All of a sudden, ’tis the season to wear parkas … fuddle duddle dah … dah-dah dah dah…
Hosts Jodie Applewaithe and Joy Spearchief Morris
True winter — with snow swirling, tires skidding and buses creeping along or not showing up at all — chose this Midweek production day to arrive.
Once the crew straggled in to work and the grumbling subsided, though, we discovered that along with the snow, winter had brought us a whole new shovel-full of story ideas, and so we set to work looking into winter biking, tire tips and bad coughs, along with all the less seasonal news we were chasing.
First, though, looming storms of other kinds: Midweek’s Sophie Kuijper Dickson looked into what comes into focus when the labour struggles of 55,000 Ontario education workers are seen through a gender-based lens by an expert researcher. Then Mariana Tawil reported on a recently leaked study on emergency room wait times in the province.
Reporter Hafsatou Balde is dressed for the weather.
Constantina Varlokostas followed up on that with a report on how Ontario’s chief medical officer is warning those already strained ERs to brace for an “extreme surge” in demand as a triple threat of respiratory viruses step up their attacks, particularly on children and the vulnerable.
Host Jodie Applewaithe then interviewed a local driving instructor about the importance of weather-appropriate tires now that winter has hit. Reporter Ben Skene next checked the political climate south of the border, speaking with his brother in Rochester, N.Y., about reaction among his American university classmates to Donald Trump’s newly announced candidacy for president.
Jodie was back with a story on Latin dance and the Capital Bachata Festival fundraiser, and Hafsatou Balde covered the opening of Tealive, a new bubble tea spot in Ottawa. Midweek’s Mayson Maharaj then spoke with a scholar studying the mental health therapy potential for psychedelics such as magic mushrooms, LSD and DMT.
Morgana Adby brought us an in-depth look at an ongoing discrimination case that Black public servants have taken to Canadian courts and to the United Nations, and Wafa El-Rayes spoke with the co-ordinator of an event in Ottawa to mark the upcoming Transgender Day of Remembrance.
The ghostly presence of reporter Spencer Nafekh prepares a report on winter biking.
Among the parkas, scarves and toques heaped in our newsroom on this first-storm day were … two bicycle helmets, one of which belonged to intrepid reporter and cyclist Spencer Nafekh. He turned his fresh commuting experience into a story by gathering winter cycling tips from experts on what he called “a whole different ball game” from riding in the other three seasons.
With the 2022 FIFA World Cup about to start in Qatar, Constantina Varlokostas returned with a rundown on how players on the Canadian team have to compete not just with opposing teams but also against the distractions of important controversies.
And what the heck, since it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and there’s not a darned thing we can do about it, we ended the show with visits to two local pre-holiday craft sales — one with Ben Skene to the annual Shopalpalooza at Sacred Heart High School in Stittsville, and the other with Caitlin Redmond to the fundraising craft fair held by the Heroes Equine Learning Program.
Might as well let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…