Eby, Rustad hold campaign events on Vancouver Island on final day of advanced voting

Canada will face Suriname in next month’s two-legged CONCACAF Nations League quarterfinal.

Suriname, ranked 138th in the world by FIFA, advanced by finishing second to Costa Rica in Group A of League A play. The 38th-ranked Canadian men, along with No. 17 Mexico, the 18th-ranked U.S. and No. 37 Panama, received a bye into the final eight of the CONCACAF competition.

Suriname, which finished ahead of No. 107 Guatemala, No. 156 Guyana and unranked Martinique and Guadeloupe in its group, will host the first leg of the quarterfinal on Nov. 15 with the return leg four days later at Toronto’s BMO Field.

The other quarterfinals are Panama versus No. 50 Costa Rica, the U.S. versus No. 61 Jamaica and Mexico versus No. 77 Honduras.

The four winners will advance to the CONCACAF Nations League Finals at Hollywood Park and SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, and also qualify for next summer’s Gold Cup.

The Canadian men have faced Suriname twice before, both in World Cup qualifying play, winning 4-0 in suburban Chicago in June 2021 and 2-1 in Mexico City in October 1977.

Canada lost to Jamaica in last year’s Nations League quarterfinal, ousted on the away-goals rule after the series ended in a 4-4 draw. The Canadians lost 2-0 to the U.S. in the final of the 2022-23 tournament.

Canada defeated Panama 2-1 in a friendly Tuesday in Toronto.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

VANCOUVER – Former Canada soccer captain Christine Sinclair is headed to the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame.

The 41-year-old from Burnaby, B.C., who added to her distinguished resume with a goal in the Portland Thorns’ 6-0 win over Vancouver Whitecaps FC Girls Elite in CONCACAF W Champions Cup play Tuesday at B.C. Place Stadium, is joined by four other athletes, three builder-coaches, one team, one pioneer, one media member and the winner of the W.A.C. Bennett Award in the 2025 induction class.

The other athletes are hockey’s Ray Ferraro, mountain biking’s Cindy Devine, rugby’s Nathan Hirayama and para swimming’s Walter Wu.

The builder-coach inductees are Saul Miller (sports psychology), Wes Woo (weightlifting) and the late Chandra Madhosingh (table tennis).

They will be joined by the 2000 B.C. Lions in the team category.

Broadcaster Jim Hughson enters the media category with the W.A.C. Bennett Award going to Robert Wright. The Meraloma Club founders go in as multi-sport pioneers.

Since 1966, the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame has inducted 452 individuals and 69 teams.

“Honouring the past — and inspiring the future — is at the very heart of the mission of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and this year’s honourees truly exemplify the best of sport in this province and beyond,” Hall chair Tom Mayenknecht said in a statement.

The Class of 2025 will be honoured at the Hall of Fame Induction gala in May.

Sinclair, who retired from international football last December, is in her final soccer season. She leaves as the all-time leading goal-scorer for both men and women with 190 goals scored in 331 international appearances.

Sinclair played for the Canada senior side from 2000 to 2023, captaining the women to three Olympic medals: gold and two bronze. She was named Canada’s Player of the Year 14 times.

Devine, a Canadian pioneer in her sport, won the first-ever official UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) world downhill mountain bike championship in 1990 at Durango, Colo., one of only two Canadian women ever to win this title.

The Venezuelan-born Devine, who now makes her home in Rossland, B.C., won world championship bronze medals in 1991 and ’92. A five-time Canadian national downhill champion (1990-94), she was inducted into the World Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in 2003.

Ferraro scored 20-plus goals 12 times and 40-plus goals twice during an 18-season NHL career (1984-2002) with the Harford Whalers, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, Los Angeles Kings, Atlanta Thrashers, and St. Louis Blues.

His 1258 NHL regular-season games, 408 goals, and 898 points ranked fourth, fifth, and seventh all-time among B.C.-born players as of 2024. He has worked as an NHL analyst and colour commentator since 2002.

Hirayama enters the Hall as one of Canada’s greatest rugby sevens players. Retiring in 2021, he ranked third-highest in scoring in World Rugby sevens play with 1,859 career points and led all Canadian men in both appearances (363) and scoring after 15 years on the national sevens team (2006-21).

Wu won 14 career Paralympic medals, including eight gold, four silver, and two bronze, ranking sixth all-time among Canadian Paralympic athletes. A native of Richmond, B.C., he also won eight career world championship medals: seven gold and one silver. Visually impaired since birth, he still holds three Canadian national records 20 years after retiring from competition.

