'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
Dozens of Afghan women are elated to be experiencing their first Canadian winter after a harrowing journey escaping Afghanistan, where they faced retaliation for their work in education.
About 200 Afghan women and their families began arriving in Saskatoon, Sask., as refugees in September after fleeing the Taliban for a better life in Canada. They are all students and graduates of the Marefat School in Kabul, which champions education for women, especially those of the Hazaras ethnic minority -- two factors that made them early targets for the Taliban.
Maryam Masoomi is among these women now calling Saskatoon home.
“When the Taliban took Kabul, I just died and my dreams were gone,” she told CTV National News.
Marefat School is still open today, but now it’s only for boys.
Masoomi, also a talented singer, also feared that the Taliban would also uncover YouTube videos of her singing in school, given the group had banned music.
“I just feel that they will kill us,” she said.
When the Taliban took over the Afghan capital in August, she knew she had to get out as soon as possible.
“It was very shocking news for everybody,” she said. “Everyone was in a hurry and chaos had begun.”
A few days after fleeing her home, Masoomi was able to secure a Canadian visa. She drove 12 hours to Mazar-i-Sharif, a city in northern Afghanistan. But she couldn’t find a flight out of country for two weeks and eventually returned to Kabul.
From there, Masoomi and her group took a four-hour journey to Jalalabad, west of Kabul, and then two-and-a-half hours to the border with Pakistan where they crossed over.
“That was so scary a moment,” she said. “I was just crying.”
Once in the neighbouring country, it took another month before she was able to fly into Canada.
Farkhonda Tahery also went to Marefat School and is now settled in Saskatchewan. She was one of the first Afghans to arrive in the city back in September.
Tahery said she called her parents as the flight was about to take off to let them know she had escaped.
“It was difficult, honestly,” he said. “They were happy because they knew that we were going to be safe.”
Tahery says she has friends from the school who escaped the Taliban and are now in a Pakistani hostel, but if they’re sent back to Afghanistan they could face the threat of sexual slavery.
“That's a high risk that they’re going to be taken and sold as slaves,” she said.
More than 100 Afghan refugees remain at the hostel in potentially dangerous circumstances. Several charities have tried to push the Canadian government to speed up the immigration process for these people, but the government is not committing.
CTV News has learned that discussions are underway for Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani advocate for women’s rights and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to lend her name to the cause.
The Canadian government has promised to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees, but there is no timeline for doing so. So far, the government has been able to bring in 6,495 refugees through the three streams, according to government numbers.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has received 14,720 applications from Afghans who helped the Canadian military in the Afghanistan War.
Masoomi also worries about the other Afghan refugees who remain in precarious situations, but hopes to be part of the solution in the future.
“In Afghanistan, [the refugees] will not have any future,” she said.
“I want to be a good leader and I want to participate in Parliament and helping the Saskatchewan and Saskatoon people.”
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Rookie goalie Arturs Silovs will start in net for the Canucks as Vancouver kicks off a second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers Wednesday night.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.