Producer Cindy Tran lines up the show. (Newsroom photos by Kevin Philipupillai)
Hosts Zoya Davis and Sarah O’Leary were all smiles to anchor our second Midweek, even if you can’t see their grins behind the masks — and rightly so, since it was quite a show.
(Our hosts are wearing these sorts of masks for each other’s safety while sharing our broadcast booth because they’re less muffling than the cloth ones they wear elsewhere in the workplace.)
The show opened with a look at why Canada is increasingly attractive to international students — and how international students from Nigeria celebrated their country’s national day here in Ottawa with a karaoke night.
Then we changed pace, figuratively and literally, as Midweek’s Ben Andrews introduced us to a man so badly injured in a random drive-by shooting last year that he was told he’d never run again, I’m but just knocked off a 42-kilometre marathon as a fundraiser for other trauma victims.
Zac Delaney told us about a growing shortage of veterinarians in Ontario, and Ariel Harker reported on the Beechwood Cemetery’s battle to scrub moth eggs off its trees before they hatch into dangerous (to the trees) crawling critters.
Anda Sipolins, 71, volunteered to help scrub L.D.D. moth eggs from trees in Beechwood Cemetery. (Photo by Ariel Harker)
Midweek’s Ralph Jean-Jacques looked ahead at the cross-town university women’s soccer matchup, and Ariel looked backwards at the trouble that flared after the two biggest universities in Ottawa met for the men’s football Panda Game.
Then Jen Osborne brought us the reflections of a former Mixed Martial Arts fighter about his controversial sport.
Midweek’s Sarah O’Leary took us to a ceremony on Parliament Hill to mark Orange Shirt Day in remembrance of the suffering of Indigenous children in residential schools and throughout their lives as they dealt with the damage done to them there.
Behind the glass in the fish bowl of our control room, producer Cindy Tran takes the show to air.
Camille Vinet reported on how Carleton University students plan to celebrate Thanksgiving this year as COVID-19 lingers on, and Meagan Gillmore followed up on that theme with a look at how vegans have their own ways of celebrating what’s traditionally been one of the meatiest holidays in the calendar.
And this month’s calendar also has Halloween coming up, so Midweek’s Jen Siushansian took us off to this year’s Sahmain Halloween Psychic and Craft MarketFaire.
We also found out how one theatre company in the region made sure the show still went on despite pandemic shutdowns, and we also went looking for all the drama that must have unfolded when Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp all went offline for six whole hours two days before our show. The answer we got was, well, “Meh…”
We closed with a look at an online food-studies conference, and a food drive to help local families.
All that and more on this edition of Midweek!