Whether it’s stories about safety and security or moving stories of people finding their place in the world, one theme dominates the news you consume most in 2022.
Many of them revolve around the word “home”.
Two years after a global pandemic, it may be a topic close to the heart, or it may be a coincidence. But the pattern is evident when you browse the top 10 stories for 2022 on CBC Newfoundland and Labrador’s website.
Here are 10 stories that grabbed headlines this year.
Tiffany Elton lived through every homeowner’s worst nightmare this year — discovering that the house she bought sucks. Or, in Elton’s case, it was actually a mechanic’s garage that had been on fire.
Since that discovery, Elton told CBC reporter Ariana Kellan that she was sent on a frustrating fact-finding mission to try to save her home, her finances and her jewelry and Herbal business. To make matters worse, when she warned the city of St. John’s about her plight, they began fining her for the issues.
“[The] The more information I got, the more complicated it was because the structure might not be safe, which I didn’t buy,” she said. “I didn’t buy a house that burned down.
Communities in southwestern Newfoundland have been hit by one of the worst storms in recent memory. Homes were razed, entire neighborhoods were destroyed, and one person tragically lost his life.
The story dominated the national news for over a week, but none got more attention than the first – St. John’s writers Darrell Roberts and Nick Ward with reporter Marlon Information provided by Malone Mullin and meteorologist Ashley Brauweiler relentlessly updated the scene in the Port of Basque Country throughout the day.
The images are shocking. The personal stories that follow are equally gripping. Fiona’s story will continue into 2023 as people in southwestern Newfoundland continue to recover from the devastation.
About two years ago, Pauline Diamond and Randy Diamond decided to sell the home they had lived in since the early 1980s. They found a buyer — a family friend looking to move back home — and proceeded to liquidate the title to clear up any potential land disputes.
That’s when the trouble started.
The provincial government told them that Pauline and Randy’s home is on Crown land.
According to the government, the lawn where their children played, the garden where Randy grew vegetables and the house where Pauline raised her family never belonged to Diamonds.
“We didn’t know where we stood or where we were going next,” Pauline said.
Charlie Comrie knows his story is unusual, and some may think he’s lost his mind.
But for Comrie, a 96-year-old World War II veteran, it all came when he sold his house in Clinton, Ont., last December and moved 3,000 kilometers east to a rural town in Newfoundland. It all makes sense.
Comrie now lives in Plate Cove West, a village of about 170 people who welcomed him and his best friend Shiloh, a Nova Scotia terrier, with open arms.
You might wonder why an old man would move such a long distance to live on the harsh shores of the Atlantic Ocean.
The answer, he told CBC reporter Melissa Tobin, is simple.
Love.
Traveling in 2022 is anything but ordinary, as this Basque Harbor couple can tell you.
As journalist James Grudic writes, the couple’s relaxing vacation in Cancun, Mexico, quickly turned into a frustrating experience for Michelle and Paul Bart, as their flight home was canceled and delayed by a full week.
What was supposed to be a two-hour flight ended up costing them a full week of travel time. Their flight from Montreal to Deer Lake, western Newfoundland, was canceled not once, but four times in a row, before being delayed by three days.
Michelle Barter said the fourth cancellation in as many days was too much for her to deal with. They booked a flight to Nova Scotia and took the ferry home.
“I was in shock, unbelievable. I was crying,” Butt said. “Right now I don’t want to go anywhere that requires flying.”
Lillian Thomey, 80, said she never imagined she would be fighting her own family in court.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head as she spoke of the caregivers she once trusted — her daughter and son-in-law.
Jackie Puddister, 54, and her husband Christopher Puddister, 56, were sentenced in 2022, ending a years-long saga over missing money, homes sold in 1 Dollars sold and saga of broken families.
Thomey’s case highlights the distress and long-term impact financial crime can have on older people. As experts say, reports of financial crimes by older adults are on the rise, and she’s not alone.
In a story that has dominated headlines for days, a Mount Moriah family says their privacy was violated by two Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers who entered their home unannounced and questioned their young daughter about her disappearance in the early morning The girl’s situation.
Cortney Pike told CBC News that she and her partner, Andrew Dunphy, were woken around 5:30 a.m. by footsteps at the top of the stairs.
“I said, ‘Andrew, I think we have someone in the family,’ Pike said Tuesday.
Pike said she learned police had entered the home through an unlocked door and they began asking questions about a missing girl. Pike said the couple said they were not aware of anyone missing and asked police why they were in the home, but received no definitive answer.
RCMP insist they knocked, rang the bell and yelled for 45 minutes before entering the house. The family said they didn’t believe it was real, saying their bear hadn’t made a sound.
Joanne Nemec Osmond tells CBC’s Ariana Kelland how the notorious federal payment system caused her family to lose their home
A woman in St. John’s says she’s lost everything — her home, her livelihood and stability — and hasn’t received a dime in compensation after years of problems with the federal government’s notorious Phoenix pay system .
Joanne Nemec Osmond began working as a contractor with the Canada Revenue Agency in 2006. Every year, she’s fired, only to be recalled the next season, with the hope that one day she’ll become a permanent employee.
In 2017, she was offered a higher paying position, but the cost was high enough to destroy her family, career and finances.
“They owe me cold hard cash from work but I will never get my credit back and I will never [get back] I had to leave my children home, life changing,” Nemec Osmond said.
“They took many years off my life.”
CBC reporter Jeremy Eaton tells the story of Taylor Jackson and Dr. Paul Patey, and how Jackson’s life was saved in a speeding ambulance
Dr. Paul Patey knew that a young man could die unless he did something unusual.
It was July 16, 2010, and an ambulance was heading to St. John’s Hospital with a teenager in urgent need of bleeding from a recently injured brain.
Holding a scalpel and drill borrowed from a maintenance worker at the William H. Newhook Community Health Center in Whitburn, Patey told the paramedics who were driving to find a safe place to stop so he could try Drill a hole in the young man’s skull.
“I took the drill and put it on the bone,” Patey recalled in an interview with CBC’s Jeremy Eaton.
He saved the boy’s life.
A TV show about dog detectives managed to fool the St. John’s community – even the city inspector.
The city said it received a complaint on Aug. 10 from a resident on Gower Street in the downtown core about what appeared to be an illegal hair salon — called Curl Up & Dye, according to a sign on the front window — located adjacent to the home.
After an inspector investigated, the city sent letters to homeowners saying they needed to apply to the city for proper certification — or face fines and legal action.
But Curl Up & Dye doesn’t actually exist – the painted “storefront” is actually part of the set for the CityTV show hudson and rexfilmed in and around St. John’s.
Indeed.
