A 27-year-old Norwood man is dead after a single-vehicle collision on County Road 40 north of Norwood late Saturday night (July 8).

At around 11:15 p.m., Peterborough County OPP and emergency services responded to a report of the collision on County Road 40 between County Road 6 and Webster Road.

A pickup truck had left the roadway entering the ditch and striking a rock wall, at which point the driver was ejected from the vehicle.

The driver, a 27-year-old man from Norwood, was transported to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. There were no other occupants in the vehicle.

County Road 40 remained closed for several hours while police investigated and documented the scene.

Anyone who may have witnessed or has video or dash camera footage of the collision and who has not spoken with police is asked to contact the Peterborough County OPP at 1-888-310-1122.

When she was 19 years old and all her friends were enjoying their summer holidays, Lakefield resident Rachel Jenkins was being told by three different neurologists she might never walk again.

Three years and a multiple sclerosis diagnosis later, not only is Jenkins walking, but she’s made it her career to help people improve their own mobility.

Today, Jenkins is a personal trainer for Lakefield 24 Hour Fitness and Young’s Point 24 Hour Fitness. Though she does all kinds of training, her niche is assisting her elderly clients with day-to-day functions that help them stay in their own home, like shoulder exercises for carrying groceries and squats for getting in and out of bed.

When she’s not working as a personal trainer, Jenkins is also a spin cycle instructor at Peterborough’s Full Tilt Cycle, a boutique cycling studio and fitness gym. She also works for Community Care Peterborough, a non-profit organization serving seniors and adults with physical challenges in the city and county of Peterborough.

“[Community Care] has a program where you can go into retirement homes and teach fall prevention and seated exercise,” she explains. “I’m able to relate to my clients, especially the ones that have trouble with mobility or independence, because I was there once.”

Before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a potentially disabling disease of the central nervous system, Jenkins wasn’t planning on a life committed to working with her body. In June 2020, when she first felt the symptoms — a tingling in her feet not unlike when an arm or leg falls asleep — she was on summer break from studying political science at the University of Guelph. Her plan was to complete her degree and then head off to law school.

All of that changed when, not long after the first onset of symptoms, she woke up completely immobile, paralyzed from the waist down. She visited three neurologists who were unable to diagnose her, though they all told her she might never walk again.

“I never wanted to accept the wheelchair,” Jenkins says, explaining she spent the entire time before receiving her diagnosis in denial, unwilling to believe the symptoms were anything serious. “I’d never accepted that answer. And I think that’s good because obviously I proved them wrong.”

It took nearly a year before Jenkins was finally diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). Relapsing-remitting means Jenkins gets acute attacks between long periods of less severe or even non-existent symptoms.

Although RRMS is the most common type of MS in Canada (around 85 per cent of those with MS are diagnosed with RRMS according to MS Canada), Jenkins’ case was difficult to diagnose because she had no prior family history of MS, she was very young when her symptoms began, and the onset was very sudden rather than progressive.

Between the first hospital visit and the diagnosis months later, Jenkins dropped out of school, moved back home to Lakefield, missed every major holiday with her family, and spent over two months at Lyndhurst Centre, a spinal rehabilitation facility in Toronto.

After months of intense and painful rehabilitation beginning with seemingly simple fine motor movements like uncurling and wiggling her toes, Jenkins slowly began to walk again.

“Even just trying to get up from my bed was very difficult,” Jenkins recalls. “It was scary because I didn’t trust my body.”

After working with her team of personal trainers and therapists, Jenkins saw a future that no longer involved law school. When she was out of the hospital and had her official diagnosis, she began to study fitness and health promotion at Fleming College.

During this time, she spent all of her free time at the gym and driving to Toronto three times a week to a physical therapist who specialized in spinal cord and brain injury.

“While all my friends were at work, I was focusing on physical therapy,” she says, adding that she gave herself small goals like being able to go to the mall with friends and walk down to her cottage dock without needing to be carried. “Recovery became my job.”

Dan Caldwell, the owner of the 24-Hour Fitness gyms in Lakefield and Young’s Point, was very impressed with Jenkins’ motivation and commitment to her fitness routine after months of seeing her come into his gyms. When she mentioned she was working towards becoming a personal trainer, he offered her a job on the spot, and she ended up getting her certification before finishing school.

She began working for Caldwell in October last year, about two years into her recovery and a year and a half after her diagnosis. Jenkins says much of what she’s learned comes from working for Caldwell, who she calls an “amazing mentor.”

“[He’s done personal training] for 40 years, so he was an awesome person to get into the business with,” she explains, adding that he’ll often give her tips when she’s having difficulty with a client. “I love working with him. He’ll just teach me everything.”

