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Welcome to your Weekend Posted. The Olympics kick off in late July, but we’ve got a couple stories to start getting you hyped to watch Team Canada take on the world. And, we also continue our Heroes Among Us series with an incredible tale of coolness under fire in Afghanistan.
THE GREAT OLYMPICS MYTH
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There’s an Olympics myth out there. You may have heard of it. It goes something like this: The Olympics, since ancient times, have existed to promote peace and friendship through sport. A noble goal certainly … but it’s just not true. When Olympians from around the world gather in Paris this summer to compete, they’ll do so against the backdrop of wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, Niger are all embroiled in fighting. “There will be calls for truce, and appeals to both modern and classical traditions, but the wars will go on, and so will the Games,” writes National Post’s Joseph Brean. A trip through history illustrates the hollowness of this legend. The 1972 Olympics went ahead despite the terrorist massacre of Israeli athletes. Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula days after the Sochi Olympics ended. The Beijing Olympics in 2022 went ahead despite China’s maltreatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority. Read more about the myth, how Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, continued the myth — and why it just isn’t true.
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AN EIGHT-HOUR FIREFIGHT
On Aug. 4, 2009, Canadian, American and Afghan troops were hit by an ambush. Taliban fighters had them hemmed in. Improvised-explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades were hitting armoured vehicles and troop carriers. Richard Stacey, then a sergeant major with the Canadian Armed Forces, took control of the situation. He was shooting at the enemy. He was calling in airstrikes. He was helping coordinate the rescue of injured soldiers and the retrieval of armoured vehicles. Stacey was awarded the Star of Military Valour. Stacey, his superior later said, did the work of three men that day. He is the latest in the National Post series Heroes Among Us, a project about the Canadian Victoria Cross, Canada’s highest military honour. Read more about Stacey and why his heroic actions should qualify him for the award.
DEAR DIARY
In the weekly satirical feature Dear Diary, the National Post re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Tristin Hopper takes an imagined journey into the thoughts of the keffiyeh: I don’t want to question these people’s clothing choices; but just as you see very few mukluks and toque in the Eastern Mediterranean, might I suggest that I may not be the optimal sartorial choice for spring in the St. Lawrence Lowlands?
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ET CETERA
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- Air Canada has apologized after the headdress belonging to Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak was taken from its carrying case, placed in a plastic bag and removed from the cabin. Nepinak, who’s the chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said “Air Canada needs a protocol for First Peoples so that we are not harassed for our sacred items.” Read more about the incident and what happened to the headdress.
- Canadian sprinter Harry Jerome may have been the fastest man alive. At the Canadian Olympic trials in Saskatoon in 1960, some witnesses say he sprinted 100 metres in 9.9 seconds. The world record was 10 seconds. And the officials, disbelieving that 9.9 seconds was possible, rounded Jerome’s time to tie the world record. But he may just have been faster. Read more about Jerome and the race and his career as a sprinter .
- For a while now, young people in Canada have favoured Conservative Pierre Poilievre over Liberal Justin Trudeau. New polling shows that Trudeau is more unpopular among youth than he’s ever been — in fact, the group that likes him tends to be much older. Read more about what the numbers tell us and what impact this could have on the next election.
- When Justin Trudeau became prime minister, he made big promises. “Deliverology” was to be the theme of his new government, after a decade of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. But as Brian Lilley writes, a lot of these promises haven’t panned out. From housing to dental care, read more to find out how the Liberals under Trudeau have failed to deliver.
SNAPSHOT
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