Global News What Happened To...?

In the 1980s, the threat of acid rain in Canada and the U.S. had become a brewing environmental crisis.

In areas of Southern Ontario, lakes that once were teeming with wildlife were on the verge of becoming dead lakes, void of fish and other aquatic species.

Acid rain occurs when sulphur dioxide and other pollutants mix with moisture in the air to form rain droplets with a high level of acidity. This acidity causes aluminum to leach out of the soil and water, potentially poisoning the plants and animals in the impacted ecosystem.

Acid rain had been a big issue in Sudbury because of its nickel production, and early on, large smelters were identified as a source of the pollution and all levels of government worked to change regulations and have companies reduce emissions.

The acid rain crisis also led to a bilateral Canada-U.S. agreement: the Air Quality Agreement, which was signed in 1991 by former prime minister Brian Mulroney and then-U.S. president George H. W. Bush.

Mulroney and Bush committed to cutting down on the air pollution that causes acid rain in 1991, under the Canada-U.S. Air Quality Agreement. Both nations promised to reduce the emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides — the air pollutants that give rise to acid rain — through a cap-and-trade system.

The agreement led to major reductions in dirty fossil-fuel emissions in both countries. Canada slashed its total sulphur dioxide emissions by approximately 63 per cent from 1990 to 2014, while the U.S. cut emissions by 79 per cent. Both countries also recorded major reductions in nitrogen oxide pollution.

At the height of the environmental crisis, 2.5 million tonnes of SO2 emissions were being released in the atmosphere a year from Sudbury. With changes in emission standards, Sudbury now emits 50,000 tonnes of SO2 a year. In Canada, SO2 emissions have decreased by 69 per cent — and in Sudbury, by 98 per cent.

On this episode of Global News’ What happened to...?, Erica Vella finds out how emissions causing acid rain were reduced, what is happening now in Ontario lakes, and how can we apply the lessons learned from acid rain to other environmental problems.

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Twitter: @ericavella

Email: [email protected]

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On this episode of the Global News What Happened To...?, journalist Erica Vella revisits the story of Alan Kurdi and the Syrian refugee crisis (Part 2)

In 2012, Ruba Bilal was living in Damascus, Syria with her husband and two sons; she had reached a level of stability in her life, but the country where she had lived her whole life was in the middle of a dangerous civil war.

Bilal said she was an activist in her community and worked on providing aid to people who were in areas that were under siege, but her family had concerns that she would be taken and detained because of the work she was doing.

That year, Bilal and her family felt tensions beginning to mount and she said they made the decision to temporarily relocate to Lebanon.

As the civil war continued, it was clear Bilal and her family would never have the chance to return to Syria and she submitted an application to LifeLife Syria, an organization that connects Syrian refugees with potential sponsors in Canada.

In 2016, she learned her family would be coming to Canada as privately sponsored refugees.

Bilal and her family were one of thousands who came to Canada in 2016, after the federal government made promises to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees.

The commitment came after a photo of two-year-old Alan Kurdi garnered international attention on the dangers refugees undertake to seek safety.

Kurdi and his family were attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea by boat after fleeing war-torn Syria. On the journey Alan, his brother Ghalib and mother Rehana perished; Abdullah Kurdi, Alan and Ghalib's father, was the only one to survive.

On this episode of Global News What Happened To...?, Erica Vella speaks with Bilal about how she and her family adapted to life in Canada. She also finds out what happened to the Kurdi family and if the federal government has continued its commitment to resettle refugees in Canada.

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Twitter: @ericavella

Email: [email protected]

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The Flint Michigan water crisis garnered international attention in 2015 after it was discovered that residents were being poisoned by the water running through their taps.

A year earlier in 2014, the city switched its water source from the Detroit water system to the Flint River as a cost-saving solution while awaiting the building of a pipeline from Lake Huron which hadn’t been completed yet.

Many people living in the city questioned the decision before the switch which officially happened on April 25, 2014, and Lewis said she remembers noticing an immediate difference in the water.

Residents began reporting various illnesses and several people had died from a Legionnaires outbreak.

It was later revealed that the city didn’t treat the water with anti-corrosion agents that might have prevented aged pipes from leaching lead into the water system.

On this episode of Global News’ What happened to...? Erica Vella revisits the water crisis to find out how it all began and what has happened since. She also speaks with the community members who pushed for change and finds out where they are now.

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Twitter: @ericavella

Email: [email protected]

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On this episode of Global News What Happened To...?, journalist Erica Vella revisits the SARS epidemic that gripped parts of Canada in 2003.

This year has been an unprecedented year as the world battles the COVID-19 pandemic, but 17 years ago, parts of the world faced another coronavirus -- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, better known as SARS.

Erica Vella looks back at the SARS epidemic and explains how one super-spreading event brought the virus to Toronto, where health-care workers were among the hardest hit.

Sylvia Gordon was working in the critical care unit at Scarborough Grace Hospital in 2003 and there was one day in early March that she recalls vividly.

“I was doing a day shift -- a 12-hour day shift -- we had trouble staffing and I stayed on for an extra hour or so,” she said.

“Just as I was on my way out the door, I heard deep snoring. I thought, wow somebody is in trouble. I went in the room and sure enough, the patient was having like a cardiac arrest. So I put my bag down and called a code and we began resuscitating him.”

At the time, Gordon had no idea that the patient she was resuscitating had SARS and she was now infected with the virus.

“Initially I thought I was coming down with the flu. It was, you know -- you're coughing and you're feeling lethargic, running the temperature and just body pain, aches and pains all over,” she said.

Gordon called in sick and explained what she was feeling.

“I was told 'gosh, you know, you're not the first one. We've been getting a number of calls from other colleagues that they're not able to make it to work, that they're ill.' And then I started figuring out, well, maybe we contracted something. So I started calling my colleagues and then they described the same symptoms.”

In Canada, there were 438 probable and suspect SARS cases reported and there were 44 deaths that included three health-care workers.

Globally, the virus killed more than 800 people.

Erica Vella finds out what changes were made following the SARS epidemic to protect health-care workers in Ontario and most importantly, if it helped in the battle ahead with COVID-19.

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Twitter: @ericavella

Email: [email protected]

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In a nearly three-hour-long interview between Det. Rob Thomas and the man accused of driving a rental van on a busy Toronto sidewalk we got insight on the driver's frustrations with women and his inability to attract a partner.

"I would say that sometimes I am a bit upset that they choose to date obnoxious men instead of gentlemen," he said in the interview.

He then speaks about 4Chan — an online anonymous image board — where he engaged in conversations with others about his anger with women and being a part of the involuntary celibate ("incel") community, an underground online community that lives primarily on the dark web.

Experts have been studying the proliferation of the incel community for several years.

Mike Halpin, an associate professor at Dalhousie University, said the term was coined in 1997, when a Canadian woman who only went by her first name, Alanna, began a support group online for people struggling to form relationships.

"It was more about the kind of frustrations and complications with wanting a romantic partner, not being able to have one. Over time, the community became more and more populated by men and also more and more by people who were upset and angry about being alone," he said. The incel community then started popping up on places like 4chan and Reddit, he explained.

Halpin has been studying the incel community for several years and this episode of What happened to... Erica Vella speaks with Mike Haplin about the complex subculture of the incel community; she also finds out if the community has grown and learns more about other incel-inspired attacks. She also speaks with experts about incidents of gender-based violence that continue to increase across North America.

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Email: [email protected]

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