To learn a new approach to fitness, Jenkins chose to do her school placement with Full Tilt Cycle. Even though she’s now done her schooling, she continues to work as a spin instructor for the gym and says she enjoys having a career that combines various approaches to fitness.

“I love doing the personal training and the group fitness. It’s awesome to have a mix of both because I like the energy and the vibes that people give you in group fitness. Everyone is really supportive of each other and very motivating. Everyone’s there cheering each other on.”

On the day-to-day, Jenkins says she’s reached a point where she’s able to live a relatively close to normal life as long as she sticks to her fitness routine and continues to take her medication.

“I would say that if you looked at me, you wouldn’t know I have MS,” she points out.

Looking back, Jenkins remembers being in the hospital and telling her roommates how much she loved her life and didn’t want it to change. Now she knows that, without her diagnosis, she wouldn’t have been as happy as she is today.

“My whole body feels new,” she explains. “I really got a whole new life out of it, professionally and even with some friendships and where I live. Yes, I would have been fine had I ended up in law school. But I think I make more of an impact now — hopefully — on my clients and the people around me.”

Even aside from her professional endeavours, Jenkins feels her diagnosis has allowed her to grow as as a person and to become more empathetic towards others living with illness and disability.

“Until I was put in a situation where I had to use a wheelchair, I didn’t realize how inaccessible a lot of things are and now I notice it,” she says. “It also just made me more grateful. I definitely have a greater respect for my body and I have a greater respect for all the people around me.”

Jenkins recently told her story on CBC’s Sickboy, a humorous podcast on which three friends break down stigmas associated with illness and disease by hearing from those who have experienced it first-hand. Her episode, titled “Youthful Swagger and MS: Rachel’s Courage In The Face Of Early Onset Multiple Sclerosis,” is available on CBC Podcasts.

Haliburton Highlands is one step closer to losing its status as the only county in Ontario without a CT scanner.

Haliburton Highlands Health Services (HHHS) announced on Friday (July 7) the Ministry of Health has approved the organization’s request to acquire a CT (computerized tomography) scanner and a mammography unit with CT capabilities.

“Having a CT scanner in Haliburton will facilitate care closer to home for local residents and expedite diagnosis by eliminating travel to distant hospitals for imaging,” says Dr. Mario Voros, chief of radiology at HHHS, in a media release. “Having access to breast cancer screening from the latest state-of-the-art mammography unit will greatly benefit women in Haliburton County.”

A CT scan is a non-invasive medical test that helps physicians diagnose and treat medical conditions with advanced x-ray technology to take images of the body. It has become the standard of care for the diagnosis of many life-threatening conditions such as stroke and trauma and the investigation of abdominal pain.

Mammography is the most effective way of detecting breast cancer in women. With the addition of mammography services, HHHS will be able to provide services in a remote area that is currently underserved and includes over 6,000 at-risk women.

“Diagnostic imaging tools are key to our future success and providing care locally,” says HHHS acting president and CEO Veronica Nelson. “We know that these services will better support the needs of patients with quicker diagnostics, will reduce EMS visits out of the county keeping ambulances available for emergencies, and attract more health care workers including much needed doctors, nurses, and medical radiation technologists.”

While HHHS has now received provincial approval to acquire the diagnostic imaging equipment, they still need to raise funds to support the purchase as the provincial government does not fund hospital equipment.

“We are committed to raising the funds needed with the support of the community,” says HHHS Foundation director Melanie Klodt Wong.

“The HHHS Foundation has been working behind the scenes since the application process began and are working towards launching a major capital campaign in the near future now that HHHS has the go-ahead.”

A 19-year-old Syrian refugee who has been separated from his family for eight years and only recently discovered they are still alive is planning to sponsor them to come to Canada, with the help of a group of Peterborough residents calling themselves Azadi Peterborough.

The group includes David McNab and Scarborough resident Matt Park, the two men who accidentally discovered the plight of Rashid Sheikh Hassan back in May 2021 when the young man, a Syrian Kurd living in Turkey under fear of deportation, posted on a Canadian Facebook group dedicated to birds that he wanted to come to Canada.

Rashid’s post was immediately met with racist, hateful, and anti-immigrant comments. Park defended Rashid, condemned the online attackers, and brought the post to the attention of McNab, a retired OPP officer and instructor at Trent University. McNab began corresponding with Rashid and teaching him English and, with the help of Park, McNab’s veterinarian wife Kristy Hiltz, nurse practitioner and veteran U.N. peacekeeper Lee-Anne Quinn, and social advocate Michael VanDerHerberg, raised funds to sponsor Rashid to come to Canada.

