It was around 11 p.m. on Feb. 5 in Calgary when Mohammad Ajmal Nikzad heard the news on TV about the devastating earthquake that hit Kahramanmaras, Turkiye, where his mother and three siblings were living.
“I tried to call them. I called every one of them, but their phones were off,” he told CTVNews.ca on Tuesday. “I realized that something had happened to them and soon I booked a ticket and came to Turkiye.”
Nikzad’s mother, along with his brother and sisters, were living in a seven-storey building when the deadly 7.8 magnitude earthquake jolted wide swaths of Turkey and Syria. The entire structure collapsed.
“My family is under the building. Of four family members, two of were taken to hospital and two of them – my mother and my sister – are under dust … Please pray for them to be alive,” Nikzad said in a video he posted to TikTok on Feb. 7.
“When I arrived there, I saw the doomsday. I saw bodies with no legs, no heads,” he added.
After hours of searching, Nikzad said he found the dead bodies of his 23-year-old sister Sayeda Hashimi and his mother Najya among those pulled from the rubble by rescue teams.
He tried to find an ambulance or a vehicle to take them somewhere to be buried.
“I was on the street for six hours with my sister’s body in a bag, but no one was helping me. I desperately was asking every driver to stop and help me,” Nikzad told CTV News.ca.
Finally, a group of people answered his calls for help. After burying his mother and sister, he started searching for his 20-year-old sister Najma Hashimi and 25-year-old brother Sharif Hashimi.
Sharif Hashimi and mother Najya. (Supplied)
Nikzad found out his brother was taken to a hospital in the Turkish capital of Ankara for treatment. Both of his legs were amputated.
His surviving sister was taken to a hospital in Kayseri, where doctors informed him one of her legs had to be amputated.
“When I saw my sister, she could barely open her eyes. She was asking for my mother and other family members. Her eyes were full of dust,” Nikzad said. “She was in very bad condition.”
Najma Hashimi. (Supplied)
Last week’s earthquake, which centred around Kahramanmaras and also hit neighbouring Syria, has claimed at least 39,000 lives.
Nikzad’s family is originally from northern Afghanistan, in the Baghlan province. He came to Canada as a refugee 17 years ago and is now a Canadian citizen.
His mother was a school principal and often received threats from the Taliban to stop teaching girls, he says, but she refused. One day, his father was killed, and in 2017 the family decided to move to Turkiye for safety reasons.
Now, Nikzad’s wife and eight-year-old son are waiting for him at home in Calgary as he tries to find a way to bring his surviving siblings with him to Canada.
“I reached out to the Canadian embassy and also the Canadian government in Ottawa, they said they can do nothing for my siblings and I have to contact immigration, [Refugees and Citizenship Canada]” Said Nikzad. “I’ve sent several emails to immigration but they are not responding.”
Nikzad, who is a self-employed floor installer, says he feels devastated and helpless as he has to take care of his family in Calgary and the two siblings in Turkiye. He hopes the Canadian government can somehow help his family.
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.
