Prada going fur-free

The Prada Group has become the latest luxury fashion house to go fur-free.

Prada said Wednesday that it will no longer include animal fur in its designs and new products starting from the springsummer 2020 women’s collection, which will be previewed in September.

Prada joins Versace, Gucci and Burberry in giving up fur in quick succession since the beginning of 2017. The move was in collaboration with the Fur Free Alliance of animal protection groups in more than 40 countries.

Miuccia Prada said that “focusing on innovative materials will allow the company to explore new boundaries of creative design, while meeting the demand for ethical products.”

The Prada Group, comprised of Prada, Miu Miu, Church’s and Car Shoes brands, will continue to sell items with fur until inventory is exhausted.

Canada’s top soldier has acknowledged the anger many Canadians felt about the way the Kandahar memorial was unveiled in Ottawa last week — in a shroud of secrecy, without the families of the dead soldiers present, and with ongoing limited public access.

In an interview from Brussels, Gen. Jonathan Vance promised Wednesday to make it right.

“We’ll turn this around,” Vance said. “Where we want to get to is that anybody who wants to visit that memorial can visit.”

The monument, with shiny black plaques featuring each of Canada’s military and civilian war dead, stood for years at Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan. It was moved to Canada after the combat mission ended in 2011.

Other than a tour of the country, it had been languishing in a warehouse until now.

Last week, the opening of the Afghanistan Memorial Hall occurred without public notice or invitations either to relatives of the dead depicted on the plaques or to wounded veterans. Only days later — just ahead of the Victoria Day weekend — did the Department of National Defence make the opening public.

“To ensure a dignified, dedication service, a quiet, limited service was held in honour of those we have lost,” the department said in a statement. “The decision to hold a humble, internal event was made by senior leadership to ensure proper reverence.”

Jimmy Collins, a former Canadian Forces sergeant who lost several platoon members in a roadside bomb blast in Kandahar province in 2009, called the approach ridiculous and embarrassing.

“It upsets me because it seems like the federal government is slowly trying to make everyone forget about the conflict in Afghanistan, the people who served there and their families,” Collins said.

Sandra Lang, whose daughter Michelle Lang has a plaque on the memorial as the only Canadian journalist killed in Afghanistan, said “very disappointed” barely describes how she and her husband feel.

“We can’t understand how the bureaucracy came up with this misguided plan,” Lang said. “As usual, the civilian casualties are ignored — we have had no correspondence or notification of the memorial.”

Vance, who was on hand for the opening, denied any attempt to hide the war effort. The aim, he said, was to get the memorial up and running as quickly as possible.

“It was a beautiful ceremony but it was absent the families and the wounded,” Vance said. “It happened. We need to now come up with a way to ensure accessibility.”

Police in Saskatoon are investigating a video that appears to show young boys swarming, punching and kicking a woman at a playground while some other boys stand by laughing.

The images recorded Monday evening show at least four boys attacking the woman, who suffered several bruises and cuts to her entire body, including many across her back.

The assault continues, even as she falls to the ground and tries to protect herself, but she eventually manages to get up and walk away after her attackers leave.

Bonnie Halcrow tells CTVNews.ca that she was attacked after she recorded some boys throwing sticks and stones at a man pushing a fridge on a trolley through the park and she chastised them for their actions.

The video was apparently recorded by a man who also tried to stop the boys’ harassment of the trolley pusher.

Halcrow, who was to give a statement to police on Wednesday, said she hadn’t decided whether she will press charges.

“All I could think about was ‘I hope my daughter is OK,”’ said Halcrow, who lives in Manitoba and had been visiting Saskatoon since Friday.

Halcrow, who says she already suffers from PTSD, also said it was the first time she and her 10-year-old daughter had visited the park and that she had never seen her attackers before.

“I could have ran but I don’t think my daughter could outrun them. She was screaming and crying and she was so scared for her mom ... I didn’t shed a tear because I wanted to be strong for her.”

She also said police had been at the park five minutes before the attack and confronted the same group, but it didn’t appear to be enough to make them leave.

The man who shot the attack video requested CTV News to not report his name out of fear for his safety. He told the media outlet that he was in the park reading a book and had asked the boys to quit throwing stones at passersby.

He said they stopped and he sat down, but he didn’t realize a woman nearby had recorded what the boys were up to.

“A few minutes later, they went to this lady and started beating her up,” he said.

Both he and Halcrow sent their videos to police.