearing. For the decision. For the disappointment I expect will come.”

• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson

EDMONTON — As countries around the world wrestle with a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of them are trying short, sharp lockdowns — a “circuit breaker” that shuts the country down for a couple weeks to curb the spread and then starts things back up again.

The idea, which has caught on in Wales, Germany and Poland, has arrived in Canada, too, with Manitoba and British Columbia both entering restricted periods to try and curb cases.

In Alberta, too, where the government has been hesitant to introduce wide-ranging lockdowns because of the economic consequences, several dozen physicians wrote to Premier Jason Kenney, seeking a temporary shutdown to bring case counts under control.

Noel Gibney, an emeritus professor at the University of Alberta’s faculty of medicine, said the impetus to write the letter came from the daily case numbers, increasing ICU admissions, and a Friday press conference where Premier Jason Kenney urged people to continue following guidelines that are in place.

The reality, Gibney said, is that as we enter winter and people congregate indoors, we are, quite simply, in a different scenario than spring, and that means considering new ways of tackling the pandemic, such as a short-term lockdown to get case counts under control.

“If people follow this, and it works, we will be able to lessen the degree of restriction in the future,” Gibney explained.

Gibney said the open letter doesn’t specify what specific actions actions the government should take — for example, whether bars, schools or churches should close — that’s a job, he said, best left to public health officials. But the letter details the risks to the health-care system posed by rising case counts. “When these resources are overwhelmed, mortality rates from COVID-19 and other potentially treatable conditions increase dramatically.”

“We have lots of beds in the system that we can put online, we have ventilators … we don’t have any staff, you cannot duplicate our staff, our staff are exhausted,” said Gibney.

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The Alberta government is considering further, unspecified, restrictions. As yet, few mandatory restrictions have been put in place across the province beyond capping private gatherings to 15 people.

Dr. Deena Hinshaw, the chief medical officer of health, said at her Monday briefing that the circuit breaker proposal is an “interesting idea,” but that the government is giving Albertans the chance to follow the rules and bend the curve before more stringent measures are put in place.

“We know there is no one perfect way … we need to look at all options on the table,” Hinshaw said.

As of Monday’s update, there were just shy of 8,000 active COVID-19 cases in the province, with 192 people in hospital and 39 in intensive care. There have been 369 deaths.

Asked recently about why the government hasn’t imposed lockdowns, Kenney said it would be a “massive invasion of people’s fundamental rights, a massive impact on not only their personal liberties but their ability to put food on the table.”

For several weeks, Alberta has been climbing towards new daily records of COVID-19 cases. Consistently, when pressed on future restrictions, Kenney and others have pointed to the devastation it could bring to people’s incomes.

“Look, we have tens of thousands of small businesses who are barely hanging on. Behind every one is someone’s life savings, a family whose entire future is at risk,” Kenney said on Oct. 20. “I really fear what the economic, social, mental and emotional health impacts of (repeated lockdowns) will be.”

• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson

Manitoba goes into lockdown Thursday, escalating from “restricted” to “critical” on its pandemic severity scale, as it bans social gatherings and restricts travel, trying to contain COVID numbers that are surging across the province.

Schools will remain open, but religious services will be closed, and non-essential businesses will be restricted to curbside pick up or delivery. Essential services like grocery stores and pharmacies can operate only at 25 per cent capacity.

Gyms, restaurants, sports facilities, libraries, casinos, museums and movie theatres will be shuttered in the lockdown that will be in place at least four weeks, or two incubation periods.

Non-essential travel is discouraged and will be restricted in the north.

Positivity rates exceeded 10 per cent over the last five days, and 383 cases were tallied in the Tuesday morning update. Manitoba’s recent spike has made its per capita case load the highest of any province.

The new cases were concentrated with the population in Winnipeg, with 216 cases, but distributed across all health regions, including 41 in the north. Five deaths were reported, all of elderly people in Winnipeg or the south.

Of Manitoba’s 114 deaths from COVID, nearly half, 45, have occurred in the last month.

