NEW After hearing thousands of last words, this hospital chaplain has advice for the living
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
A senior military commander in Western Canada says he doesn't expect much opposition from Canadian Forces personnel over mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations.
Ottawa is requiring federal employees, including members of the military, be fully vaccinated by the end of this month. The government also expects employers in federally regulated industries, including banks and airlines, to do the same.
Brig.-Gen. Bill Fletcher, who's responsible for Western Canada's 3rd Canadian Division, oversees the training of Canadian soldiers and operations from the Pacific Ocean to Thunder Bay, Ont.
There are almost 12,000 regular and reserve forces under his control.
"It's been made very clear by the government that we will follow the same direction that the government has given the public service and we will enforce mandatory vaccines across the Canadian military," Fletcher said in an interview from his office in Edmonton.
He said more than 90 per cent of Canadian military personnel are already double vaccinated and he's not worried about any pushback from what he calls a small percentage.
"We'd already been dealing with the implication for deployments ... of non-vaccinated folks going into a COVID-hot environment or going into an international setting where the host country has said, 'you will be double vaccinated,"' he said.
"Those folks ultimately have to make a decision on whether they'll be vaccinated."
He said he couldn't comment on what would happen to personnel who are not vaccinated. But the federal government has said public servants will be put on unpaid administrative leave if they aren't vaccinated by Oct. 29.
Fletcher said responding to COVID-19 has been a learning process for the Canadian Forces, because it was "nothing that anybody had ever talked about in any of my army training."
Members of the military, he added, have helped with both pandemic assistance and vaccine distribution across the country.
Some calls for assistance included COVID-19 outbreaks in remote northern communities such as Shamattawa First Nation in Manitoba, Fond du Lac Denesuline First Nation in Saskatchewan and Fort Nelson First Nation in British Columbia.
Fletcher said it's been positive for the mental health of army personnel to be able to help out during the pandemic, because sitting around home with their families during the early stages "grew old pretty quickly."
"They're women and men who didn't join to sit at home. It started taking a toll, I think, from a mental-health perspective, certainly from a training perspective," Fletcher said.
"We had soldiers who were considering releasing actually pull their releases to be able to respond on behalf of Canadians. So I think it was very cathartic. We got back into doing what soldiers wanted to do."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2021.
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
French police cordoned off the Iranian consulate in Paris on Friday, where a man was threatening to blow himself up, Europe 1 radio and BFM TV.
More money will land in the pockets of some Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit installment.
An apparent Israeli drone attack on Iran saw troops fire air defences at a major air base and a nuclear site early Friday morning near the central city of Isfahan, an assault coming in retaliation for Tehran's unprecedented drone-and-missile assault on the country.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
Canadian banks that refuse to identify the carbon rebate by name when doing direct deposits are forcing the government to change the law to make them do it, says Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.
A woman who recently moved to Canada from India was searching for a job when she got caught in an online job scam and lost $15,000.
The World Health Organization and around 500 experts have agreed for the first time on what it means for a disease to spread through the air, in a bid to avoid the confusion early in the COVID-19 pandemic that some scientists have said cost lives.
Prince Harry, the son of King Charles III and fifth in line to the British throne, has formally confirmed he is now a U.S. resident.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.
While many people choose to keep their medical appointments private, four longtime friends decided to undergo vasectomies as a group in B.C.'s Lower Mainland.