They were the team that drafted her and now, the team that is giving her the first taste of being traded.
Canada’s Kia Nurse had her name called by the New York Liberty in the 2018 WNBA Draft, beginning her journey in the league. Fast forward two years later and she is now a member of the Phoenix Mercury.
“I didn’t expect it to come but I had a feeling something was happening,” Nurse told CityNews after the trade in February.
The Liberty dealt her in a three-team trade that saw her end up in Phoenix with WNBA vets Skylar Diggins-Smith and Diana Taurasi.
“There is so much for me as a youngin’ that I can learn from them,” said Nurse.
This week, the WNBA opened training camp where Nurse was able to get advice from Taurasi and Diggins-Smith about developing her game.
“I asked them about what they have found success in and how they have got themselves out of shooting slumps every once in a while and they have been really great in between plays to help me with little things,” Nurse said from camp.
Nurse is just one of a handful of Canadians playing in the WNBA the season with two of her Team Canada teammates Bridget Carlton and Natalie Achonwa, who play for the Minnesota Lynx.
Nurse believes that with the leadership and talent on the Mercury, no team will be able to stand in their way of the championship this year. “I think we have a top team for sure.”
Last year, the 12 teams played a condensed season in a bubble like the NBA scenario in Florida because of the pandemic. This year will also be unique as some players, including Kia, will be leaving their teams to compete in the Olympics.
“This is going to be another one of those unprecedented times. It will be different then what we saw in the bubble just because we are in market and we are traveling but you have to add in the fact that there are the Olympics and that some of us that will be leaving in the middle of the season to just leave and go play for another team and just come back,” said Nurse.
The WNBA Season will tip-off in its 25th year on May 14.
MONTREAL – A Quebecer has died due to a blood clot after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Quebec’s public health director, Dr. Horacio Arruda, made the announcement during the government’s Tuesday health update.
The woman who died was 54 years old.
Reports indicated she was from the Monteregie-South Shore region of Montreal, but Arruda wouldn’t confirm those details citing privacy reasons.
This is the first Canadian to die after this shot.
Health officials across Canada have maintained that these cases are incredibly rare and the benefits of getting the vaccine far outweigh the risks.
“What I regret is the story of this woman, I think if we could have prevented [this] if we knew that she was going to do it, we wouldn’t have given her the vaccine. But it’s impossible,” said Arruda.
“But I don’t regret [it] because we are sure we are preventing more deaths and complications of the disease, even with that vaccine.”
Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube says the province is currently investigating four cases of serious complications out of some 400,000 people who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“This is very sad but I don’t think it changes the program at all,” said Dube.
“In fact, we were expecting to have these complications with a certain number–it is within the number of persons that could be affected, we are in that number. That’s very unfortunate and we are sad about it, but that’s the price of vaccination.”
Dube says the government has been very clear about the risks associated with the COVID-19 vaccines, which was reiterated when the province opened up eligibility for the AstraZeneca vaccine to include those 55 years old and younger.
“I think that’s the price to pay to be vaccinated and to be going back to a normal life at one point in time,” he said.
Currently, the province is offering the vaccine to Quebecers between the ages of 45 and 79, and Arruda says there are no plans to change that strategy.
Around 80 Canada Post employees and contractors are self-isolating after a COVID-19 outbreak was declared at the Gateway West facility in Mississauga.
Peel Public Health has ordered the Shift 3 employees (the afternoon shift) within the Toronto Exchange Office at 4567 Dixie Road to leave the workplace and self-isolate for 10 days.
In the last seven days, Canada Post says 12 employees who work in the location have tested positive for COVID-19.
The crown corporation says they continue to provide on-site rapid COVID-19 testing and paid leave provisions are in place for any employees who have to self-isolate.
The Toronto Exchange Office is where inbound international mail items arrive are reviewed and cleared by the Canadian Border Service Agency and customers can expect some delays as contingency plans are implemented.
The Gateway location was previously hit by a massive COVID-19 outbreak back in January in which over 200 employees tested positive.
Peel Public Health has already ordered the partial closure of seven businesses since the implementation of their Section 22 order, including two Amazon fulfillment centres and a Brampton Canadian Tire distribution centre.
