Women's field hockey team back in Canada after getting stuck in South Africa as omicron emerged
CBC
A long ordeal for Canada's junior women's field hockey team has come to an end, as the team quarantines in a Toronto-area hotel after being stranded in South Africa due to restrictions around the omicron coronavirus variant.
The women arrived home Thursday following more than a week of uncertainty.
"It's actually such a relief to finally be back home on Canadian soil," said Jenna Berger, one of two team members from Waterloo. "Just finally being able to get a hug from your parents after everything you've been through, because it was extremely hard, emotionally and mentally on all of us athletes."
The team arrived in Potchestroom, about 120 kilometres southwest of Johannesburg, in late November to play at the junior World Cup starting Dec. 5.
But the event was cancelled as travel restrictions around the omicron variant came down — and the team was without an immediate flight home.
Canadians travelling from South Africa are required to have a pre-departure COVID-19 test result from a third country before continuing home. After receiving a travel exemption from the Canadian government, the team was able to leave Johannesburg on Wednesday, transferring through Frankfurt, Germany, before arriving in Toronto.
Berger said the players are now isolating in a hotel until they receive the results of their COVID tests.
If a test is positive, that player will remain in the hotel to quarantine. Otherwise, they'll get to quarantine at home.
In the past few days, parents and supporters have pulled together to bring the players home.
"I think all the families have all reached out to their MP," said Liz Berger, Jenna's mother. "I think we all got emails or phone calls saying they're going to support us, they're going to see what they can do for us."
Jenna said it was the calls and letters of support from ordinary Canadians that impressed her most of all.
"It was unbelievable," she said. "We're really thankful."
A Saskatoon judge has now heard about the hours just before and after Taya Sinclair's death.
Two people were taken to hospital after a fire tore through a unit in an apartment building just west of downtown Edmonton Wednesday evening.
B.C. Premier David Eby, who is on a trade mission to India, says that finding new trade partners is critical to ensure British Columbians' standard of living doesn't deteriorate amid the U.S. trade war.
A program aimed at preventing homelessness on Prince Edward Island that was halted last year due to funding issues is back up and running again with support from the provincial and federal governments.
Large crowds of people lined up around the block outside a pair of packed community halls in central Alberta on Wednesday night, to attend town halls focused on the idea of the province seeking independence from Canada.
The sight of a cyclist in January in the Yukon can prompt confusion from some onlookers — but historians say bicycles were being used to get around the territory in winter long before cars.
On Prime Minister Mark Carney's first day of talks in Beijing, the government agreed to co-operate with China more on clean and conventional energy after years of difficult relations between the two countries.
The city says it is one step away from returning the Bearspaw feeder main to full service, with a final water pump scheduled to be turned on Friday morning — if the pipe continues to remain stable.
When David St-Pierre saw the snow outside his window in Brossard, Que., south of Montreal, he decided to chance the metropolitan region's shiny light-rail transit system once more.
A Calgary lawyer who falsified court documents and repeatedly lied to a client, causing the man to miss out on parenting time with his youngest child, pleaded guilty to forgery on Thursday.
The Crown has stayed an assault charge against Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Jeremy Tunraluk.
Alberta’s minister of hospitals says a province-wide strategy has begun to ease the strain on the acute care system as frontline doctors continue to declare that provincial hospitals are dangerously overcrowded.
As snow squalls continue to blanket southwestern Ontario, school boards in the London region announced the closure of all schools Thursday morning, and police are reporting closures and collisions across the area roads.