On June 15, 2011, riots broke out in Vancouver following Game 7 of the NHL Stanley Cup final downtown after The Canucks were defeated by the Boston Bruins in a stunning 4-0 win. A report found that total damage caused by the riot was just over $3.7 million. There were 112 businesses and 122 vehicles damaged, and 52 assaults were reported against civilians, police and emergency personnel. On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella speaks with those who were in the ground experienced the...

On February 5, 1981, Toronto Police launched Operation Soap. Officers ambushed four Toronto bathhouses in a series of coordinated raids following a six-month investigation, which led to almost 300 patrons being arrested on the street. The raids were a watershed moment for Toronto's Queer community because, thousands of activists protested along the streets of Toronto and decided to fight the attacks in court. On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella speaks with members of the Queer...

TikTok is one of the most popular apps around the world, with more than one billion users, but in February of 2023, Canada's federal government announced a ban of the app on government devices. It's a move several countries have made in recent months. TikTok has maintained the app isn’t unique in the amount of information it collects and all social media companies should be looked at with the same scrutiny. On this episode of What happened to…?, Erica Vella speaks with experts about whether...

The old days of air travel were quite risky…compared to today, the chances of your flight going down were far greater …every airport had kiosks and coin-operating vending machines where you could buy life insurance before you headed to the gate—you know, just in case you thought you weren’t going to make it to your final destination… 1977 was one of the worst years for accidents in aviation history…in addition to several violent hijackings every month—sometimes with fatal results—There were...

TikTok is one of the most popular social media applications with more than 1 billion users around the world. On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella speaks to Bev Standing, the original voice behind TikTok’s text-to-speech feature. She also speaks with Kat Callaghan, the woman behind TikTok’s current text-to-speech character “Jessie.” She learns about the adoption and evolution of the feature, and how it changed the way users create and interpret TikTok videos. Find out more at:...

Kourosh Doustshenas met Forough Khadem in 2010 but a relationship between the couple wouldn't blossom until years later. The couple planned to get married, but before that could happen, Khadem traveled to see her family in Iran. Her return ticket to Canada was scheduled for Dec. 21, 2019, but the flight changed and she was now scheduled to depart on Jan. 8, 2020. By the beginning of January 2020, tensions between the U.S. and Iran began to escalate following the death of Revolutionary Guard...

On this episode of What happened to…?, Erica Vella revisits Google Glass — the product that sparked curiosity, protests and internet memes around the world. She speaks with one of Wired’s gadget reporters, Mat Honan, about the controversial pair of smart glasses. Find out more at https://globalnews.ca/news/9873033/what-happened-to-google-glass/ Contact: Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 2018 Thai cave rescue quickly became an international spectacle that captured the attention of people all around the world. Twelve boys and their soccer coach were exploring the Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai when the cave suddenly flooded, trapping the team. Monsoon season came early that year, and the cave became blocked by heavy rainwater. On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella revisits the incredible Thai Cave rescue mission. She speaks with diver Rick Stanton about the...

The 2018 Thai cave rescue quickly became an international spectacle that captured the attention of people all around the world. Twelve boys and their soccer coach were exploring the Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai when the cave suddenly flooded, trapping the team. Monsoon season came early that year, and the cave became blocked by heavy rainwater. On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella revisits the incredible Thai Cave rescue mission. She speaks with diver Rick Stanton about the...

There are stories…..that grab the world’s attention… But what happens when the cameras turn off and new stories take over the headlines? On this season of Global News “What Happened to”, Erica Vella brings you some of the most gripping stories from the past and talks to the people at the heart of them to find out what's happened since. Starting Sept 14 we'll share stories on The Thai Cave Rescue, The Downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, The 2011 Vancouver Riots, TikTok,...

In this season wrap we give you a sneak peek at the complete season on Global News What Happened To…? as journalist Erica Vella brought you incredible stories and spoke to the people at the heart of each one to find out what’s happened since the news cycle turned and the cameras walked away. Contact: Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brook Schryer recalled his first interaction with zebra mussels in the early 1990s. He was living with his family on Lake Scugog in Ontario and one fall, Schryer and his brothers pulled the family boat out of the water and noticed that it was double its normal weight. This was because of the sheer number of tiny mollusks that clung to the bottom of the boat. The brothers scraped the mussels off the boat but at just five years old, Brook didn’t understand just how big of a problem the pesky...

