Air Canada walks back new seat selection policy change after backlash
Air Canada has paused a new seat selection fee for travellers booked on the lowest fares just days after implementing it.
Canadian entrepreneur Craig Cohon is on an epic guilt trip that’s already cost him $1 million and taken him across Europe, not as the jet-setter he once was, but by walking up to 40 kilometres a day, for six months, until he reaches Istanbul.
Cohon is doing the reverse route of climate refugees to talk about CO2 emissions.
“They usually walk from Istanbul to London, I wanted to go the opposite way,” he told CTV News, while making his way through southern Bulgaria on day 137 of his journey.
Indeed, Cohon is reversing in more ways than one. He’s done what no other private citizen has publicly done before: he went back in time and calculated his carbon footprint. And it’s a big one.
As a former executive who launched Coca Cola in Russia and then co-owned the Cirque du Soleil in that country, he says he flew to and from Moscow at least 250 times. There were also holidays in Palm Beach, Ethiopia, Stockholm, Paris, Argentina, and the list goes on.
“This issue around CO2, I didn't understand it until two years ago,” he said.
“I was wondering how much damage I personally have done and then a journalist said, ‘Well why don't you remove your lifetime carbon footprint Craig?’ And I said, ‘You know what? I'm going to do that.’”
Cohon didn’t just count the executive air miles, he also counted the childhood Big Macs. Twice a week, he would eat at McDonald’s where his father worked, a routine that lasted years. Add it all up and you’ve got a carbon footprint 28 times bigger than the average Canadian’s, which Cohon decided to offset by draining his pension fund.
“I took my pension fund of a million dollars and figured out how to remove my historic footprint, not my future footprint, by sucking carbon out of the environment,” he said.
He says he enjoyed all the all the trappings of consumerism and consumption until he understood the unintended consequences. He’s now going from town to town, to speak to European mayors, “trying to get some action on this issue about removing two trillion tons of carbon.”
In a promotional video, Cohon’s friend, writer-producer Leonard Dick said “you could call this ‘Entitled rich guy walks across Europe’ but to Craig's credit, he owns it, he realises the life he has led.”
Cohon is not sleeping in five star hotels during this journey. His nights are spent in a 15-square-metre container he’s occasionally shared with CEOs of big corporations “to make them uncomfortable and shift their minds,” he said.
During a cost-of-living crisis, the unlikely activist admits this is a privileged problem, “therefor it’s my problem to solve” he told CTV News.
Cohon is scheduled to complete his journey in Istanbul on June 5.
Air Canada has paused a new seat selection fee for travellers booked on the lowest fares just days after implementing it.
An ongoing municipal strike, court battles and revolt by half of council has prompted the province to oust the mayor and council in Black River-Matheson.
Three officers on a U.S. Marshals Task Force serving a warrant for a felon wanted for possessing a firearm were killed and five other officers were wounded in a shootout Monday at a North Carolina home, police said.
A Calgary elementary school principal has been charged with possession of child pornography, authorities announced Monday.
The Vancouver Island Health Authority is downplaying what staff describe as a cockroach infestation in a medical unit of Saanich Peninsula Hospital.
Toronto police say 12 people are facing a combined 102 charges in connection with an investigation into a major credit fraud scheme.
One of the winners of a historic US$1.3 billion Powerball jackpot last month is an immigrant from Laos who has had cancer for eight years and had his latest chemotherapy treatment last week.
Britney Spears and her father Jamie Spears will avoid what could have been a long, ugly and revealing trial with a settlement of the lingering issues in the court conservatorship that controlled her life and financial decisions for nearly 14 years.
The clock is ticking ahead of the deadline to file a 2023 income tax return. A personal finance expert explains why you should get them done -- even if you owe more than you can pay.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.