Elliott Price attended the Montreal Expos' first home game on April 14, 1969 at Jarry Park. "There was a lot of worry because it snowed significantly during that week in April 1969, and it was a makeshift field, as well, and they were worried about what kind of, you know, will they be able to play the game?" Price said. "And lo and behold, April 14, 1969, the sun came out and was 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and there were people standing on snow mounds behind the outfield fences, looking into a...

Devon Harris always had a passion for sport and dreamed of competing in the Olympics as a teenager. He spent his childhood in Haughton, a rural district in Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica, but moved to Olympic Gardens in Kingston, Jamaica. "The thing that I would say kept me sane was school. I loved school. ... I loved to play and guess where I could play? At school. So I discovered sports. ... The thing I loved about sports was regardless of what your situation was off the field or on the field,...

As a former multiple-franchiser owner, Alan Payne is familiar with Blockbuster; he had owned over 40 stores in Alaska and Texas. Early on, however, Payne said he noticed issues with how the company had been operating. At its peak, there were over 9,000 Blockbuster stores around the world and many of the stores were corporately owned. While it appeared that Blockbuster was growing, Payne said he identified many financial flaws. In 2010, Blockbuster declared bankruptcy, and by 2014, all...

In March 2012, a 30-minute film produced by U.S.-based not-for-profit Invisible Children and narrated by co-founder Jason Russell, aimed to shed light on Joseph Kony, the leader of the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). He was the target of the Kony 2012 campaign led by Invisible Children, which garnered international attention. Before Invisible Children existed, in 2003, Russell, along with Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole, set out to create a film on the conflict in the...

On this episode of the Global News podcast What happened to…? Erica Vella finds out what happened to viral video, Kony 2012, which aimed to shed light on the Ugandan militant who founded the Lord’s Resistance Army. Dominic Akena grew up in a small village in Patongo, Uganda; his childhood was spent outside playing with other children in his village. In 2001, when Akena was seven years old, he remembers hearing a lot of commotion early one morning. The LRA had attacked a village close to...

On April 15, 2019, the world watched with despair as a fire ripped through Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The flames began just before 7 p.m. local time and spread rapidly throughout  one of Europe’s most well-known structures. By 7:40 p.m., the fire had spread to the spire, which collapsed just before 8 p.m. Firefighters worked diligently to save the towers and to keep a bell from collapsing, but their efforts could not save a roof structure that dated to the year 1220. On this episode...

In 2011, a 90-second video launched Ted Williams, a man who was experiencing homelessness, as an international celebrity. In the video, Williams was standing at the side of a road in Columbus, Ohio; he was holding a sign that read in part, “I have a God-given gift of voice.” Doral Chenoweth, a photojournalist with The Columbus Dispatch -- a daily newspaper based in Ohio – took the video. Chenoweth posted the video in January 2011 and it quickly began drawing international attention; media...

Moufida Holubeshen and her husband John Holubeshen have long been passionate about beekeeping; the couple has three hives of their own at their home in Nanaimo, B.C. In 2019, Moufida recalled an email that sparked her attention; several sightings of large hornets had led officials to believe there was a suspected Asian giant hornet nest in Nanaimo. On this episode of Global News’ What happened to…? Erica Vella finds out more about the Asian giant hornet and how they managed to arrive in...

There are stories…..that grabbed the whole world’s attention… But what happens when the news cycle continues to turn and new stories take over the headlines? This season, not only do we revisit major new events, we dig deep into topics YOU have asked for. We have 20 brand new episodes for you this season.  Global News What Happened To...? arrives November 25th. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode of the Global News podcast What happened to…?, Erica Vella updates stories that were covered in Season 1 of the podcast, including the Quebec mosque shooting, Boko Haram and the Fukushima nuclear crisis. Contact: Twitter: @ericavella Email: [email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2002, Trent Evans was overcome with excitement when he learned he would be invited to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah to volunteer as an icemaker. Originally from Edmonton, Alta., Evans had been working as a supervisor for the maintenance team that cared for the ice during Oilers games, team practices and other activities. Evans was one of 16 people invited to make and maintain the ice that would be on the international stage at the Olympics. When Evans arrived in Salt...

Introducing Episode 1 of China Rising - Hostage Diplomacy On the first episode of China Rising, we examine  the Chinese government's practice of detaining political prisoners, by hearing directly from Canadians who've become caught in the crossfire. Christian aid workers Julia and Kevin Garratt lived in China for 30 years before their arrest in 2014, when they were suddenly cast as pawns in a geopolitical chess match. The Garratts’ traumatic experience is eerily similar to the case of the...