Toronto police say they are investigating after a man in his 40s was stabbed in Scarborough Monday evening.
Police said they were called at around 7:15 p.m. to the Progress Avenue and Borough Drive area for a report of a fight in a mall parking lot.
Investigators said the victim left the scene before police arrived, but was later found in a car on the side of Highway 401 after he called 911 to ask for help.
It is not known if the victim was the driver, police said.
He was transported to the hospital in serious, but non-life-threatening condition.
Police said they are searching for a suspect described as male and possibly in his late teens. He was seen wearing a black jacket, blue jeans and was holding a large kitchen knife.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the police directly. Tips can also be left anonymously with Crime Stoppers.
OTTAWA — With the help of the NDP, Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberal government has survived the last of three confidence votes on its massive budget.
The House of Commons approved Monday the government’s general budgetary policy by a vote of 178-157.
Liberals were joined by New Democrat MPs in voting for the budget, in accordance with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s vow not to trigger an election in the midst of a deadly third wave of COVID-19.
Conservative, Bloc Quebecois and Green MPs voted against the budget.
Votes on the budget are considered confidence matters; had all opposition parties voted against it, the government would have fallen, plunging the country into an election.
The government survived two other confidence votes on the budget last week, on Conservative and Bloc Quebecois amendments to the budget motion.
The budget, introduced last week, commits just over $100 billion in new spending to stimulate the economic recovery, on top of an unprecedented, pandemic-induced deficit of $354 billion in the 2020-21 fiscal year.
The government must eventually introduce a budget implementation bill, which will also be a matter of confidence.
Prime Minister Trudeau last week insisted the big-spending budget is not a launching pad for an election. He would not rule out an election this year, noting that he leads a minority government and saying it will be “up to Parliament to decide when the election is.”
While that sounded like Trudeau doesn’t intend to pull the plug himself on his government, it didn’t preclude the possibility that the Liberals could try to orchestrate their defeat at the hands of opposition parties. Nor did it preclude the possibility that Trudeau could at some point claim that a dysfunctional minority Parliament requires him to seek a majority mandate.
Some Liberal insiders believe Trudeau may pull the plug this summer, provided that the pandemic is relatively under control and vaccines are rolling out smoothly.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 26, 2021.
Funds are being raised for the funeral of a 13-year-old Brampton girl who is one of the youngest Canadians to die after contracting COVID-19.
Emily Viegas died on April 22, just days after first exhibiting symptoms and five days after testing positive for the virus.
Her father told the Globe and Mail her symptoms started as a persistent cough, then she had trouble breathing and eventually could not stand on her own. Days later she was rushed to hospital after he family found her unresponsive in her bed.
She was pronounced dead hours later after several attempts to resuscitate her. Doctors said she had pneumonia in addition to COVID-19.
Mayor Patrick Brown tweeted his condolences on Sunday.
“This is beyond heart wrenching,” said Brown. “As a parent, I am lost for words. Horrifying. We can never underestimate the seriousness of COVID-19 and the variants.”
Premier Doug Ford released the following statement on Monday.
“My heart absolutely breaks for this family. I can’t imagine the unbearable pain and sorrow they are feeling right now. It’s heart-wrenching and a devastating reminder of what this virus can do. On behalf of all Ontarians, I’m sending my deepest condolences to everyone who is suffering from the terrible loss of this young life.”
According to the Globe and Mail, Emily lived in an apartment in Brampton with her parents and her brother. Her brother and mother are also sick with the virus and her mother remains in the hospital. Her father has received his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
A GoFundMe page was setup shortly after Viegas’s death to help cover her funeral and burial costs and has already quadrupled the initial goal of $10,000.
Parts of Brampton have been among some of the hardest hit communities in the entire country throughout the pandemic. The city currently has a test positivity rate of approximately 22 per cent, the highest in Ontario.
Severe COVID-19 cases for younger Canadians have been extremely rare. Out of the over 200,000 people under 19 infected with the virus there have been 142 who have been admitted to the ICU.
As of the latest provincial numbers, there are currently 2,126 people in the hospital with COVID-19 and 851 in the ICU.
