Cheers: to shattering glass ceilings. Congratulations to labour activist Lana Payne for being elected the first woman president of Canada’s largest private sector union, Unifor, which represents more than 300,000 workers. Payne had been the national secretary-treasurer of the organization and campaigned on a platform of transparency and accountability. Payne is also a former Telegram columnist and former Telegram reporter.
Cheers: to helping hands. A big thanks to the businesses who rallied to help get emergency supplies to the south coast of the province last week when communities were cut off by the wildfires that made the Bay D’Espoir highway impassible for days. It was not only a lesson in how vulnerable our food transportation routes are but also a great demonstration of the generosity of the human spirit. We’re not naming names here for fear of missing anyone, but the companies involved know who they are and how they helped, and surely that is a reward in itself.
Cheers: to acts of generosity. When Oleksi Senyk took a car for a test drive in St. John’s recently, he had no idea of the dominoes of kindness he had set in motion. “It was destiny,” he said afterwards. Oleksi and his family — wife Tata and son Myron — are from Ukraine and had to flee their home because of the war. The man who took Oleksi for that test drive was Capital Subaru sales manager Chris Smith, who asked general manager Greg Stowe if there was something they could do to help the family. Stowe contacted the dealership’s owners and they agreed to give the car to the family as a gift. “We were shocked, we never expected it,” said Tata. “I struggle to find the words.” We hope they enjoy using it to explore their new home.
Cheers: to news you can use. Thanks to documents obtained through the access to information process, Telegram reporters Juanita Mercer and Barb Sweet were able to give readers a look at the behind-the-scenes chaos caused by the cyberattack on the province’s health-care system last year. Far more than merely an internet outage, the attack stymied everything from non-urgent admissions to long-term care, to making payroll, to accessing a drug cabinet at the Janeway Children’s Hospital. The two-part series published last week is a wakeup call for any entity that could fall prey to a similar hack. Be sure to safeguard your systems and have a plan ready in case you ever find yourself without access to technology.
Jeers: to acts of greed and selfishness. The provincial government issued a news release on Friday that tells a shameful story of the illegal killing of salmon that is going on in this province. In just one 10-day span this summer, resource enforcement officers found three illegal gillnets, one of which was 85 feet wide and stretched right across a river. It contained 19 dead Atlantic salmon. What a senseless waste.