Just over a year later, his sponsors greeted Rashid as he arrived in Canada at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. Rashid immediately embraced his new Canadian life — including trying poutine for the first time on the way to Peterborough. Since then, Rashid has attended high school, become fluent in English, and worked at The Whistle Stop Café in downtown Peterborough (which serves poutine of course).

After the devastating earthquakes this past February in Turkey and northern Syria, Rashid launched a campaign to raise funds for the Canadian International Medical Relief Organization (CIMRO). Hastings resident and former longtime Peterborough paramedic Mark Cameron, who is the president of CIMRO, was able to connect with two people working in the village where Rashid’s grandparents live.

During a brief call with his grandmother, Rashid was told his parents and his two sisters and brother were still alive. Shortly after that call, he saw and spoke to his family for the first time in eight years during a video call on WhatsApp.

VIDEO: Meeting Rashid at the Airport

Knowing of Rashid’s desire to be reunited with his family, his original sponsors have formed a new group called Azadi Peterborough (azadi is the Kurdish word for “freedom”). Other members of the group include Clayton Ibey and Brenda Wierdsma-Ibey (owner of The Avant-Garden Shop), retired paramedic Jim Vinn, Lainey Bates (one of Rashid’s high school teachers), pottery instructor Karina Bates, grocer Paul Halasz, and Trent University graduate student Simal Iftikhar. The group is being supported by the Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough.

To apply to the Immigration Canada to sponsor Rashid’s family to come to Canada, Azadi Peterborough needs to raise $45,000 to cover the travel costs and the costs of family support for one year.

Rashid has himself already contributed $10,000 — all the money he has earned and all of his savings — and Azadi Peterborough members have contributed another $10,000, so the group is nearly halfway to its goal.

“He is a hard-working, unselfish, and determined young man who has been contributing to his new community since he arrived,” McNab says in a media release. “It is now hoped that this community will help reunite this deserving young man with the family that he grew up believing were lost forever.”

If you would like to help Azadi Peterborough bring Rashid’s family to Canada, you can donate online via GoFundMe at gofund.me/92820f32 or by etransfer to rashidfamilysponsorship@gmail.com.

Donations can also be dropped off at or mailed to The Avant-Garden Shop (165 Sherbrooke St, Peterborough, ON K9J 2N2) or dropped off at Sherbrooke Heights Animal Hospital at 1625 Sherbrooke Street in Peterborough.

Rashid’s story

In March 2014, when he was 11 years old, Rashid Sheikh Hassan’s family home in Aleppo, Syria was bombed. Along with his parents and his younger siblings (two sisters and a brother), Rashid made it out of the house safely but subsequently became separated from his family in the chaos that followed. He travelled 100 kilometres across a war zone to find his grandparents in a village north of Aleppo, hoping the rest of his family would follow. They never did.

It was two years before Rashid could return to Aleppo. He and his grandfather made the journey to seek any news of their family but found none, and were ordered out of the area at gunpoint by the military in control of the neighbourhood.

Rashid worked and helped his grandparents until after he turned 16 in 2019, when he feared he would be conscripted into the Syrian military — a dangerous possibility, especially for a young Kurdish man. He fled Syria for Turkey in early 2020 and, after eight attempts, managed to get across the border. He made his way to Istanbul but, since refugees were no longer given protection or official refugee status, he was considered an illegal resident.

Rashid lived in Turkey for almost two years, supporting himself with meagre wages in a country where he was not entitled to education or health care. As a Kurd with no legal status in Turkey, he was at constant threat of being captured and deported back to Syria.

Hoping to come to Canada, Rashid went on Facebook and searched for a Canadian Facebook group. He found one and posted a desperate plea for guidance on how he could come to Canada to start a new and safer life. However, with little knowledge of English, he had inadvertently posted his request in a group intended for people posting photos of birds, where his post was met with hostile, anti-immigrant, and racist comments.

Matt Park, one of the group’s members, defended Rashid and brought his post to the attention of retired Peterborough County OPP officer Dave McNab, who began communicating directly with Rashid online. Over several months, McNab helped Rashid improve his English. McNab, along with his wife Kristy Hiltz, Matt Park, Lee-Anne Quinn, and Michael VanDenHerberg, raised funds to sponsor Rashid to come to Canada.

On June 23, 2022, Rashid arrived at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport where he was welcomed to his new home by his sponsors. He now works and attends school in Peterborough and speaks fluent English, his third language.

On February 22, 2023, Rashid had a video call with his grandparents, his parents and siblings, and other family. Until an hour before the call, they feared he was dead and he feared they were dead.