Ontario prepared Monday to receive medical support from the military as the province reached grim new milestones in COVID-19 hospitalizations and spread.
A senior federal official said Ottawa would provide military medical personnel to help Ontario’s overburdened health-care system, much as it did last spring during the pandemic’s first wave.
Up to three multi-purpose medical assistance teams are preparing to deploy. They are composed of nursing officers and medical technicians, as well as additional CAF members for general duty support as applicable.
The teams will be rotated in and out of the province rather than deployed simultaneously to ensure that CAF support is sustainable.
Work is underway to complete on-the-ground assessments, which will determine the exact number of military personnel deployed to Ontario.
The federal government will also fund the redeployment of the Red Cross to augment or relieve staff within medical care facilities.
The military will also be providing airlift for medical personnel from Newfoundland and Labrador and possibly other jurisdictions to go to Ontario.
The move comes after the province said it made a formal request for assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian Red Cross.
“What we are looking for is very specialized nurses that can help out in our intensive care unit beds and medical personnel that can assist our hospitals that are seeing disturbing rises in cases of COVID-19,” Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones said.
Hospitalizations and admissions to intensive care units have been breaking records in recent weeks, and public health officials said Monday both were once again at their highest since the start of the pandemic.
Dr. Barbara Yaffe, the province’s associate chief medical officer of health, said Ontario also reported its highest positivity rate, at 10.9 per cent, on Monday.
The province said 2,271 people were in hospital with COVID-19, but noted that more than 10 per cent of hospitals did not submit data over the weekend and that the tally would likely go up.
Provincial data showed 877 people in intensive care because of the virus and 605 on ventilator.
Toronto is expected to announce its first workplace closures today under new rules meant to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Public health units in both Toronto and Peel introduced the rules, which allow them to shutter establishments where five or more workers have tested positive for COVID-19 over a 14 day period.
Toronto Public Health said it was conducting investigations over the weekend and planned to announce which workplaces would be affected today.
Peel Region announced its first two closures on Saturday.
It partially closed two Amazon fulfilment centres — one in Brampton and one in Bolton.
Peel Region could also announce new closures today, as it says it plans to update its list of affected workplaces each weekday at noon.
Sang Hee Baek started nursing school at the University of Toronto last fall as the second wave of the pandemic was putting health-care staff in parts of the country through an endurance test, making her wonder if she’d made the right career choice.
Nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists and others working with COVID-19 patients were becoming physically and mentally exhausted as some hospitals filled up, deaths climbed and vaccines were not yet a reality.
“I was worried a little bit,” 30-year-old Baek said, recalling the questions she asked herself: “Am I making the choice at the right time or am I not knowing enough to enter this profession and solely relying on my passion?”
She’d applied to nursing school in her last year of a life sciences degree after connecting with community health nurses working with marginalized people, including deaf and hard of hearing adolescents who faced challenges making an appointment to see a family doctor.
“The waiting time for them to just book a translator service can be up to two weeks,” said Baek, who learned sign language to better understand their needs.
“That just made me look further into what’s going on with the Canadian health-care system and made me think: “I want to be a part of this. And if I want to be a part of it I want to be a nurse.”
The pandemic ultimately fuelled Baek’s passion for nursing as she realized the burden being carried by essential workers who are more vulnerable to COVID-19.
“I think it’s a chance for many of the nursing students or medical students, anyone who wishes to offer something to the field, to take it as kind of a mission,” she said of her decision to forge ahead in nursing with a greater awareness about the specific needs of diverse communities.
Baek’s sentiments about a career in health care are shared across the country as nursing schools see a rise in applicants, although the vast majority among the diverse talent pool aren’t being accepted due to a lack of spaces.
Elizabeth Saewyc, director of the University of British Columbia’s school of nursing, said a number of applicants over the last year have mentioned the pandemic motivated them to take on the challenges of a job that could have them saving lives.
She said others pointed out they saw more clearly how inequity is affecting marginalized populations during the pandemic.
The importance of nurses in the treatment of Spanish flu patients served as an impetus for the establishment of the University of B.C.’s nursing program in 1919.