“We are at a critical point in our fight against COVID-19, and we must do everything we can to protect our most vulnerable Manitobans and ensure our health-care system is there for Manitobans, when they need it,” said Premier Brian Pallister. “This is a team effort, and we all have a role to play in protecting ourselves, our loved ones and our community. By taking these measures seriously, we are going to save lives.”

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The ban on social gatherings, and restriction of social contacts to members of one’s immediate household, is among the strictest lockdown measures used so far in Canada.

Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin said the new level of lockdown involves a “short, sharp set of restrictions.” Pallister called it a “circuit breaker.”

The short, sharp lockdowns have been used in European countries to control surges of COVID and were proposed by a group of doctors in Alberta to control the virus in that province. British Columbia has also adopted a form of circuit-breaker lockdowns in the Vancouver Coastal and Fraser health regions in recent days to control COVID surges. There, people may only socialize with those in their “core bubble.”

Manitoba’s latest round of data showed 5,390 active cases, and 3,374 people who have recovered.

The current spread is so intense that there were fully 2,000 new cases in the last week alone, Roussin said.

There are more than 200 people in hospital, including 30 in intensive care.

COVID-19 is surging across Canada, with caseloads reaching record highs in various parts of the country and provincial governments reimposing restrictions to curb the spread. This is the state of the novel coronavirus in the worst-hit provinces.

Ontario

Ontario is reporting a record high of 1,388 new COVID-19 cases today, and 15 new deaths due to the virus.

Health Minister Christine Elliott says Toronto posted 520 new cases, a record number of COVID-19 cases for the second day in a row.

Premier Doug Ford was asked Monday whether the ballooning cases in the province pushed him to reconsider its new colour-coded system for pandemic measures, which loosened public health restrictions in all regions but Toronto when it took effect Saturday.

The tiered system places health units in colour-coded categories based on their caseload and transmission levels, and has drawn criticism for allowing activities such as indoor dining in restaurants in all alert levels short of a lockdown.

In Peel Region, the only area currently in the red category, local health officials imposed additional measures over the weekend in order to reduce the risk of transmission.

But Ford defended the system Monday, saying it was built to give each region the flexibility to enact further rules, as Peel did. “That’s the reason we have the framework,” he said.

Toronto, meanwhile, is remaining under a previous, more stringent system until the end of the week, at the request of local officials.

Mayor John Tory said the city would likely follow in Peel Region’s footsteps and impose “an enhanced suite of measures” to stem the spread of the virus, with more details to come Tuesday.

The city’s top doctor, Dr. Eileen de Villa, said the COVID-19 numbers seen over the last few days were among the “most concerning” she’s seen since the start of the pandemic.

The province also reported 159 new COVID-19 cases related to schools, including at least 103 among students.

Those bring the number of schools with a reported case to 601 out of Ontario’s 4,828 publicly funded schools.

Quebec

Quebec is reporting a seventh straight day of more than a thousand new COVID-19 cases, with 1,162 infections and 38 new deaths linked to the novel coronavirus.

The Health Department says nine deaths were recorded in the previous 24 hours while another 27 occurred during the past week. One death was before Nov. 3 and another was on an undetermined date.

Hospitalizations were down by six, to 534, while the number of patients in intensive care increased by six for a total of 82.

There are currently 10,937 active cases in the province.

While community transmission in Quebec was limited by the spring lockdown, it is now occurring in much of the province, said Roxane Borges Da Silva, a professor at Universite de Montreal’s school of public health.

The province has now reported a total 117,151 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 6,493 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, along with 99,721 recoveries.

Manitoba

Manitoba will be moving the entire province to the critical or red level on its pandemic response system, CTV News reported .

Starting Thursday, non-essential retail outlets will be limited to curbside pickup and delivery, and churches will not have in-person gatherings.

Social gatherings with anyone other than household members will be forbidden, and restaurants, museums, theatres and recreational activities must close.

Schools will remain open as the province’s chief public health officer says officials are not seeing much transmission within schools.

We need to flatten our COVID curve and we need to do that now,” Premier Brian Pallister said Tuesday.

There has been a surge of cases in Manitoba since a summer lull when, at one point in July, there was only one known active case.