In the 1980s, the threat of acid rain in Canada and the U.S. had become a brewing environmental crisis. In areas of Southern Ontario, lakes that once were teeming with wildlife were on the verge of becoming dead lakes, void of fish and other aquatic species. Acid rain occurs when sulphur dioxide and other pollutants mix with moisture in the air to form rain droplets with a high level of acidity. This acidity causes aluminum to leach out of the soil and water, potentially poisoning the...

Hannatu Stephens was in her school's hostel in Chibok on the night of April 14, 2014. Speaking through a translator, she said at around 1 a.m., she heard loud noises coming from outside. The men who had broken into the hostel were not military soldiers, but members of the insurgency group, Boko Haram. Stephens and 275 other young women were ordered to leave the hostel and the insurgents set the school on fire. Stephens and the other girls were taken to Sambisa Forest, the known hiding...

In April 2014, Grace Danladi Saleh had moved to her husband’s hometown of Chibok, Nigeria. He husband, Idrisa Danladi Saleh, was the town’s doctor and cared for the community. On April 14, 2014, Grace said she heard loud noises and their home began to shake. Her husband went to investigate. That night 276 schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram and in the days and weeks following the abductions, international outrage began to mount. A campaign called Bring Back Our Girls became the...

Aymen Derbali knew he would be late for evening prayers, but he decided to go anyway. He left his home in Sainte Foy, Que., on Jan. 29, 2017. When he arrived at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, he took a spot in the back corner to not disturb others but within minutes, he said he heard a loud noise. That night, six people were killed and 19 seriously injured when a gunman burst into the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, Derbali was one of them. The attack stunned the...

The Flint Michigan water crisis garnered international attention in 2015 after it was discovered that residents were being poisoned by the water running through their taps. A year earlier in 2014, the city switched its water source from the Detroit water system to the Flint River as a cost-saving solution while awaiting the building of a pipeline from Lake Huron which hadn’t been completed yet. Many people living in the city questioned the decision before the switch which officially...

Brazil was among one of the countries most affected by the Zika virus in 2015 and 2016 but Dr. Carlos Pardo, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, said the virus emerged in the 1950s. Zika virus is an arbovirus — a type of virus that is transmitted by certain kinds of insects like mosquitos. The ades Aegypti mosquito, which is primarily found in tropical climates, is a known carrier of the virus. It can also be sexually transmitted. In 2015, Germana Soares, who lives in Brazil, was...

Eleven years ago, Haiti was rocked by a seven-magnitude earthquake that killed, injured and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Franciscot Auguste was living in the country at the time with his mother and four other siblings. He said Jan. 12, 2010, started out like a normal day that is until he realized the shaking he was feeling was an earthquake; he acted immediately and ran outside of the building. 20 seconds after he escaped the three storey building came crumbling down and he...

On this episode of the Global News podcast Whatever Happened To…?, journalist Erica Vella revisits the story of Alan Kurdi and the Syrian refugee crisis (Part 2) In 2012, Ruba Bilal was living in Damascus, Syria with her husband and two sons; she had reached a level of stability in her life, but the country where she had lived her whole life was in the middle of a dangerous civil war. Bilal said she was an activist in her community and worked on providing aid to people who were in areas...

In early September in 2015, a photo of a young boy lying lifeless on a beach in the Mediterranean captured the world’s attention. The picture showed two-year-old Alan Kurdi lying face down in the sand. Kurdi and his family were attempting to cross the Mediterranean by boat after fleeing war-torn Syria, but on the journey Alan, his brother Ghalib and mother Rehana perished; Abdullah Kurdi, the family’s father and husband, was the only one to survive. Tima Kurdi, Abdullah’s sister and Alan’s...

On this episode of the Global News podcast Whatever Happened To…?, journalist Erica Vella revisits the 2013 Lac Megantic train derailment. In the early hours of July 6, 2013, a train carrying petroleum crude oil crashed into the centre of Lac Megantic, a small town in Quebec. The downtown core erupted in flames; 47 people perished, 2,000 people were evacuated from their homes. The tragedy marks one of the worst rail disasters in Canadian history. The incident happened at 1:15 a.m. July 6,...

Following years of drought, Australia was ravaged by sweeping bushfires that began in 2019; 33 people were killed and thousands of others were displaced. Bushfires are an annual threat during Australia’s dry summers, but this wave of fires came early, catching many by surprise. The speed of the fires, coupled with the consistently dry conditions, created a situation firefighters struggled to control. New South Wales, a coastal state, was the hardest hit. The region located in the eastern...

Brandon Wolf recalls the hours leading up to June 12, 2016 vividly. He said he made plans to go out with his friends Christopher Andrew (Drew) Leinonen and Juan Ramon Guerrero. They decided to go to Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. At 2:02 a.m. a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun walked into the tightly packed club and began firing. The massacre is on record as one of the deadliest mass shootings of LGBTQ2 people in the U.S. Forty-nine people were killed and 53 others...