In a world often dominated by challenging headlines, Yahoo News Canada aims to spotlight uplifting news stories both local and beyond. This week’s roundup includes a Lebanese man caring for pets left behind as residents flee Israeli strikes, a 99-year-old veteran gets her diploma eight decades later and a Toronto non-profit that is breaking barriers for Muslim students.
Van Ha carried an envelope filled with $12,000 in cash everywhere she went, planning to eventually give it to her three children.
She felt safer keeping the large sum with her rather than putting it anywhere else, said her nephew, Truong Huynh, in an interview with the Washington Post.
But on Sept. 22, when Ha, 71, returned home from grocery shopping at Market Basket in Shrewsbury, Mass., her heart sank: The envelope was missing.
She phoned her nephew in a panic, telling him that her precious savings must have slipped out of her purse in the parking lot or at the store.
“She was sad and she admitted her mistake; she shouldn’t keep cash with her like that,” said Huynh, noting that Ha does not speak English.
Huynh, 55, agreed to take Ha back to the supermarket to help her communicate with store employees and try to track down the missing envelope.
Huynh said he and his aunt felt defeated and distressed, especially since the cash was intended to help support her family.
“She tries to help out her kids,” said Huynh. “We were about to leave very sad.”
Just as they were getting into the car to head home empty-handed, Desfosses ran outside with good news: A customer had just brought the envelope to the service desk. Every dollar was still there.
“The look on her face when he presented the money back to her was priceless,” Desfosses said.
The Good Samaritan who brought it back just wanted to be sure it went to its rightful owner, Desfosses said.
“I don’t know if there’s a lot of people that would do that,” Desfosses said. “It shows you what he’s made of … It shows you there are truly some good people in this world.”
A non-profit geared to creating an environmental movement within the Canadian Muslim community has taken its work inside the classroom. The aim is to help students make connections between sustainable habits and their cultural values.
Aadil Nathani, co-founder of Green Ummah — ummah means community in Arabic — said the group was created to help address under-representation in environmental causes among Muslim people as well as other racialized groups.
“We see these students as the future leaders in the world,” said Nathani in an interview with CBC News. He also acts as the group’s director of operations and partnerships, and is a lawyer for a Toronto firm by day.
He said Muslim communities in Canada have had limited capacity to get involved with environmental movements — and for good reason.
“I’ve grown up in a post-9/11 world where a lot of the concerns for the Muslim community have been, first and foremost, safety and security within Canada, within the United States,” Nathani said, who resides in Scarborough, Ont, a Toronto suburb.
He points to tragedies in recent years when Islamophobia has erupted in deadly violence, such as the London, Ont., truck attack by Nathaniel Veltman, who killed four members of the Afzaal family in 2021, and the mosque shooting by Alexandre Bissonnette, who killed six people in 2017.
“We wanted to let them feel like, yes, there are problems, but we can all collectively be part of the solution,” he said.
Funding from that group’s NatureHood program has paid to send students on field trips to national wildlife areas, migratory bird sanctuaries or urban nature sites, such as Rouge National Urban Park in Toronto’s east end.
“This has been really unique for us because we also know that newcomer and racialized Canadians face barriers to accessing nature in Canada.”
“So we’ve been able to break those barriers down entirely and actually just send students to do activities in nature spaces, which is great because it builds that connection to the environment and will hopefully lead to the students becoming environmental stewards in the future.”
Anees Chugtai, a Grade 11 student at Toronto’s Gibraltar Leadership Academy said the message came through loud and clear.
“The program made me feel a lot more hopeful about humanity’s rebuttal against climate change,” he said.
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A dog clings to Hussein Hamza inside a car as he pans his camera around to show the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon.
“Poor thing. Look at this, he’s clinging to me out of fear,” Hamza says in the video he posted online. “A missile hit here,” he said, his voice shaking.
As Israel pummels southern Lebanon with airstrikes, tens of thousands of residents are fleeing their homes in fear. But Hamza is staying. His mission is to care for the dogs and other animals left behind.
He runs an animal shelter that houses 200 dogs in the village of Kfour. Recently, he has also been driving around towns and villages in the south, looking for stray animals and abandoned pets to feed.
“I opened bags of food and left them water. I’m relying on God,” said Hamza as he spread food hundreds of meters away from the shelter he runs, in case the dogs need to escape the facility when airstrikes come too close.
Despite the danger, Hamza drives around looking for stray animals and pets left behind by families, many of them abandoned behind locked gates. He brings them food, and then posts the videos online.
“Come here, come here! I got you food,” Hamza called to a dog hiding behind a fence in one of his online videos. “At least unleash your dogs,” he pleads with residents in his videos. “The dog owners had to escape on foot and couldn’t take them.”
In the midst of the chaos, Hamza has become a lifeline for many who reach out to him, hoping he can get food to their pets.
“This nice man called me, crying. They (the family) left the dogs behind the fence, and they couldn’t take them,” he said. “I just got the dogs dry food.”
Hamza’s journey has been perilous. On more than one occasion, he’s narrowly avoided airstrikes.
Even so, the danger keeps mounting. “I hope someone can take some load off my shoulders,” Hamza said as he picked up an elderly stray dog off the street and into his car.
“God help people. At the time of a strike, people lose it and don’t know what to do,” he said while dropping off food and water in remote areas.
With an Israeli ground invasion of south Lebanon looking increasingly likely, Hamza worries about what comes next. For now, his focus remains on the animals.
Do you have an uplifting moment or story you would like to share with us? Email the Yahoo Canada team: canadatips@yahoonews.com.