There have since been outbreaks in long-term care homes and hospitals and widespread community transmission of the novel coronavirus. Intensive care beds, including those occupied by non-COVID-patients, are running close to capacity.

Manitoba leads all other provinces in per-capita active cases.

British Columbia

Over the weekend, B.C.’s chief public health officer issued directives requiring people living in two health regions to cut back on their social interactions in order to slow the rising COVID-19 case count.

Dr. Bonnie Henry’s latest directive on Saturday said that people in the Vancouver Coastal and Fraser health regions may only socialize with those in their “core bubble.”

Henry says dangerously high and rapid increases in COVID-19 cases has forced a reversal of the restart plan for two weeks

B.C. reported Monday 998 new cases of COVID-19 detected over two days, pushing the number of active infections to 4,891. Five more people have died after contracting the illness for a death toll of 281.

A majority of Americans believe that Trump should concede the election once all avenues of appeal are exhausted, a new poll states, and many are fearful that his refusal to do so may spark protests and a potential civil unrest.

Conducted by public opinion researcher Maru/Blue, the poll surveyed 1,506 Americans and found that 78 per cent of Americans believe that if the Electoral College formally declares Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 U.S. election, Trump should accept his defeat and begin a peaceful transition of power to the Biden transition team.

That’s not to say that the same majority of people unhesitatingly support Biden’s claim to the Oval Office. In fact 54 per cent of Americans polled believe that voter fraud has taken place during the election, with 17 per cent of those polled believing that it might have happened within their own communities.

It comes down to the process by which the election is assessed, according to John Wright, Maru/Blue vice-president.

“It’s one thing to expunge a president, it’s harder to expunge the taint of a potential fraudulent election,” he told the National Post.

The president, he said, is within his rights to assert that the election cannot be called until Dec. 14 — when the members of the electoral college body meet — and that between now and then, he is allowed to pursue legal options to contest the results. And the public agrees with him.

However, should the Supreme Court declare the election results legitimate, 87 per cent of those surveyed believe that Trump should then “accept the decision, concede, and begin transition.

“The Americans are looking for an untainted referee,” Wright explained, that will lean on law and process to determine the outcome of what has been a particularly bitter and divisive presidential campaign.

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That being said, 74 per cent of Americans polled believe that Trump will concede; Fifty-six percent of those polled believe that he may go so far as to defy a Supreme Court ruling in favour of Biden and refuse to begin transition.

“The reality is though, that they (Americans) don’t believe that he will step down,” Wright said. “So that leads to another dilemma.”

If Trump were to refuse to leave the White House, despite a Supreme Court ruling, he should be forcibly removed from office, 77 per cent of those surveyed say, although it is unclear what that would look like.

In fact, 23 per cent of Americans polled stated that Trump should be able to remain in office until he decides to vacate. This is Trump’s core group, Wright said, who are “totally with the president, come high or hell.”

But “even they believe that there is a process that should be followed,” Wright added.

The polarity around Trump’s future in the Oval Office has almost half of those polled fearing the possibility of violent protests within their own communities, while 52 per cent of those surveyed believe that the outcome could mean civil unrest, whether that be between groups, factions or even armed conflict.

The statistics paint an alarming picture of the future of the U.S., but Wright asserts that if there’s one thing most citizens are united on, it is their desire for democratic process.

The country “has not done away with its leader, it has dealt with it, and it is going to continue to deal with it the way it is set up (to)”, Wright said. “This is yet, its greatest test. And what the public seems to be doing is to want to follow that process.”

Morley Ornstein’s name is one of the 52 engraved on the Harbord Collegiate Second World War Memorial sculpture, honouring the boys from the downtown Toronto high school who were killed serving in the Second World War.

With close to 85 per cent of Harbord’s student body in those years belonging to the Jewish faith, it is not surprising that many of the names — including Ornstein’s — on the stainless steel memorial sculpture at the corner of Harbord Street and Euclid Avenue are Jewish.

However, for 75 years, the young Toronto airman’s final resting place in a war cemetery in Germany has been under a military tombstone marked with a cross.

