Latest news with #CraigNorris
CBC
23-05-2025
- Climate
- CBC
CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition airing London Morning on Friday
Due to technical difficulties, CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition with host Craig Norris will not be heard on 89.1 FM or the CBC Listen App on Friday, May 23.. Instead, listeners in Waterloo region will hear London Morning with host Travis Dolynny. The CBC London team will include weather, traffic and news from Waterloo region, so listeners in our area will be able to stay up-to-date. The team at CBC Kitchener-Waterloo is working hard on the problem and we hope to have the show back on the air on Monday. If you'd like to speak to CBC Audience Relations about the technical problems, contact Audience Relations online or on the phone. Use the online Contact Form or call 1-866-306-4636.
CBC
18-04-2025
- Climate
- CBC
Kate's 5 fun things to do this long weekend in and around Waterloo region: April 18 to 21
Social Sharing It's the long weekend — perhaps a very long weekend for those who have both Friday and Monday off — and it's going to be a very spring-like weather rollercoaster with sun, rain and mild and cool temperatures. The Kitchener Rangers have a do-or-die game Friday in Windsor. Down 3-1 in the playoff series, if Kitchener wins, they'll be back at The Aud in Kitchener on Sunday night. If you're looking for something fun to listen to on Monday, CBC K-W's The Morning Edition with host Craig Norris is doing a special province-wide show that will focus on election issues from Ontario communities. Tune in and listen to the morning team between 6 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. Monday. If you're driving this weekend, here are some gas prices: Easter Egg Hunt for Dogs Friday 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Knollwood Park, Kitchener Riverside Park, Guelph It'll be cuteness overload in two local parks as dogs hunt for eggs with treats inside them. There is a cost to take part because it's a fundraiser for National Service Dogs. Register ahead of time or pay at the park. National Service Dog event page Bonus: Easter Pawty Saturday 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. The Modern Paw, 720 Belmont Ave. W., Kitchener This is a free, pet-friendly event with an egg hunt and photos in front of an Easter-themed backdrop. This is a fundraiser for the Kitchener Waterloo Stratford Perth Humane Society. Brewer's Brass Friday at 7 p.m. TWB Co-operative Brewing, 300 Mill St., Kitchener The brewer at TWB, Peter Collins, is one heck of a trombone player and he's getting the brass quartet back together for a fun Friday night concert. Entry is pay-what-you-can. Facebook event page Earth Day Clothing Swap Saturday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Church of the Good Shepherd, 116 Queen St. N., Kitchener Bring clean and gently used clothing, shoes and accessories for all ages and a reusable bag to this event and swap what you don't wear anymore for some new-to-you gems. There is an entry fee of $5 at the door, but bring a reusable mug and enjoy some refreshments. Organizers say this swap is a great way to save money, give away unwanted clothes and get something fresh for your wardrobe. Facebook event page Easter Egg hunts There are several egg hunts planned. Here are a few: Saturday at 10 a.m. — Doon Pioneer Park Community Association will host a hunt. The festivities kick off with a performance from Krickett and the hunt gets underway at 10:30 a.m. Saturday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. — Downtown Cambridge Easter Egg Hunt starts at Encore Threads and Treasures located at 60 Main St. and people will get a map of participating businesses taking part in the event. Saturday 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. — Hespeler Village Easter Egg Hunt will have people visit downtown businesses to get treats. Enjoy live music with Katy Topham on Queen Street and the food bank will be on hand to collect donations. Saturday 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. — Verity Community Church in Waterloo is hosting a hunt and people can also enjoy a hot beverage. Sunday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. — TheMuseum in downtown Kitchener will host a hunt with eggs hidden on all five floors of the building. Participants will receive a hunt booklet and for each egg returned, kids will get a piece of candy. It's also the last day for the Giraffe, A Heightened Experience exhibit. Sunday 2:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. — This event is for young children, from infant to six years old. An egg hunt for toddlers will take place on the indoor field at the Royal Distributing Athletic Performance Centre followed by a tot 'n' play session. The older kids will get to go on an Easter scavenger hunt outside. Registration is recommended. Hoppy Easter with Baby Chicks Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday Schneider Haus, Kitchener