Now, Saewyc said the COVID-19 pandemic has again revealed the value of nursing, with hundreds of applicants vying for 120 coveted spots at the University.
“In previous years we generally had between 500 and 600 applications and this year it was 860,” she said. “In our nurse practitioner and masters of science in nursing programs we’ve seen a 50 per cent or greater uptick in numbers of applicants, and even in our PhD program we saw a jump in terms of the number of applications.”
Lesley Mak, assistant dean and registrar at the University of Toronto’s school of nursing, said applications for the undergraduate program have jumped by almost 25 per cent, while those for the graduate degree have risen by around 20 per cent.
Kimberley Thomson of Prince George, B.C., is in her first year of medical school at UBC and is the western regional director of the Black Medical Students Association of Canada.
Thomson is hoping that the lessons learned about the gaps in the health-care system during the pandemic will better serve patients and health-care professionals who have been overwhelmed and overworked.
Neither she nor her fellow students have been deterred from pursuing their dreams of becoming a doctor.
But Thomson has come to understand that addressing issues like burnout among those working in hospitals that are running out of beds in the third wave of the pandemic will have to involve systemic changes after COVID-19 is over.
“That was a really interesting turning point for me because I started realizing that there’s some bigger system-level issues that I’m going to have to be going into as I continue in my career,” she said.
Expecting doctors to be personally responsible for making changes in their lives won’t improve the overall health-care system itself, Thomson said.
“So people are sometimes told, ‘Focus on meditating, your own well-being, exercise, eat well.’ Those are all great, but it detracts attention from the system-level issues, that people are working in these really toxic environments,” she said, referring to low staffing levels and a lack of resources such as personal protective equipment.
“I’m worried about, down the road, experiencing burnout and not loving and being passionate about what I do. That would be my biggest worry.”
OTTAWA — The federal government says it expects Canada to receive around 1.9 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine this week, including its very first shipment of single-dose shots from Johnson & Johnson.
Canada is set to receive about 300,000 doses of the J&J vaccine, which will come in addition to more than 1 million Pfizer-BioNTech shots and around 650,000 jabs from Moderna.
The country is not currently scheduled to receive additional supplies of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been in heavy demand after the eligible age for the shot was dropped to 40-plus in several provinces.
That demand is only expected to increase after the National Advisory Committee on Immunization adjusted its age recommendation for the shots, announcing on Friday that Canadians 30 and older should get the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Some provinces, however, have said they don’t have enough supply to expand eligibility any further.
Federal Public Procurement Minister Anita Anand said last week the government is in talks with the United States to secure additional AstraZeneca doses after President Joe Biden suggested his country might share the shots with Canada.
The U.S. has stockpiled tens of millions of AstraZeneca shots, but health officials there have not approved the vaccine for use.
Anand said earlier this month that Canada still expects to receive 4.1 million doses of AstraZeneca from all sources by the end of June.
The expected arrival of the first Johnson & Johnson doses later in the week follows the end of an 11-day pause in the U.S. as health officials looked into six cases of rare blood clots.
There have also been questions and concerns about possible contamination of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson doses at a Baltimore factory.
Health Canada released a statement on Sunday offering assurances that the two vaccines are safe.
“Health Canada has verified that the 1.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine imported into Canada from this facility meet quality specifications,” it said.
“The department reviewed test results of all vaccine lots that came into Canada, as well as the company’s quality control steps implemented throughout the manufacturing process to mitigate potential risks of contamination.”
The Johnson & Johnson vaccines expected this week do not come from the Baltimore facility, it added.
This week will also mark the last in which Canada will receive less than 2 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, as the pharmaceutical giants prepare to ramp up deliveries for the foreseeable future.
The government expects the Pfizer-BioNTech shots to arrive early in the week, and the Moderna doses around mid-week.
Provinces reported 231,540 new vaccinations administered over the past 24 hours on Sunday, for a total of 12,044,741 doses given since the start of the vaccination campaign in the winter.
Across the country, 1,018,381 people, or 2.7 per cent of the population, had been fully vaccinated. The provinces have administered doses at a rate of 31,780.926 per 100,000.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 26, 2021.
Lee Berthiaume, The Canadian Press