Madhosingh, who died in December 2020, spent more than six decades in the sport of table tennis as a coach, organizer, administrator, official, and volunteer.

Miller, who now lives in North Vancouver, spent more than 40 years as a sports psychologist working with teams from the NHL, MLB, NFL, NBA and USFL, as well as pro hockey teams in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and Norway.

Vancouver’s Woo was one of Canada’s most successful weightlifting coaches over three decades and served as Canadian weightlifting head coach at three Olympics (1968, 1976, 1980), the first Chinese-Canadian coach of any Canadian Olympic team.

The 2000 B.C. Lions won the Grey Cup, defeating the Montreal Alouettes 28-26 in Calgary. And they did it the hard way, becoming the first CFL team to lift the trophy after a sub-. 500 regular season at 8-10.

Running back Robert Drummond was named Grey Cup MVP, while fullback Sean Millington was named Most Valuable Canadian. Lions quarterback Damon Allen scored two touchdowns and kicker Lui Passaglia, in his final game, kicked two field goals, two singles, and two conversions.

Founded in the summer of 1923 as a swimming club by a group of 12 friends at Vancouver’s Kitsilano Beach, the Meraloma Club has lasted more than a century and is one of the province’s longest-standing and largest multi-sport clubs.

Nearly 100 Meraloma athletes have gone on to represent Canada internationally in their sports while close to another 50 have played professionally.

Hughson spent more than 40 years in the broadcast booth, including 16 as play-by-play broadcaster on Hockey Night in Canada (2005-21). He also broadcast Toronto Blue Jays and Montreal Expos games. Hughson, who was born and raised in Fort St. John, B.C., won the NHL Broadcasters Association’s Foster Hewitt Memorial Award in 2019.

Wright, the W.A.C. Bennett Award winner, is a longtime administrator who served as chair of Tennis Canada from 1989 to 1991. Now living in Coquitlam, B.C., he was on the International Tennis Federation’s Federation Cup Committee (1987-89), chair of Sport BC (1986-88), chair of Tennis BC (1983-85) and chair of Basketball BC (1981-84).

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024

WINNIPEG – A candidate in last year’s Manitoba provincial election has been found to have forged two signatures on her nomination form.

A report from elections commissioner Bill Bowles says Gabrielle Simard-Nadeau, who was running for the Green Party in the Steinbach constituency, was having trouble collecting the 50 signatures required to qualify as a candidate.

The report says Simard-Nadeau spoke with a friend who said two relatives would be willing to sign, and Simard-Nadeau forged their signatures because there was no time to meet with them before the deadline.

Simard-Nadeau was approved as a candidate, but Elections Manitoba announced on the day before the election, without an explanation, that she was withdrawing.

The commissioner’s report says Simard-Nadeau was an inexperienced candidate who fully admitted to the forgery and took responsibility.

The commissioner has the authority to recommend charges be laid under the Elections Act, but is not doing so in this case.

“There are several factors I have considered, none of which amount to a justification for what Ms. Simard-Nadeau did, but which do, in my view, suggest that a prosecution is not necessary,” Bowles wrote in his report issued this week.

“This was her first time being involved in an election and, although she clearly knew that she should not forge signatures, I believe she did so in the pressure of the moment without much understanding of the seriousness of the offence.”

Bowles also said Simard-Nadeau accepted responsibility and forged the names of two people she fully believed would have signed her nomination papers if there had been more time.

While no charges were laid, the commissioner and Simard-Nadeau entered into a “compliance agreement,” which requires her to read the relevant section of the Elections Act and a code of ethical conduct.

“I am satisfied that Ms. Simard-Nadeau truly regrets what she did and would never make the same mistake again,” Bowles wrote.

The leader of the Green Party of Manitoba said she takes responsibility for what happened.

“Engaging inexperienced, sometimes overenthusiastic youth in our political process means mistakes are sometimes made. This is such an example,” Janine Gibson wrote in an email Wednesday.

“Many of our youngest would-be candidates did not recognize the time and effort required to gather qualifying signatures and were not able to gather sufficient signatures in the time frame of the 2023 election.

“One made a significant wrong choice out of desperation. We as a party missed offering the support needed for this potential candidate to understand the rules and their crucial significance for fairness in our democratic process.”

A previous case of forged signatures, stemming from the 2011 provincial election, resulted in a $3,500 fine.

That case involved an official agent in the Liberal party who forged nomination signatures for two candidates and initially denied doing so when confronted.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.