Good morning, and welcome to the weekend.
Grab your cup of coffee or tea, and sit down with a selection of this week’s great reads from The Globe and Mail.
In this issue we preview the World Cup, in which Canada’s women’s soccer team will compete for global supremacy starting Thursday. The reigning Olympic champions and seventh-ranked team find themselves in a difficult group with tournament co-hosts Australia, 22nd-ranked Ireland and 40th-ranked Nigeria, but nevertheless see themselves as title contenders.
Adding to the challenge is the players’ ongoing dispute with Canada Soccer, the sport’s governing body, over gender equality when it comes to pay and overall treatment. “I think this year hasn’t been the easiest for us as the national team,” says centre back Vanessa Gilles, who plays professionally in France.
But with a mix of veteran experience (Christine Sinclair, Kadeisha Buchanan, Sophie Schmidt) and rising talent (Jayde Riviere, Kailen Sheridan) on the roster, Canada is hoping to overcome injuries, an unforgiving travel schedule and the nagging labour dispute to emerge victorious.
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Canada heads to Women’s World Cup with point to prove
Illustration by Nicole Rifkin
For an Olympic champion, Canada’s women’s soccer team doesn’t necessarily get the respect it deserves. The Olympic event is a short tournament with a shallow pool of teams where anything can happen, the detractors say. That explains, in part, the team’s underdog mentality heading into this month’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Another factor? The players’ ongoing battle with their own soccer federation. Rachel Brady sizes up the current team, which opens its quest for a World Cup title on July 20.
A multilayered affront: Indigenous communities face harsher effects from wildfire smoke
Wildfire smoke near Fort Albany in northern Ontario on July 6.Elizabeth Kataquapit
Indigenous people make up only 5 per cent of the Canadian population, but accounted for nearly half of all forest-fire-related evacuations from 1980 to 2021. As fires continue to ravage several Canadian provinces, it’s the smoke, not flames, that accounts for the majority of wildfire-related evacuations. And, as Joy SpearChief-Morris reports, the smoke is having a disproportionate effect on Indigenous communities, which already face higher levels of health disparities, have limited resources to fight wildfires and treat affected people, and lack shelter that can keep out contaminated air.
A crisis of neglect: How society can help those with mental illness
Illustration by James Lee Chiahan
Amid a perceived spike in random violence presumably fuelled by uncontrolled mental illness, David Gratzer, physician and attending psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, issues a reminder: people with poor mental health are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators. Decades of failed public policy and recent developments, such as the pandemic and the opioids crisis, have left those suffering from severe mental illness languishing, he writes. But with foresight and a focus on giving people a sense of place and a purpose, there may be a path forward.
Ontario’s Darlington nuclear station is on time, on budget and learning from past mistakes
A view of the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Courtice, Ont. on May 23. OPG staff gave The Globe and Mail a tour of the ongoing project to refurbish the four nuclear reactors at Canada’s second-largest nuclear station.Carlos Osorio/The Globe and Mail
The most important lesson Ontario Power Generation has applied to the Darlington Station refurbishment project is a willingness to learn lessons from its own past. Now more than half complete, a major refurbishment of the Darlington nuclear power station in Ontario has so far maintained its promised schedule and budget. Nuclear projects hardly ever accomplish that, but OPG believes it has learned from mistakes made on past projects. As Matt McClearn reports, it bodes well for OPG as it angles to take on more nuclear projects in the years ahead.
Animal-rights groups urge Ottawa to ban strychnine poison for causing unnecessary suffering
Ottawa is being urged to ban strychnine poison in Alberta, the only province still using it to kill animals, including wolves.JosefPittner/Getty Images
Alberta is the only province in Canada that is still using strychnine to kill animals, including wolves and coyotes. The poison is no longer used in other provinces, and it’s banned in many countries. Now, a coalition of animal-welfare groups, conservationists and veterinarians is asking the federal government to ban the use of strychnine. Marie Woolf interviewed a number of people pushing for the ban who said the poison causes undue suffering to animals and is leading to the deaths of nontarget animals such as dogs and grizzly bears.
The Tao of Tom Cruise, our last action hero
See Tom run. See Tom jump. See Tom fall just short of meeting a brutal, bloody demise.The Globe and Mail
It started as a bit of a lark, but this year film editor Barry Hertz watched every Tom Cruise movie to get an accurate reading of the A-lister’s career arc, and maybe even his motivations. The resulting conclusion places Cruise in a unique position: A revered actor whose lasting obsession is not industry accolades or even respect, but the goal of making big-screen, big-budget action films that leave audiences in awe.
Bonus: Every Tom Cruise movie, ranked
Sustainable seafood is top notch and plentiful in Canada. These three recipes prove it
Canadian waters provide some of the most delicious and ecologically beneficial seafood available anywhere, including the once-endangered bluefin tuna.Karen Pinchin/The Globe and Mail
The list of seafood species that are caught sustainably and now support thriving fisheries is long and growing: Bluefin tuna, snow crab, spot prawns, scallops. Where in past decades whole coastal communities were devastated by overfishing leading to the collapse of stocks, today more holistic approaches to seafood harvesting are rising to the surface. With a little research and a questioning eye, Karen Pinchin writes, consumers can confidently buy seafood and prepare great dishes that do no harm. We even have the recipes to prove it.
Drawn from the headlines
Membership for Ukraine on agenda at NATO talks. DW, July 10, 2023, as drawn by Jenya Polosina for The Globe and Mail.
Illustration by Jenya Polosina for the Globe and Mail