A month-by-month look at the tumultuous year of 2019.
1 – Marnie McBean was named chef de mission of Canada’s Olympic team for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games. The Toronto rower is a three-time Olympic gold medallist.
2 – Ex-Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca died in Bel Air, California at age 94. Iacocca put the Mustang in Ford’s lineup in the 1960s and enjoyed a 32-year career at Ford and then Chrysler. 8 – Environmental groups said heavily-blacked out documents released by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association showed Canada’s spy service overstepped its legal authority by monitoring groups opposed to Enbridge’s now-abandoned Northern Gateway pipeline. The Security Intelligence Review Committee cleared CSIS of any wrongdoing.
9 – Bombardier announced plans to lay off half of the 1,100 workers at its Thunder Bay, Ont., railway car plant. Two major contracts in Ontario – for the Toronto Transit Commission streetcars and Metrolinx GO Transit rail cars – were slated to halt by the end of the year. 09 – Actor Rip Torn died at the age of 88. No cause of death was given. Torn started his career with a series of dark, threatening roles and later did a 180-degree turn, taking on some of the wackiest parts in movies and TV shows.
10 – Canada’s premiers want the federal government to seek an exemption from the United States for its Buy American measures. 11 – The head of an Ontario committee that helps appoint justices of the peace resigned after reports that he had ties to Premier Doug Ford’s former chief of staff. 18 – A man screaming “You die!” burst into an animation studio in Kyoto, doused it with a flammable liquid and set it on fire – killing 33 people in an attack that shocked the country and brought an outpouring of grief from anime fans. Thirty-six others were injured.
22 – The Canadian Press promoted managing editor Andrea Baillie to editor-in-chief, the first woman to oversee editorial operations at the national news wire.22 – Chris Kraft, the creator and longtime leader of NASA’s Mission Control, died in Houston, just two days after the 50th anniversary of what was his and NASA’s crowning achievement: Apollo 11’s moon landing. He was 95.
26 – The Supreme Court ruled that military members accused of serious offences under military law do not have a constitutional right to jury trials. In a 5-2 decision, it said the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees Canadians a right to a jury trial for serious offences carrying a maximum sentence of five years or more, except in the case of “an offence under military law tried before a military tribunal.
28 – The trades began for the Toronto Blue Jays – sending Eric Sogard to the Tampa Bay Rays. The next day pitcher Marcus Stroman was dealt to the New York Mets. On the 30th, David Phelps was went to the Chicago Cubs. On the 31st, the Jays traded Cal Stevenson, Joe Biagini and Aaron Sanchez to the Houston Astros and Daniel Hudson went to the Washington Nationals.
31 – Sobeys announced it would phase out plastic bags by February of 2020. It said shoppers would need to bring their own totes or lug home their groceries in paper bags.2 – Calgary MP Deepak Obhrai, the scarf-sporting, fun-loving elder statesman of the Conservative caucus and a beloved character on Parliament Hill who championed the virtues of tolerance and human rights, died just weeks after discovering an aggressive form of liver cancer. He had just turned 69.
4 – A gunman in body armour opened fire in a popular entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, killing nine people, including his own sister, and wounded dozens of others. The gunman – 24-year-old Connor Betts – was killed by police within 30 seconds of the first shots being fired. 8 – Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. announced he was leaving his post to return to the private sector in Toronto. David MacNaughton was a key point of contact between Canada, the U.S. Congress and the Trump administration during tense negotiations of the new North American free trade deal.
11 – Bianca Andreescu became the first Canadian to win the Rogers Cup in 50 years. She was up 3-1 in the first set when American opponent Serena Williams retired because of injury. 12 – The Trump administration unveiled a crackdown on legal immigration. It announced it would disqualify applicants who use government assistance and ban entry to those who can’t prove their financial worth.
13 – The U.S. Justice Department announced two guards assigned to watch Jeffrey Epstein the night he apparently killed himself in a New York jail had been placed on leave and the warden had been removed. The announcement came amid mounting evidence that the chronically understaffed Metropolitan Correctional Center may have bungled its responsibility to keep the 66-year-old Epstein from harming himself.
16 – Actor Peter Fonda, the son of a Hollywood legend who became a movie star in his own right after both writing and starring in the counter-culture classic “Easy Rider,” died of complications from lung cancer. He was 79. 25 – Top-ranked Jin Young Ko won the CP Women’s Open. The South Korean closed with a 64 for a 26-under-par 262 total, five shots better than Denmark’s Nicole Broch Larsen.
