Man arrested after allegedly caught trespassing at Drake's Bridle Path mansion
Toronto police say a man has been taken into custody after he was allegedly caught trespassing at Drake's mansion in Bridle Path Saturday afternoon.
The room is freezing cold. There’s a gauzy curtain over the window that lets in soft morning light. The street outside feels forbidden and hostile. If not dangerous.
And now to the story of Anzorat Wali.
The empty room is where she and her older sister Nilab practise taekwondo. Anzorat has a black belt, and a fistful of medals that jingle. She can’t remember exactly how many golds she’s won, but it’s a lot.
And it all stopped the day the Taliban arrived. The shattering of dreams. The end of freedom. A life that now feels hopeless, and she’s only 19.
“I don’t want something big,” she told me, in a soft voice and confident English, sometimes smiling, sometimes unbearably sad. “It’s our right to do something for ourselves, to fight for ourselves.”
They practise at home because all the gyms are closed to Afghan women and girls. Taekwondo has become a world reserved for boys only. Boys have rights. Girls don’t.
“Women’s rights mean nothing to them,” she says, a teenager’s lament that comes across more as weariness, than anger. “We’re getting worse day by day, just sitting at home, eating and sleeping. Nothing else.”
The two of them used to train by jogging around the neighborhood. Everybody knew about the Wali sisters. The Taliban took that away. Now, they rarely go outside, trapped in their home by fear.
“I had lots of hope and dreams,” says Anzorat, her voice trailing off into tears. “We have nothing now. Our rights, our freedom, our jobs. I mean we have nothing here.”
She uses that word a lot. “Nothing.” In two syllables, it sums up a young state of mind, adrift in despair.
She took up taekwondo for the purest of reasons: to learn to fight. Years of training have given her strong, firm legs and a forceful kick.
“It was necessary for any girl to know fighting for self defence in Afghanistan.”
But then she started winning competitions, and out of that grew her biggest dream, to compete at the Olympics. This is a young woman never been satisfied winning silver or bronze.
“What an athlete wants is to do something for myself, for my country,” wiping away more tears without embarrassment.
Her family is Tajik, which is not a good thing in Afghanistan these days. It was a Tajik leader who resisted the longest against the Taliban.
Her brother Milad worked for the foreign affairs ministry. Her sister and her mother held good positions in other departments. They were untroubled and comfortable. The Taliban took that away too. Now they’re all jobless.
“Life was so good,” he says. “Just a normal life. There were no problems.”
Until a beating from the Taliban put him in the hospital. He was waiting in line to apply for passports. Relatives in Vancouver are trying to get them to Canada.
“I felt just a small pain, but after one night it got worse. I told my family this is going to kill me.”
He is immensely proud and protective of his younger sister. As happens when somebody close to you achieves astonishing success.
“She was in love with her sport,” he says. “And when I saw her, she had a happy look on her face.”
The look her face gives off now is more like sorrow. She returns to the words that slip out of her mouth like a moan.
“We have nothing now. We have nothing.”
Toronto police say a man has been taken into custody after he was allegedly caught trespassing at Drake's mansion in Bridle Path Saturday afternoon.
The wildfire that prompted the evacuation of more than 3,000 people near Fort Nelson, B.C., was caused by a tree falling on wires, according to the municipality's mayor.
The 68th Eurovision Song Contest finally got down to musical business Saturday in the Swedish city of Malmo after days of protests and offstage drama that have tipped the feelgood musical celebration into a chaotic pressure cooker overshadowed by the war in Gaza.
A man has been transported to hospital after police say he was stabbed in a random attack carried out by a group of teens in Toronto on Friday night.
The rolling hills leading to the hamlet of Rosebud are dotted with sprawling farms and cattle pastures -- and a sign sporting a simple message: No Race Track.
From London, to Grand Bend, Collingwood and Guelph, here are some highlights of Friday night and Saturday morning's northern lights display.
Ron Ellis, who played over 1,000 games with the Toronto Maple Leafs and was a member of Canada's team at the 1972 Summit Series, has died at age 79.
Irresponsibly using a credit card can land you in financial trouble, but personal finance columnist Christopher Liew says when used properly, it can be a powerful wealth-building tool that can help grow your credit profile and create new opportunities.
Where you live plays a big factor in what you pay at the grocery store. And while it's no secret the same item may have a different price depending on the store, city or province, we wanted to see just how big the differences are, and why.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.
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.