Now after months of detective work by Canadian and international genealogy sleuths including two emeritus Harbord alumni who knew Ornstein’s family, the cemetery authorities who maintain the war graves have agreed to fix their decades-old mistake.

In January, Murray Rubin, Class of 1950, and retired judge Morley S. Wolfe, who attended Harbord in the 1940s, wrote to ask me about Morley Ornstein. The pair was behind the successful project to erect the new War Memorial Sculpture at Harbord in 2007. I am the author of a book about the contribution of Canada’s 17,000 Jewish servicemen and women to defeating Hitler in the Second World War.

A quick Google search turned up the photo of Ornstein’s tombstone at the Becklingen War Cemetery. It was shocking to see it was engraved with a cross, but not surprising.

Sometimes the Allies placed a cross on the tombstone because the proper paperwork was missing. Even if there was paperwork, the Jewish personnel sometimes had lied about their religion when they enlisted. They did this in order to avoid being captured by the Nazis and murdered along with the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. For similar reasons, other Jewish soldiers changed their names when they enlisted.

The Ornstein case sparked my hunt to find out why.

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While I can’t issue medals, British historian Martin Sugarman deserves one for his holy work with the graves of about 100 Jews who were killed in action during war. He keeps a rolling list of Jewish (or potentially Jewish) Allied personnel who were killed in the two world wars. Any graves that do not bear the symbol of the Star of David — some like Ornstein’s actually bear a cross — spark a new project to find out why and to try to correct the mistake.

Sugarman, based in London, England, is the archivist for Britain’s Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women. He works with next of kin, if possible, and liaises directly with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who oversee the 1.7 million Allied war graves around the world. Sugarman’s goal is to have the casualty officially recognized as Jewish, the records changed, and a new stone engraved and installed.

Sugarman took on the Toronto project.

Morley Ornstein was born in Winnipeg in September 1924, the youngest son of Benjamin and Esther Ornstein. His parents were among the tens of thousands of immigrants to Canada in and around the turn of the 20th century. They sought safe haven from the anti-Semitism and pogroms against Jews in Czarist Russia.

By 1925, the family had moved to Toronto, and settled in the predominantly Jewish neighbourhoods south of Bloor Street West near Christie Pits.

The young Toronto student was an assistant Boy Scout troop leader, and held a part-time job at his uncle’s radio store on Bathurst Street. He earned top marks in physics and geometry, although he struggled with Latin and French. Ornstein was an athlete, too. He was an excellent swimmer, and also played on Harbord’s sports teams, including hockey, basketball and rugby.

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, Ornstein was too young to enlist at 15. When he graduated two years later, now 17, Ornstein joined the army reserves working in the signal corps. Everyone liked Ornstein, and that was useful when he needed three reference letters to hand to the RCAF with his application.

By his 18th birthday on Sept. 24, 1942, Ornstein went in for his medical at the No. 11 Recruiting Centre in Toronto. He told them some of the reasons he was a good candidate.

“PROFICIENCY IN GEOMETRY AND PHYSICS. PATRIOTISM. GOOD HEALTH. DESIRE TO LEARN A TRADE FOR FUTURE YEARS,” Ornstein wrote in all capital letters on his application form.

The officers liked what they saw.

“Above average. Aircrew. Keen. Wide Awake,” wrote Flt. Lieut. F.H. Macleod, the medical officer in charge. “Athletic and smart. Plenty drive and pep. Excellent pilot material and he is very keen on pilot.”

A second officer reported that Ornstein was suitable, despite the fact that he was the child of immigrants to Canada. With a Romanian father and Russian mother, his file might have been flagged as someone who was potentially anti-war, or, worse, a Communist sympathizer.

The RCAF felt satisfied that Morley was not going to cause trouble.

“Boy quite assimilated and loyal,” wrote Flt. Lieut. M. Powell.

While Ornstein wanted to be a pilot, he had done so well in physics and geometry that the air force thought he would make a good navigator and bomb aimer.

They sent him to train in Guelph, then St. Thomas, and Malton. By Christmas 1943, Ornstein, then 19, had earned his wings. With his formal commission as navigator, he could proudly wear the stylized half-winged N badge, with the rank of Pilot Officer in the RCAF.