Fifty years ago, Kim Phuc Phan Thi's life seemed simple; she lived with her family in the village of Trảng Bàng in Vietnam. The country was in the middle of a war, but as a nine-year-old child, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Everything changed in June 1972 when several napalm bombs fell on her once peaceful village. Suddenly there was fire everywhere around her and her clothes burned off. In excruciating pain, Phuc ran down the main highway in her village and at that time, Associated...

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...

On Apr. 23 2018, a man drove a white rental van down busy sidewalks in Toronto, killing 11 people and injuring 16 others. The driver was arrested without injury on the day of the attack and was brought in for questioning by Toronto Police. The almost three-hour investigative interview between the driver and Det. Rob Thomas was released publicly in September 2019. At the time, the driver of the white rental van was facing ten counts of first-degree murder and 15 counts of attempted...

Cathy Riddell has lived in Toronto's Yonge and Finch neighbourhood for over six decades; it's an area where she says she’s surrounded by familiar faces, shops and restaurants. On a warm Monday in April 2018, Riddell was eager to be outside and run errands in the sunshine. However, her day was interrupted when a white rental van wreaked havoc in the neighbourhood she called home. On April 23, 2018, a white rental van mounted the sidewalk at the southwest corner of the intersection of Yonge and...

The man who killed six men and injured over a dozen others after storming a Quebec City mosque will be eligible for parole after 25 years after a Supreme Court struck down a Criminal Code provision on consecutive sentencing for multiple murderers. The unanimous high court decision happened May 27 and declared unconstitutional a 2011 provision that would allow a judge, in the event of multiple murders, to impose a life sentence and parole ineligibility periods of 25 years to be served...

In June 2014, cases of Ebola were reported in Guinea and the disease began to rapidly spread across the border to Liberia and Sierra Leone. More than 28,000 people became ill with the disease and over 11,000 died. The 2014 outbreak was the first Ebola outbreak in West Africa. According to the World Health Organization, it first appeared in two simultaneous outbreaks in 1976 in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The outbreak in DRC happened in a village near the Ebola...

On this special episode journalist Erica Vella shares an excerpt of the series on the Brentwood Five massacre first covered by Nancy Hixt. Nancy is a Global News colleague and a senior crime reporter based in Calgary and she covered this case in an episode of her award-winning podcast Crime Beat. In the excerpt of the episode shared with you today you’ll hear from Timothy McLean’s mother, Carol De Delley….who is fighting to change the law in Canada-- so killers deemed to be not criminally...

From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, companies made the move to create products that were colourless or transparent as it was often equated with purity. It was called the clear craze and it was first inspired by Ivory soap's "99.44/100% Pure" campaign. Crystal Pepsi was launched in 1992 with a big splash at Super Bowl 27 in a commercial with Van Halen’s hit song Right Now in the background, but the product was taken off the shelves about two years after its launch. In the 30 years since...

In May 2016, tens of thousands of people in Fort McMurray were forced to flee their homes, as a fire burned through surrounding forests and entered the city. Damian Asher, a veteran firefighter and the captain of the Fort McMurray fire department, said the department had been monitoring the wildfire's movement. READ MORE: Short-term exposure to Fort McMurray wildfire smoke affected lungs of RCMP officers: study "We've had lots of forest fires in our area in the past and we work with lots...

Journalist, Erica Vella is on a journey to find and speak with the people at the heart of stories that have captured the entire world’s attention, … and today she shares major developments in two stories that we’ve covered so far. Contact: Email: [email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Dec. 9 2012, video of a baby monkey running around in a faux-shearling coat at a North York IKEA garnered international attention when Darwin escaped a locked crate and vehicle before making a dash toward the furniture store. “(I thought) this is absolutely ridiculous that there would be a monkey wearing clothes, walking around in Canada in the middle of winter. It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever and just really, you start to think about how did he get to that position, how did he...

Elias Tarabay remembers Aug. 4, 2020, clearly. He arrived home after having a late lunch with a friend. He was living in Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon. His house had a balcony that looked out at the city’s ports. Just as he settled in, he heard a loud explosion. Tarabay was working as an editor for a local newspaper at the time and he thought he would take the video to send back to his office. Then a second large explosion rocked the Beirut port. The explosion killed at least 214...