REGINA Regina residents and local businesses are reacting with a show of support for LGBTQ2S+ people after a pastor’s message was called homophobic by some community members. On Sunday, Pastor Terry Murphy gave a sermon at Regina Victory Church that has since been condemned by many in the community. The sermon was livestreamed on Facebook. Murphy’s sermon compared members of the LGBTQ2S+ community to pedophiles and expressed the belief that sex should only occur “between a man and a woman.” Terry Van Mackelberg said he will be submitting a complaint to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.
Saskatchewan universities are reporting an increase in academic misconduct investigations, almost one year after both schools switched exclusively to online learning because of the pandemic.
FORT QU APPELLE A Fort Qu’Appelle high school has given students a new space dedicated to practicing and learning about traditional Indigenous ceremonies. Bert Fox Community School says the Cultural Room is its first effort to help repair the harms caused in the past and move forward with reconciliation. All of us take responsibility to make space to put back what was taken out by the school system and this space does that, Principal Julie Stiglitz said. In the centre of Treaty 4, there are primarily four different linguistic groups and this space is designed to be functional for traditional and inter-tribal ceremony. The space includes different doors facing different directions to accommodate different practices.
Young people under the age of 19 accounted for approximately 20 per cent of active cases in Regina during the first week of March, according to a weekly monitoring report released by the government.
REGINA Friday marks one year since Saskatchewan reported its first case of COVID-19. A person in their 60s who had travelled to Egypt was the first presumptive case in the province. Since then, Saskatchewan has endured several spikes in cases, deadly outbreaks in long-term care and a quiet Christmas. The arrival of the COVID-19 vaccine in December paved the way for optimism for some, and skepticism for others. Here’s a look back at the past year of pandemic storylines in Saskatchewan:
MORE THAN 30,000 CASES Since COVID-19 arrived in Saskatchewan on March 12, 2020, there have been 30,193 cases confirmed in the province, as of March 11, 2021.