More training in Canada ensued until April 1944, when Ornstein was shipped out to England, in an eight-day crossing of the Atlantic.

While the Allies were preparing for the Normandy landings of June 1944, Canadian aircrews in the RCAF and RAF were flying fighter planes and also carrying out bombing raids over German-occupied Europe. But Ornstein would not be part of the action just yet: he was still in training, learning how to fly heavy bombers over the English countryside, including Halifaxes and Lancasters.

In mid-November 1944, Ornstein was posted to the RAF’s No. 101 Squadron, out of RAF Ludford Magna, as a navigator. He usually flew with the same pilot he’d crewed with in July, Reg Paterson, a Regina native who was just two years older.

They flew operations for five months. On March 23, 1945, Ornstein’s group was sent on a daytime raid to bomb Bremen’s railway bridges. His plane LL755 SR-U (for Uncle) was the leading aircraft and carried a crew of seven.

It would be their 29th mission. Most crews did not survive that many, but those who made it to 30 often received the opportunity to finish a tour, and be reassigned to less dangerous work.

The raid was scheduled to drop their bombs over Bremen around 07:00 local time. On the way back, Ornstein’s Lancaster was hit by flak. The left wing fell off. The plane started to “twist like a fiend,” according to a later account by the pilot.

Paterson would tell investigators after the war that he saw Ornstein with a parachute clipped on, and even helped get him into position to bail out of the plummeting plane.

The pilot and two others parachuted out and made it safely down to the ground, landing near the Bremen airport, but they were soon captured and interrogated. Paterson was shown Ornstein’s identity card and was informed that his young crewman was dead.

But the pilot never saw the body before being sent to a German POW camp near Barth for the rest of the war.

Ornstein’s parents always thought the Germans had captured their son after he came down onto a tree and dangled helplessly. Then he was shot. This is due to testimony given by some German children to Allied forensic investigators after the war, and contained in Ornstein’s official service records at Library and Archives Canada.

According to Aircrew Remembered, there was also a mystery as to who was really buried in the temporary grave designated as Ornstein’s.

When the Allied military experts exhumed four bodies at Osterholz, close to Bremen, the one purported to be Ornstein was a thin man who was 5-foot-5, and had brown hair. Ornstein’s attestation papers described him as six inches taller, at 5-foot-11 with black hair.

Lt.-Col. (Ret’d) David Bashow’s book No Prouder Place (2005) quotes the pilot, Paterson, describing Ornstein as a big man with a big appetite, even if the sandwiches the Jewish airman was eating didn’t adhere to Jewish dietary laws that ban pork products.

After the war, officials reburied the dead crewmen three hours to the east of Bremen, at the Becklingen War Cemetery.

According to Martin Sugarman, apparently efforts had been made to contact the family after the war for instructions about the tombstone. Receiving no reply, the War Graves Commission put a cross on it, by default.

A spokesman for the CWGC confirmed this is what happened. The Ornsteins had left their Euclid Avenue address by the time the war was over. When his mother, Esther Ornstein, wrote to the government to ask for more details on what had happened to her son, she was living in an apartment at 139 Sandwich Street East in Windsor, Ont.

In order to make the case that Morley Ornstein should be considered as a Jewish casualty of the war, Sugarman contacted historians in Canada, asking for help to find proof.

On his attestation papers, Ornstein wrote that he was of the Hebrew religion. His wartime Service and Pay book, still held by Library and Archives Canada in his military files, also says he was a Hebrew. Although many Jewish recruits faced systemic anti-Semitism before, during, and even after they enlisted in the Canadian forces during the war, Ornstein did not hide his true faith. Hebrew would be engraved onto his dog tags.

The CWGC still required more confirmation. We sent them Ornstein’s attestation papers, his parents’ marriage records, Canadian census entries from 1906, 1916, and 1921 showing they were Jewish, and even U.S. border crossing cards showing their religion when their mother took Morley, then a toddler, and his older brother Robert, then 4, to visit a relative in Buffalo, N.Y. Robert would join the army during the war.

