The COVID-19 pandemic is perhaps the most devastating global event since World War II, impacting billions of lives across at least 185 countries. More than 235 million cases have been confirmed and more than 4.8 million dead have been counted since January, but there is no question the real tally is significantly higher, and the human and economic cost unfathomnable.
Read MoreImagine having a potentially shorter wait time for surgery or having ready access to a second - or possibly third - opinion on your diagnosis. In many pockets of Canada’s vast and complex health-care system, physicians have worked effectively for years as a team under a “shared-care” model. Some surgeons are hoping this form of patient care can be widely adopted across surgical specialties, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read MoreHealth stories for CTVNews.ca.
Read MoreWe may associate the Royal Family with strict protocols and stiff upper lips, but King Charles III and the House of Windsor can trace their lineage back through centuries of bloody wars and brutal power struggles to 1066, when the illegitimate son of a duke and grandson of a tanner ascended the throne. I tried to somehow distill a thousand years worth of dynastic lineage into as many words in this overview that traces the Windsors back to William the Conqueror.
I cover a broad range of topics as a freelance general news writer at CTVNews.ca. From the serious to the absurd, you can find a (regularly updated) selection of those stories here as well.
Read MoreFor the second anniversary of the pandemic, I spoke with several doctors about the lessons learned and compiled a summary of essential COVID-19 facts and myths about the disease, masks, and vaccines for CTVNews.ca.
Read MoreTucked slightly out of the way under the shade of a patio umbrella, federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is mostly left alone on this sunny July morning at a coffee house in downtown Toronto, but a casual exchange with a passerby illustrates an approachability frequently characterized by colleagues and captured in public opinion polls. I interviewed Singh this summer for CTVNews.ca’s election profile.
This and other stories from the 2021 and 2019 Canadian elections and the 2020 U.S. elections.
Read MoreFemale surgeons in Canada have long faced gender-based referral biases that result in large pay gaps, and an inequitable and inefficient environment for patients, Canadian surgeons say, but with the urgency surrounding surgical backlogs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some say the time is ripe for major changes to healthcare.
Read MoreA flaw allowed access to sensitive customer information on Walmart's website, demonstrating the ease with which such data could be accidentally exposed. Walmart has since disabled the pages where this security flaw was found.
Read MoreAnything resembling "normal" may seem unfathomable as the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide dash past 80 million and Canada grapples with a second wave that far surpasses what it experienced in the spring.
It is a term that feels wildly out of place in 2020, but in some parts of the world where the virus has been all but eradicated, like Taiwan and Australia, life is about as close to "normal" as one can imagine during a global pandemic.
Read MoreWith more than a million cases and counting, COVID-19 has hit every continent except Antarctica. From Canada to South Korea, every country has responded differently - in some cases, quite significantly.
I teamed up with Jesse Tahirali, CTVNews.ca’s Digital Content Editor, to produce this interactive package to chart and compare the progression of jurisdictions that have reported more than 100 cases. I also highlighted a few countries and aggregated information on the measures they took and when to give some background and context.
Read MoreI wrote about Sacha Bond, a Quebec man who had been in a Florida prison since he was 19 - nearly half his life. Due to a series of events, he ended up in a coma, still chained to his hospital bed and under 24/7 guard. From the length of his sentence and the family’s efforts to bring him back to Canada to serve his time, to the state of U.S. prisons and issues around mental health and incarceration, it’s a tragic story on many levels. Sacha Bond died three days after this story was written, on Aug. 16, 2020.
Read MoreCries to defund the police have rung out in protests across the United States and Canada, sparked by the death of George Floyd, seen in a video pleading and gasping for air as a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee against his neck -- long after he had already gone silent. So what does police spending look like in Canada? I dug through budget reports and financial statements from the last five years to find out.
Read MoreSince COVID-19 was first reported in Canada, the disease has spread quickly and silently through nursing homes, leaving in its wake a devastating death toll. Stories from worried family members and reports -- including a damning one by the Canadian Armed Forces — have shocked Canadians. However, amid the alarming numbers, are the lesser-known stories of nursing homes that did not face a crisis. I spoke with several operators to see what actions they took that put them on such different trajectories. I thought a lot about what went wrong, which made me also think about what went right elsewhere. So this is a part of that story.
Read MoreI wrote more words than I planned looking into whether you can get COVID-19 through the ventilation in your home/building, what happened in a Hong Kong apartment building/complex in 2003 and this year, what experts think, why there's no "short answer", and more.
Read MoreFrom expats in China to those with family there, I spoke with a cross-section of Canadians and wrote about how the coronavirus outbreak has impacted their lives. Meanwhile, Canadians in China were also frustrated with the government’s lack of communication with its citizens in China.
Read MoreA hiring announcement by a very small publishing company over the summer has snowballed into an explosive confrontation on racism within the powerful Romance Writers of America (RWA) organization, leading to the resignation of more than a dozen board and committee members within a few short weeks and leaving the future of the influential trade group in doubt.
Read MoreFrom “Rupert’s Land” to Fifth Avenue: Founded in 1670, Hudson’s Bay Co. began primarily as a fur trading business, occupying some 40 percent of what is now Canada and a significant portion of what became Minnesota and North Dakota. With the iconic retailer turning 350 this year, I wanted to revisit a company I used to cover and take a peak at where it might be headed next.
I wrote a lot about this company’s modern day operations over the years, some of which can be read here as well.
Read More
