The Current for July 6, 2021
Today on The Current:
Perry Bellegarde has been a leader in Indigenous politics for decades, and national chief of the Assembly of First Nations for almost seven years. As his term comes to an end, he reflects on his time in office, Canada's reckoning with residential schools, and what lies ahead.
Then, U.S. sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson will miss the women's 100-metre race at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, after accepting a suspension for testing positive for THC, the psychoactive chemical found in marijuana. We talk to Ross Rebagliati, a Canadian Olympian whose gold medal almost went up in smoke after he tested positive for the drug in 1998; and Paul Melia, CEO of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport.
And you might have taken a selfie when you got your COVID-19 vaccine, but would you write a poem to mark the occasion? David Hassler is co-leader of the Global Vaccine Poem, which asks people to reflect on the pandemic and receiving their shot, and put those feelings into a few lines of verse. We also hear from Laura Wood in Owen Sound, Ont., who is among more than 1,400 people who have contributed to the global poetry initiative.