But none of that was enough. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to locate Ornstein’s parents’ graves, which would have shown without a doubt that they were both Jewish, and that made Morley also Jewish. Robert changed his name and survived the war. He was buried in the United States.

Perhaps what did the trick was a heartfelt letter from Ornstein’s old family friend, Morley S. Wolfe of Brampton, now 92, who happens to share the same first name.

Here is the letter below from the well-known Jewish Canadian lawyer, retired justice, and long-time community volunteer and human rights worker.

In September, Sugarman received an email from a commemorative officer at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Maidenhead, England.

“Please be advised that the case for Flying Officer Morley Ornstein has now been accepted and the commission will now arrange for a new headstone to be engraved with the Star of David,” it said.

“Please celebrate,” came Sugarman’s excited email to us with the news. “One more success!”

For Wolfe, this project was “a work of the heart.”

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission promises to send a photo of the new tombstone when it is ready.

Prince Harry was saddened when his request for a wreath to be laid on his behalf was denied, the Sunday Times reports .

The organizers of a drastically reduced Remembrance Sunday ceremony prepared a wreath for the Duke, but it was never laid. Prince Harry — who now lives in the U.S. — requested the wreath be laid for him. Palace courtiers decided that no one would lay it on his behalf, as he no longer represented the monarchy.

The ceremony took place at the Cenotaph war memorial on Whitehall in London, where Prince William, Prince Charles, Prince Edward and Princess Anne laid their own wreaths. Another 26 veterans were also in attendance at the ceremony, as well as Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Queen.

The Queen was not consulted about her grandson’s request.

Remembrance Sunday — the Sunday closest to November 11 — is when the U.K. pays tribute to those who lost their lives in war. The Cenotaph ceremony is meant to remember those killed and wounded in armed conflict.

The Duke of Sussex stepped down from his royal duties in March. Since that time, relationships have soured between Prince Harry and his brother, Prince William with the two struggling to reconcile over Harry’s disinterest in returning to the fold of the royal family.

In place of the Cenotaph ceremony, Harry and Meghan Markle privately visited the Los Angeles National Cemetery on Sunday to honour the dead. The Duke and Duchess laid flowers picked from their garden at two grave sites of commonwealth soldiers, one who had served in the Royal Australian Air Force and one from the Royal Canadian Artillery, a spokesperson for the couple said.

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The couple also placed a wreath at an obelisk in the cemetery that is inscribed: “In Memory of the Men Who Offered Their Lives in Defense of Their Country.” Harry — himself a veteran — signed the wreath with a personal inscription, writing, “To all of those who have served, and are serving. Thank you.”

Harry also took the opportunity to go on a special edition of the Declassified podcast and discuss the significance of Remembrance Day, along with other veterans.

“Remembrance Day for me is a moment for respect and for hope. Respect for those who came before us and hope for a safer world,” Harry said. “The act of remembrance is a profound act of honour.”

Prince Harry served in the British army for 10 years, and rose all the way to the rank of Captain. He served two tours in Afghanistans.

The late Ukrainian Canadian poet Michael Gowda, who in 1907 enlisted in the Canadian Home Guard and sought to create a Ukrainian regiment to serve the British army, once wrote a series of verses addressed directly to his new homeland.

Written from the perspective of an immigrant allowed to live in Canada primarily to colonize the prairie, as 170,000 Ukrainians did between 1891 and 1914, “To Canada” describes these new Canadians as in some sense merely “holders of thy soil.” To be recognized as fully Canadians, their people would have to fight and even die for Canada. It would take a blood sacrifice for their children to one day be “free to call thee theirs,” as the poem reads.

It is an outmoded vision of Canadian citizenship but no less powerful for the cultural change that has occurred since then, as Ukrainian-Canadians established themselves in Canada over many generations, with veterans of every war Canada has fought.

Award-winning Winnipeg filmmaker John Paskievich said this poem “proved prophetic.” The sacrifice was real, and the sense of belonging was finally ensured.

His new documentary, A Canadian War Story, describes Ukrainian Canadians’ contribution to Canada’s war efforts. Working for the Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation Centre, he and other researchers tracked down details of veterans in Legion Halls and various archives, and gave voice to old correspondences.

