Plus, a run down of more stories you may have missed last week
Here’s your Weekend Posted. Last week, we promised to not regale you with photos of friends and relatives enjoying fairer climes abroad. But we will just make a note that, yes, we do know people who are having a darn fine start to February, and, no, we are not writing this from the beach. We do hope, however, that you’re reading this poolside.
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PICKY ABOUT BLOOD
An awful lot of strange stuff has happened over the last couple years because of anti-vaccine sentiment and objections to COVID-19 public-health measures. But, as the National Post’s Sharon Kirkey reports, one of the oddest may still be with us: People who need, or may need, blood transfusions have attempted to ensure that their blood comes from an unvaccinated donor. This isn’t the sort of thing Canadian Blood Services accommodates, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. In the pages of medical journals, bioethicists have been debating what this means. Should the medical profession agree to the request so that people get the care they need? Or, would it set a negative precedent and therefore should be ignored? “We need to be very clear and say, ‘Look, there is no reason to think that vaccinated blood is any different from unvaccinated blood, and there’s no evidence that patients can select safer donors than the volunteer blood system provides,'” said Maxwell Smith, associate director of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at Western University.
A MAN’S TENT IS HIS CASTLE
Over here at Posted, we’ve been fascinated by an Ontario case where a judge said, basically, that a person without a home has the right to pitch a tent on public land so that they have a roof — however so constructed — over their heads. It’s a bit of a complex thing, and it builds upon jurisprudence in British Columbia. Now, it’s come to Kitchener, Ont.; Waterloo Region was blocked by the court from evicting some 50 people camping on a vacant parking lot. Two National Post columnists have weighed in on the issue. The first is fellow Edmontonian Colby Cosh, who calls the decision “the new Magna Carta for Ontario’s homeless.” The second, Torontonian Chris Selley, who remarks, rather wryly, that “There isn’t much that’s more fundamental to ‘life, liberty and personal security’ than having a roof over your head.”
NATIONAL POST NEWS QUIZ
Ready to test your mettle against the news of the week? We bring you another edition of the National Post news quiz. Somehow, we missed the fact that Vladimir Putin, the Russian strongman, threatened to kill Boris Johnson, the affable former British prime minister.
ET CETERA
- In British Columbia, a prisoner sued his jailers for not providing him with Bengali language books. Except that he had already checked out a book in Bengali — and the prison system bought 10 more that could be read by west coast inmates.
- About a century ago, censors were outraged by James Joyce’s Ulysses. There was even an obscenity trial, which the book won (or, rather, the lawyers for the book won). But now, the book will come with a trigger warning, at the University of Glasgow, because of explicit sexuality, and references to “race, gender and national identity,” The Telegraph reports.
- In further news from across the pond, a man in the United Kingdom has pleaded guilty to treason for his plot to kill Queen Elizabeth II with a crossbow. Yes, you did in fact read all that correctly. Jaswant Singh Chail was arrested on Dec. 25, 2021, about nine months before the Queen died at the age of 96.
- By now, you’ve no doubt seen the headlines that the Liberals have backtracked on their gun-ban plans. Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, says it’s a “humiliating climb-down” for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
- Thirty prominent Quebecers — academics, activists, and community leaders — are asking that Amira Elghawaby be given a chance as Canada’s first special representative on combating Islamophobia. It comes after a Quebec-related controversy in which she’s accused of having anti-Quebec views.
- Fifty-one Alberta lawyers are decrying Indigenous cultural training mandated by the Law Society of Alberta. The province’s lawyers will meet on Monday to discuss scrapping — or keeping — the training program, which fulfils one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.
DEAR DIARY
In the weekly satirical feature Dear Diary, the National Post re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Tristin Hopper takes a journey inside the thoughts of Fred La Marmotte, who dropped dead right before Groundhog Day: Heavy lies the burden upon this most unusual of oracles. While I am but a mere rodent, a cruel deity has endowed me with terrifying powers of forecast.
SNAPSHOT