TORONTO —
A Canadian family on a round-the-world trip plans to ride out the COVID-19 pandemic on a remote tropical island in the South Pacific despite the risk of dengue fever.
Emmanuel Samoglou, his wife Nicole Adoranti and their two-year-old daughter are staying in a small home in idyllic Rarotonga, part of the Cook Islands.
“It makes more sense to stay here,” said Samoglou, 41. “We want to stay away from airports and we feel in a small way this country has been very grateful and opened its hearts and arms to us and if we can help here, we’re going to help.”
The islands, with about 13,000 residents, have no confirmed cases of COVID-19, but the government has raised its emergency levels and is operating under the assumption the virus is circulating there. Three people were recently tested, but two came back negative while the third test has yet to come back.
The couple have lived abroad for years, including the last five in the United Arab Emirates, before having their daughter. They wanted to spend more time with their little girl and saved up before beginning their journey last June.
They visited family in Italy, Greece, South Korea and Thailand. Then they visited Bali and New Zealand before landing in Rarotonga in mid-February, Samoglou said.
He worked in Cook Islands as a reporter in 2013 and 2014, so they have friends there, but the country is now practising social distancing like much of the world.
“We’ve got the beach to ourselves, but it’s rainy season, so we’re inside much of the time,” he said.
Before the novel coronavirus began sweeping across the globe and killing thousands, the family’s main worry on Rarotonga was mosquito-borne dengue fever, which is circulating on the island. Unlike Canada, he said, the only run on supplies appears to be mosquito coils.
“There is plenty of toilet paper,” Samoglou said with a laugh.
The family thought about returning to Canada after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau put the call out last week for Canadians abroad to come home. But the Cook Islands began shutting down its flights last week in an effort to keep the virus at bay.
Now the only flights are to and from New Zealand, which has closed its borders to outsiders — although Samoglou said New Zealand would allow his family to transit if they wanted to leave.
“We actively considered going back to Canada but what kind of situation would that be?” he said. “We’d be in quarantine for two weeks, and fearful we’d infect family or vice versa. Although we’re alone here, we made the decision that it just might be better to stay.”
They also worry about the health-care system, which could not handle a large outbreak. The country plans to send anyone testing positive to COVID-19 to New Zealand should they need treatment.
Otherwise, the family plans to hit the beach when the sun shines as their daughter learns to swim. Food is also plentiful.
“There’s bananas and papayas that are growing in our backyard,” he said. “And it takes me a long time, but I can husk a coconut.”
The surrounding waters also provide a bounty of fish from tuna to mahi-mahi to marlin, he said.
“There’s tension with the virus at our doorstep, but there’s really this nice mentality here of working together and trying to do our best to deal with the situation,” Samoglou said. “We gotta do what we gotta do to stay healthy and to stay positive.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on March 26, 2020.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