As a story of racist exclusion giving way to acceptance, the film also offers a chance to reflect on the ethnic diversity of military service, especially from an ethnicity of Canadians who, like Japanese Canadians, were once persecuted as enemy aliens, even interned in work camps.

For Ukrainian Canadians in the late 19th and early 20th century, many of whom immigrated with the promise of title to a quarter section if they could farm it, resentment and suspicion were the norm. The film quotes then Prime Minister Mackenzie Bowell referring to the consternation felt by established Canadians as trainloads passed through Ontario on their way west, filled with “disgusting creatures… being bearing human form” but having “sunk to such a bestial level.”

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That was the climate in which Gowda tried to create a Ukrainian Canadian regiment as the threat of war grew in Europe. Canada was not interested. On the contrary, Ukrainians were suspected of sympathy for the enemy Austro-Hungarian empire, whence they came. Those who were not naturalized were forced to register as enemy aliens. Others were disenfranchised, and some were interned in forced labour camps.

There were exceptions, and the film describes how Filip Konowal, a Ukrainian Canadian from the allied Russian empire, became the only Eastern European born person to win the Victoria Cross, for “most conspicuous bravery and leadership when in charge of a section in attack.”

The second wave of Ukrainian immigration in the 1920s was similarly met with broad racism and exclusion. By the end of the 1930s, the reasons for enlisting were similar to other Canadians — patriotism, duty, excitement, lack of other work — but with that added cultural sense that Gowda’s blood sacrifice had not yet been paid.

The film quotes veterans such as Joseph Romanow of Saskatoon, who described an awareness that Ukrainian Canadians mustn’t be seen as second-rate citizens, and one way to do that was to fight for their country.

John Yuzyk of Rhein, Sask., said the economic climate was also so bad that “guys joined up because it paid and you could get three square meals a day.”

Ann Crapleve of Ladywood, Man., who would later participate in reconstruction efforts after the war, said: “I was a Canadian and wanted to do my bit for the country.”

The film ends with a description of Ukrainian Canadians assisting in this effort to rebuild Europe, and sometimes finding Ukrainians in camps for displaced persons, and facilitating their immigration to Canada rather than repatriation to the Soviet Union.

You can watch the film at www.canadianwarstory.com .R

Go to your wallet and pull out a Canadian $10 bill. Turn it over, and on the back right hand side there is an illustration of an elderly war veteran standing at attention beside the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

There are a number of stories attached to the mysterious soldier, but perhaps the leading one is that of Robert Metcalfe, a Second World War soldier whose story epitomizes that of all allied soldiers who bravely gave up their youth to stand for freedom and democracy.

Born in the U.K., Metcalfe was part of the over 300,000-strong British Expeditionary Force deployed to Western Europe to face the Nazi war machine.

Much of his job consisted of digging field fences near Vimy Ridge under the command of the French First Army. His was a dangerous job, constantly facing German bombardment, and Metcalfe was hit in the leg by German shrapnel while treating a wounded soldier.

Metcalfe’s ambulance came under German tank fire only a few miles out from a French field hospital. This should have spelled the end for him, but for reasons unknown the tank ceased fire and moved on.

Metcalfe was treated for his wounds and transferred with thousands of other soldiers to Dunkirk to be evacuated back to Great Britain, and on May 28 he boarded the HMS Grenade. Metcalfe was one of 33 fortunate evacuees to make it back to England. On its return trip, the HMS Grenade was attacked by a German Stuka and two bombs set it afire, killing 14 sailors.

Metcalfe was soon sent back into action. On his way to North Africa, his troop ship was spotted by the legendary German battleship, the Bismarck, and chased through the waters. But it was one of the few ships to escape the Bismarck’s net.

In North Africa, Metcalfe served under Field Marshal Bernard (Monty) Law Montgomery, doing battle against the fabled Desert Fox, General Erwin Rommel, at El Alamein. Following the decisive victory in North Africa, Metcalfe was sent to Italy as the war came to its bloody conclusion. And it was there that he met his wife to be, Helen Porter, a lieutenant and physiotherapist assigned to a Canadian hospital.

