Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
On May 6, I celebrated 50 years at CTV —yes 50!
Reaching this milestone, I am reflecting on my experiences at CTV News and the parts of my life that have been public all these years and the things about myself I’ve kept private.
With time, there is safety in revealing the most personal aspects of myself, so I am sharing with you my own cancer journey, which really started with my husband.
Michael died in 2005 after a six-month battle with cancer. Afterwards I read and reread journalist Joan Didion’s book “The Year of Magical Thinking.” It’s a brilliant account of Didion’s first year of coping with life after her husband’s death. She explains her grief process and how during the days and months that followed, she believed, if a person hopes for something enough or does the right thing over and over, bad events can be reversed. Didion writes about keeping her husband’s shoes, just in case he comes back and needs them.
I did the same thing. It was only when I was ready to move forward, that I was able to donate Michael’s shoes to a men’s shelter.
And then, without warning, two years after his death, I was plunged back into coping again.
An annual mammogram revealed a small lump on my right breast, unnoticed to touch or the naked eye. I was 57 years old.
I remember the day as if it was yesterday. A call from the hospital to come back for a second scan; the concerned faces of the technician, the radiologist and the biopsy that followed. I went home with a patch on my breast to wait for the results.
A call the next morning from the doctor confirmed I had breast cancer.
My worst fear was sharing the news with my three daughters who were missing their father.
I knew they would go to that dark place; losing me, too.
Let me tell you how challenging it is to focus on being optimistic when the universe is pulling you down. I had experienced far too much death; a son, when I was in my 30s; my mother in my 40s; and then at 55, my partner of 35 years.
I knew I had to find the strength for my girls and somehow I did.
I turned to music and dance to soothe and centre myself; and I spent time with those who brought me laughter.
But I focused on something far more important; my daughters. They inspired me to steady myself for what was to come.
I wanted to be around to watch them grow into the marvellous women they are today; to find love, make babies and build lives for themselves. I could not leave them.
Surgery, a lumpectomy, was scheduled to remove the tumour. A biopsy, ten days later, revealed it was small, hormone-driven and had likely not spread.
It had been caught early, which made me one of the lucky ones.
Treatment included weeks of radiation; but I opted out of the safety net of chemotherapy after consultation with my oncologist and a test to determine the likelihood of the cancer’s return.
It’s a decision my doctor told me could be the wrong one, if I let fear of a recurrence control my life. She suggested I do my best to avoid stress and focus on building tools to strengthen my resilience.
Ten years of the hormone pill tamoxifen followed; and here we are, sixteen years after the diagnosis.
Several of my colleagues have also had breast cancer or are currently in treatment. Many, if not most, have chosen to go public.
I kept my cancer secret from viewers at the time, largely because I was dealing with a lot, as a single mother of three daughters. I also worried that my aging and widowed father would be broken by the news. He had survived the Second World War, had endured loss, but watching his only child tackle cancer, would have been too much for him.
He is gone now; and with the passage of time, I am ready to reveal personal aspects of my life never shared publicly before, as part of a CTV News Special called “I’m Sandie Rinaldo” celebrating my 50 years at the network.
The Canadian Cancer Society says the five-year survival rate for all cancers, based on the most recent data collected, was 64 per cent, compared to 55 per cent in the early 1990s and 25 per cent in the 1940s; progress made through early detection and advances in treatment.
Growing up, we couldn’t say the C-word. It was as if uttering it aloud would make it a reality. Well, for the one in eight women who will get breast cancer in their lifetime, it is very much a reality, just as it is for anyone who has lost someone they love to the disease.
Cancer is very much a part of my story and I hope that sharing it now, even all these years later, will help others facing their own journey. You’re not alone.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
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.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
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.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.