Good morning. The Globe travelled 40,000 kilometres to find the source of Canada’s measles resurgence – more on that below, along with Donald Trump’s UN grievances and TikTok’s privacy breach. But first:
Today’s headlines
- The adviser on Alberta’s use of private clinics was also working for the company vying for the contract, a confidential report says
- Russia is militarizing Ukrainian children, a human rights lawyer says
- Jimmy Kimmel returns with a few thoughts on freedom of speech
Measles vaccination rates are slipping around the world, including Canada.Lauren DeCicca/The Globe and Mail
Health
The search for patient zero
More than a quarter century after Canada eliminated measles, the disease has come roaring back, reaching from Nova Scotia to British Columbia and into the Northwest Territories – close to 5,000 total cases now, making it the worst outbreak since 1998 by 650 per cent. As cases surged this spring in Ontario and across Alberta, public health authorities offered a vague explanation of the outbreak’s origin: A single infected traveller had flown to New Brunswick from some other country. So, over the summer, The Globe’s Nathan Vanderklippe began charting the path of the virus. He wanted to find Canada’s patient zero.
His early interviews in New Brunswick were discouraging: Mayors and local MLAs had no clue how the measles arrived. But a woman in Centreville asked around and pointed Vanderklippe to a nearby farm, where he drove up, unannounced, to find three generations of a family sitting outside. He told them he thought the outbreak might have started in the area.
“It started with our daughter,” Sylvie Villeneuve immediately replied.
A wedding out east
Lea Knelsen felt exhausted and feverish when she pulled into Florenceville-Bristol for her sister’s wedding, but she chalked it up to the two-day, four-stop, 8,000-kilometre journey from her home in Thailand, where she teaches English. All nine siblings were together for the first time since the pandemic. Knelsen figured she’d get checked out right after the ceremony on Oct. 18, 2024.
Charity and Josh Driedger's wedding party in western New Brunswick.Emma Tucker/The Globe and Mail
By then, she had a closed-up throat and a rash on her neck. The physician at Upper River Valley Hospital cycled through possible culprits: maybe strep or scarlet fever? He sent her away with antibiotics – but two days later, Knelsen was back in the hospital, her breathing laboured, her liver faltering. Doctors drew blood samples and said she was going into septic shock. Another 72 hours elapsed before they confirmed that she tested positive for measles.
Knelsen is not vaccinated, and neither are her three children. “I always thought, ‘Oh, those diseases are not really around anymore,’” she told Vanderklippe. She wasn’t entirely mistaken: Most Canadian doctors could go their entire careers without seeing a case of measles. It’s part of the reason Knelsen’s illness took five days to diagnose.
“Nine times out of ten, it’s going to be what’s common,” said Hanif Chatur, an emergency room physician in New Brunswick. “When you hear hoofbeats, you think horses, you don’t think zebras. Measles is still a zebra.” But this wildly contagious beast is popping up more and more often as people forgo vaccines. If sustained transmission of the virus continues into October, Canada will lose its elimination status.
A school in the south
“Every single person at the wedding that did not have the vaccine got the measles,” Marc Villeneuve, Knelsen’s father, told Vanderklippe from his farm. The guest list filled in the pieces of the outbreak’s reach. Most attendees came from Ontario, many from Mennonite communities, with relatives in Alberta. The same measles strain has since appeared in undervaccinated populations in Texas, Mexico, Belize, Brazil and Argentina.
Downtown Narathiwat in southern Thailand.Lauren DeCicca/The Globe and Mail
But Vanderklippe wondered: How exactly did Knelsen catch it? He looked for answers in Narathiwat, on Thailand’s southern border, where she’s lived with her family for the past six years. Across this province, measles is no great enigma – as few as 30 per cent of children are vaccinated in some areas, and outbreaks tend to emerge every half-decade. The most recent started in late July, 2024, at Pattana Wittaya School, quickly infecting 100 students. In the weeks before their trip to Canada, Knelsen took her son to an appointment at Rajnara Hospital, just 15 kilometers away from the school.
That’s one potential cause among many – it’s hard to pinpoint the moment of transmission in a place where measles is endemic, especially since the virus can linger for hours in the air. If Knelsen hadn’t carried the disease across an ocean, another traveller surely would. As Vanderklippe writes, “The declining rates of measles vaccination in Canada meant it was only a matter of time before a viral spark caused ignition.”
Still, Knelsen’s family had a message for Canadians before Vanderklippe returned back home. “Tell everyone we’re sorry,” her husband said. “We never would have travelled if we’d known that we would have been the case.”
The Shot
‘Your countries are going to hell.’
Donald Trump at the United Nations General Assembly in New York yesterday.Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
In a 56-minute speech to the United Nations, U.S. President Donald Trump railed against immigration, green energy, political correctness, Palestinian statehood, his malfunctioning Teleprompter and the escalator that broke down with him on it. Read more here about Trump’s rebukes – and his U-turn on Ukraine.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: Hundreds of asylum claimants living in hotels funded by the federal government must find somewhere else to live by next week.
Abroad: Muslim countries see little hope that much change will come from new recognition of a Palestinian state.
Online: Privacy commissioners found that TikTok collected sensitive personal data from hundreds of thousands of Canadians under the age of 13.
Off track: Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said Donald Trump’s erratic trade policies have hurt the safe-haven status of the U.S. dollar.
Books: Susan Choi’s Flashlight, Katie Kitamura’s Audition and David Szalay’s Flesh are among the shortlisted novels for this year’s Booker Prize.
Beauties: Canada’s last wooden hockey stick factory is riding the ‘Buy Canadian’ boom.