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Welcome to your Weekend Posted. We hope you’re enjoying one of the last weekends — pretty much the last — before the holidays.
GOING SOUTH FOR MEDICAL CARE
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After a long wait for medical care and a misdiagnosed spinal tumour, Tom Blackwell and his wife Zena went south to the United States to get timely care. Scans in Canada had shown Zena’s spine and Canadian experts concluded it was spinal stenosis. But a trip to the United States came up with an altogether different diagnosis: the reason she had tingling in her arms and was having difficulty walking was because she had a large tumour growing on her spine. The couple rushed back to Canada, and Zena underwent surgery. The personal story, written by Tom Blackwell, a former National Post reporter, highlights a major shortage of MRI machines in Canada and the experienced technologists needed to operate them. The original wait time in Canada for a publicly funded scan was long enough that, by then, the tumour could have caused permanent damage or death.
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TREASON OF THE INTELLECTUALS
Niall Ferguson, the bestselling historian, has written of the “treason of the intellectuals.” Given current dynamics on campus, including what Ferguson sees as widespread antisemitism, perhaps a symptom of larger trends towards diversity and inclusion, Ferguson draws comparisons to the intellectual impoverishment on 1930s German campuses that saw academics align themselves with the Nazis. “A century later, American academia has gone in the opposite political direction — leftward instead of rightward — but has ended up in much the same place. The question is whether we — unlike the Germans — can do something about it,” writes Ferguson. Indeed, while some of what some see as antisemitism has been defended as free speech, Ferguson writes that this incident shows a double standard on what speech is tolerated at universities, and what speech is not.
DEAR DIARY
In the weekly satirical feature Dear Diary, the National Post re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Tristin Hopper takes an imagined journey into the thoughts of the United Nations: What is my purview? The world is my purview; its people, its monuments, its ecology. It’s both a blessing and a curse, for while I am uniquely able to tackle the most pressing global challenges of our time, I must triage my priorities.
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ET CETERA
- Two people, who had a romantic liaison in a Charlottetown, P.E.I., park in August, have been sentenced to time behind bars. The couple, both in their 40s, were seen partially naked and having sex on a blanket. Both were arrested and will serve more than 100 days in jail, combined, for the indecent act.
- For all that we hear about the word “woke,” it turns out that Canadians actually don’t know what it means. The most-searched definition in Canada — searched 7,200 times each month — is for “woke.” Other gems from Canadians’ search history: racism, recession, woman, aphasia, metaphor, pegging, capitalism, gaslighting and narcissist.
- At a Liberal party fundraiser in Vancouver on Thursday, crowds of pro-Palestinian protesters demanding a ceasefire staged a “die-in.” Some protesters were draped in white sheets, covered in red paint, as they lay upon the ground outside the hotel. Tickets for the Liberal event, about affordability, cost upwards of $850.
- An 11-year-old boy has died after getting hit by a puck during a junior hockey league practice near Montreal earlier this week. Officials have not said where the boy was hit, but it is known that he was wearing all the proper protective gear.
SNAPSHOT
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