CBC
13-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
CBC Poetry Prize winner Kyo Lee releases 1st book called I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country
A newly released collection of poetry from 18-year-old Waterloo poet Kyo Lee explores the search for love through the lens of a young queer Korean Canadian. In 2023, Lee was 16 when she became the youngest winner of the CBC Poetry Prize for her poem Lotus Flower Blooming into Breast. Now, she's released I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country, an intimate collection of poems covering topics including lineage, family, war, and hope. CBC K-W's The Morning Edition host Craig Norris caught up with Lee to see what she's been up to since. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Audio of the interview can be found at the bottom of this article. Craig Norris: It's been about a year and a half since we last spoke Kyo. What's changed for you? Kyo Lee: Not much because most of the book was written by the point that I won the CBC Poetry Prize. I did a lot of editing for that book, which actually was quite rigorous. I think it was harder than writing the book. But other than that, I've been doing regular high school stuff, attending school and applying to universities. I think I've been having a couple of months, maybe a year of creative fermentation, as I like to call it. I haven't written that much since I wrote the collection, but I've been trying to be more porous to the world. I've been trying to gain inspiration in everything that I see. Craig Norris: And now your book I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country is set to be released. How would you describe this collection? Kyo Lee: I think of it as a collection of growing up while trying to learn how to love. It's a story about the Asian-American diaspora and about womanhood and about the struggles, typical or not typical, associated with growing up. You know, about learning how to be yourself really while dealing with a bunch of different identities and learning, trying to love yourself and to love the world while growing up. Craig Norris: Does poetry do that for you? Kyo Lee: Yes, absolutely. I think poetry is kind of a coping mechanism for me. And it's also the way I learned how to survive, how to become myself. Craig Norris: Where do these poems come from? Kyo Lee: A lot of the poems are based on my own experiences, but I also do say that they're not always completely non-fiction the way people expect them to be. Whether that means I'm collecting different images from different experiences in my life and putting them all together. But I also do sometimes just pull from different settings, from images from photographs, you know, other artists. And then I put them all together into one scene. Craig Norris: You also run poetry workshops for teens. What is the number one piece of advice that you give to new writers? Kyo Lee: Whenever I'm asked that, I think often about what the director of Citizen Kane, Orson Wells, said about how he made Citizen Kane, which is ignorance and sheer ignorance. Not to compare myself to Orson Wells, but I think about that a lot, that the reason that I was able to write this book is because of ignorance because I didn't know it was going to be so hard. So I think my advice is to you have to gaslight yourself a little bit into thinking that it's not hard at all. Tell yourself it'll be easy peasy, that you'll write that book in two months. And then once you're in it, you probably won't write that book in two months. But now it's too late to back out. You just gotta start and then see where that takes you. WATCH | Former CBC Poetry Prize winner releases a new collection of poems: Former CBC Poetry Prize winner from Waterloo releases a new collection of poems 5 days ago Duration 0:47 On top of being the youngest person to ever win the CBC poetry prize, Kyo Lee's work had also been recognized by several prestigious literary organizations like The RBC Bronwen Wallace Award, Prism International, New York Times, just to name a few. Now, at 18 years old, the Waterloo-based poet is releasing a new book called I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country. Craig Norris: This is your last year of high school. What's next for you? Kyo Lee: I'll be going to university next year and hopefully I'll be studying English. I'm going to Yale, I think, well, I'm almost confident I'll be going to Yale. I just haven't committed officially. Craig Norris: Congratulations! You also mentioned that you started writing again, is it poetry? Kyo Lee: I've been writing maybe the beginnings of a novel. Fingers crossed it becomes more than a beginning. I've also been writing a little bit of poetry, but I would really like to explore what else I can do.