29 – Terrance Dicks, author of children’s books and a longtime script editor for the popular British TV series “Doctor Who,” died at 84. 2 – Police in southern California said 34 people were presumed dead in a fire aboard a dive boat. After recovering the body of 20 of the victims, they suspended the search operation. Five crew members sleeping on the boat’s top deck jumped off and took a dinghy to safety.
4 – British members of parliament voted 327-299 in favour of legislation that would stop the country leaving the European Union in October without a divorce deal. The bill passed despite the opposition of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who earlier in the day, expelled more than 20 Conservative Party MPs who sided with the opposition.
7 – Post-tropical storm Dorian left large swaths of Atlantic Canada battered and in the dark as it moved out into the North Atlantic. Emergency officials warned the widespread mess, including countless downed trees and power lines, would take some time to clean up. 9 – Robert Frank, a giant of 20th century photography whose seminal book “The Americans” captured singular, candid moments of the 1950s, died at 94.
13 – Rock star Eddie Money died in Los Angeles, just a few weeks after he announced he had stage 4 esophageal cancer. He was 70. 16 – Canadian jazz prodigy Vic Vogel died at age 84. He began playing the piano by ear at the age of five and rose to become one of Canada’s jazz stalwarts. 18 – Canadian author Graeme Gibson died at 85. He was the author of novels including “Five Legs,” “Perpetual Motion” and “Gentleman Death,” and a member of the Order of Canada.
24 – A Federal Court judge granted the British Columbia government a temporary injunction against an Alberta law that could limit oil exports to other provinces. Justice Sebastien Grammond said Alberta’s so-called turn-off-the-tap legislation raised a serious issue and could have caused irreparable harm to the residents of B.C.
27 – Thousands of Canadians hit the streets to demand “widespread, systemic change” to halt the scary impact of a warming planet. From St. John’s, N.L. to Tofino, B.C., and as far north as Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, marches were held in at least 85 Canadian cities and towns, as part of the international climate movement.
2 – Canada’s Bianca Andreescu won her 16th match in a row. The world No. 6 beat Elise Mertens of Belgium 6-3, 7-5 in a second-round match at the China Open. 7 – B.C. Green Leader Andrew Weaver, who led the party to a historic election breakthrough two years earlier, announced he would not seek re-election. Weaver reduced his work schedule as he recovered from labyrinthitis, but in announcing his decision to not run again in 2021 he cited his aversion to becoming a career politician.
10 – A judge found a man guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of a police officer who was investigating reports of a stolen vehicle in Abbotsford, B.C. Justice Carol Ross of the B.C. Supreme Court delivered her verdict in the trial of Oscar Arfmann, who was accused of gunning down Const. John Davidson in November 2017.
15 – Canada’s men’s soccer team struck back after years of watching from the cheap seats as the U.S. ruled CONCACAF alongside Mexico. John Herdman’s team registered a famous 2-0 victory over the 21st-ranked Americans, with goals from Alphonso Davies and substitute Lucas Cavallini ending a 34-year, 17-match winless run for No. 75 Canada against their North American rivals.
20 – The Houston Astros won the American League Championship Series. Jose Altuve hit a walk off two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning as Houston beat the New York Yankees 6-4 in Game 6 of the ALCS. 24 – British Columbia introduced legislation it said would make it the first province to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The legislation mandates the government to bring provincial laws and policies into harmony with the aims of the declaration, but does not set a timeline for doing so.
27 – Pop singer Andy Kim, rockers Chilliwack and the alt-country band Cowboy Junkies were among the acts added to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. 5 – Thousands of scientists from around the world signed an open letter published in the journal BioScience that: “We declare … clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency. The letter included 11,258 signatures from 153 countries – including 409 from Canada.
15 – Career diplomat Marie Yovanovitch was in the spotlight on day two of the House impeachment hearings in Washington. The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine said she felt threatened by President Donald Trump as she detailed the story of being abruptly recalled from her post. 19 – Two correctional officers on duty the night wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan prison were charged with falsifying prison records. Toval Noel and Michael Thomas were accused of neglecting their duties by failing to perform checks on Epstein every 30-minutes and of fabricating log entries to show they had.
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