It was love at first sight. They were married in the nearby Italian village by the mayor. At the end of the war Metcalfe, who called himself a “war groom,” settled with Helen in Chatham, Ont. He became involved in local politics, and was voted chairman of the county board. After his retirement they moved to Ottawa, where he wrote a book of his war time exploits, “No Time for Dreams: A Soldier’s Six-Year Journey through WWII.”

As Metcalfe’s daughter relays the story, he one day received a call from a government official asking him to attend a photo-op. He had no idea that the photo would be used as a backdrop for the $10 bill, but Metcalfe died at the age of 90 believing that he was immortalized on that banknote.

The Bank of Canada will not confirm the identity of the elderly war veteran. Indeed, Monica Lamoureux of the Bank of Canada said only: “It’s not specifically showing one person. There were various models used by the artist, Mr. Metcalfe was one of them, and the final image is a composite.”

Many others who knew Metcalfe dispute the Bank of Canada’s explanation. Tom Dick, a fellow veteran who served with Metcalfe on the beaches of Dunkirk in July 1940, told an Ottawa Sun reporter in 2008: “If that’s not Bob Metcalfe, it’s his twin. I was rather surprised when I heard that the Bank of Canada was denying that was him. I always thought it was Bob and a lot of other people did as well.

“Maybe the man on the bill is a little taller than Bob and he never would have worn a blue beret. But saying that’s not his face, I don’t think you can say that.”

It’s a mystery that may never be solved. And perhaps that’s best.

Robert Metcalfe or not, the depiction is a legacy of all who fought and a remembrance of those who sacrificed their lives for peace and freedom. May all their memories be for a blessing.

Bernie M. Farber is Chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, a writer and human rights advocate.

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In spite of some of the highest spending on health care among developed nations, Canada ranks near the bottom of the pack when it comes to the availability of doctors and hospital beds and has the longest wait times of the whole bunch, concludes a new report from the right-leaning Fraser Institute.

The report, released Tuesday, is the fifth iteration of the think-tank’s analysis of health care, which this time around compares 28 developed countries with universal health-care systems to attempt to analyze how Canadian health care performs relative to peer countries around the world.

Canada spends more than 11 per cent of its GDP on health care, the highest of all countries in the study except for Switzerland, but this doesn’t necessarily translate into the top-tier medical care Canadian politicians — and the public — are effusively proud of.

“Despite Canada’s high level of spending, availability and access to medical resources is generally worse than in comparable countries,” the Fraser Institute study found.

Canada ranks 26th out of 28 countries when it comes to the number of doctors per capita — ahead of Korea and Japan but behind the United Kingdom — and 17th when comparing the number of nurses per capita, ahead of Slovenia and behind France. (On the nursing front, Canada just beats the OECD average; we’re well behind when it comes to doctors.)

As well, Canada scores poorly on other indicators: We have just 10.5 MRI machines per one million people and 16 CT scanners per one million people; the OECD average is 18 per one million and 29 per one million, respectively.

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In spite of these figures, Canada does relatively well by some of the other measures the Fraser Institute uses. On doctor consultations, Canada scores slightly above the OECD average, and also above average on the rate of CT scans. We’re behind the average though on MRIs and dead last on the rate of acute-care discharges.

“Canada’s performance is mixed, performing well, or at higher rates than the average OECD country, on about half the indicators examined, and at average to lower rates on the rest,” says the report.

Wait times are especially bad: Just 43 per cent of Canadians are able to get a same-day doctor’s appointment when sick, placing us in a tie for dead last with Norway. (In the Netherlands, the winner, near 80 per cent of patients are able to do so.)

We also rank at the bottom when it comes to wait times for a specialist, with 63 per cent having to wait more than four weeks and 30 per cent waiting more than eight weeks and the worst for wait times for elective surgery, with 18 per cent of people having to wait four months or more for treatment.

When it comes to actual clinical outcomes, we do well on survival rates for breast and colon cancers, but worse than the OECD average for diabetes-related amputation and obstetric trauma.

“Clearly, there is an imbalance between the value Canadians receive and the relatively high amount of money they spend on their health-care system,” the report says.

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