Roundup: Man credits pharmacy workers with saving his life, gardening booms as food costs soar, Liverpool raises thousands for students, COVID update
FIlmmaker Fateh Ahmed (right) and his team document racism in the workplace. Photo: Submitted
Plus: A new locally made documentary explores racism in Canadian workplaces
Former Richmond County warden Steve Sampson says quick-thinking workers at a Cape Breton pharmacy recently saved his life.
Thinking he had heartburn, he went to the store looking for a remedy, but pharmacist assistant Lorelei Marchand and pharmacist Pierre Samson recognized the signs of a heart issue, and administered a critical nitro spray as they awaited an ambulance.
“What it does is it basically opens the arteries around the heart,” the pharmacist says. “It allows more oxygen to flow back to the heart as the heart is beating. That’s what’s going to prevent you from causing cardiac damage, or the death of cardiac tissue.”
Jake Boudrot has more for the Reporter.
Confronting racism on the job
When writer Sarah Kiros approached Halifax filmmaker Fateh Ahmed to direct her documentary Working While Black, it wasn’t a tough sell.
He knows first-hand why an exploration of racism in Canadian workplaces is necessary.
Black workers are “deprived of opportunities, the lack of access to mentorship, promotions being passed by … even lack of access to capital,” he says. “These are systems that are put in place to exclude, harm, and keep you at a certain level.”
Ameeta Vohra interviews him for Unravel Halifax.
Gardening boom
Statistics Canada is releasing its latest Consumer Price Index today, and food industry expert Sylvain Charlebois is warning people to expect “record numbers,” noting that the food inflation rate in the U.S. in May was a whopping 10.1%.
If those ever-climbing numbers have you thinking about growing some of your own food, you’re not alone. Thousands of Canadians planted their first gardens this year, and it’s not too late for you to join them. And with container gardening, you don’t even need a yard.
Jodi DeLong has everything you need to know in this Saltscapes story.
Liverpool raises thousands for students
The scholarship fundraising committee for the Liverpool Regional High School aimed to raise $22,000 for the 2022 graduating class, and they smashed that goal, bringing in more than $34,000 with a recent auction.
“Oh my goodness gracious, I didn’t expect it to go the way it did,” says Heather Stevens, chair of the fundraising committee. “I think one of the coolest things that happened is that we had an alumni from Ontario, who has a niece attending school here. She found out about the auction and sent down art to go in the auction. I thought that was the coolest thing.”
Kevin McBain reports for LighthouseNow.
COVID death toll climbs
Premier Tim Houston’s government continues withholding daily data, making it difficult to get an accurate picture of COVID-19’s spread in the province, but World Health Organization (WHO) officials caution the disease is still rampant, tallying 307,400 new cases globally in the last 24 hours.
So far, COVID is known to have killed at least 6,319,395 people, including 41,470 in Canada and 421 Nova Scotians.
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