CBC
06-04-2025
- Health
- CBC
Q&A: 1st-ever X-ray of an astronaut in space used technology developed in Waterloo region
The first-ever X-ray taken of an astronaut in space used new technology developed in Waterloo region. Startup KA Imaging's new X-ray detector was part of a mission to study Earth's polar regions from space. It is being used to track the effects of space travel on astronauts. The X-ray detector creates clear images of X-rays and can measure an astronaut's bone density while in space. Chief technology officer of KA Imaging, Karim Karim, joined CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition with host Craig Norris to discuss how the new technology will impact the future of space travel and healthcare. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Audio of the interview can be found at the bottom of this article. Craig Norris: Tell us more about the technology and how it works. Karim Karim: This tech was developed in the region. We started the company more than a decade ago. It has a lot of applications. Most of the applications are on Earth, primarily in health care, but also in security. The health care applications include usage in the intensive care units where this type of technology reduces the need for follow up CT scans. So it's really good for efficient healthcare and better patient outcomes. At the same time it has this really unique feature of quantitative X-ray imaging. It lets you measure things in the body like bone density Craig Norris: Why are X-rays needed in space? Karim Karim: There are well-known studies that show in low gravity or zero gravity environments, astronauts lose their bone mass and bone density. This is a problem because oftentimes when you see them come back to Earth, they have even trouble climbing out of the shuttle. That's because things have changed. So monitoring bone density is very important. It can allow for the correct exercise regiment or potentially pharmaceutical intervention. Karim Karim: I think the main reason people didn't do X-rays in space in the past is because of the weight associated with X-ray machines. The X-ray sources and the detectors were really heavy. What we've done is we've brought a very lightweight system to the market. We've also got a very unique capability that no other X-ray has. We're the only one where you can get a bone density measurement with the X-ray. Now mind you, this is research, but we can do it. So this is the reason why we were selected. Craig Norris: In what ways does this X-ray machine differ from a machine used in the hospital? Karim Karim: When everyone thinks of X-rays, they think of a room, they think of a giant X-ray source, they see these wall stands. This is very different, all you've got in your hand is a plate and you've got a source that you can carry in your hand. The total weight of something like this would be probably in the 25-pound range but that is still too heavy. We were told we need to miniaturize even more to make this more of a regular occurrence in space. It's super simple: You've got a source, you've got a detector, and maybe you've got a laptop that fits the data. Craig Norris: How can this new X-ray detector be used here on earth? Karim Karim: One of the biggest challenges we have in the region are long wait happens because of the way our health care system is set up. Everybody gets funnelled into the emergency room and then a triage happens. Sometimes you may be waiting there for hours. With this type of system, you could argue you could do the triage at the paramedic stage, maybe in the ambulance or even earlier at little clinics. This way you could alleviate wait times and you could get better health care. One of the nice things about this particular X-ray, because of its spectral capability, is it's better at early detection of almost every disease that an X-ray is good at. So things like indeterminate lung nodules for cancer, coronary arterial calcium for heart disease, and pneumonia. It's shown higher sensitivity for all of those diseases. If this was now adopted widely in our urgent care clinics and outpatient clinics, you would get early detection that would reduce the load on our CT system and CAT scan infrastructure, but also on the hospital emergency room waiting times. Karim Karim: Absolutely. So the bone density part is in the research phase. The rest of it is FDA cleared and Health Canada approved. There are a few hospitals in Ontario that are already using it clinically and there's a few in the U.S. and overseas that are also using it. Karim Karim: Hugely. Every time you have a patient in the intensive care unit who needs a follow up scan, you have to get staff to transport them to the CT room. You have to pay for the CT machine, the CT time. All of that adds up to thousands of dollars per patient. This device eliminates that. So by adopting something like this, you could be saving half a million to a million dollars per year just in one ICU.
CBC
16-03-2025
- Business
- CBC
Q&A: Chaos and uncertainty of U.S. tariffs impacting Waterloo region businesses
The ongoing tension around news of U.S. tariffs against Canada are having real effects on some Waterloo region companies. The CEOs of two local companies that provide two very different services joined CBC Radio's The Morning Edition with host Craig Norris to discuss how the tariffs have impacted their businesses and plans they're making should the tariffs last for some time. Jennifer Appleby Vines is the CEO of Georgette Packaging in Kitchener and Dave Caputo is the CEO of Trusscore, which is a materials science company that produces sustainable building materials and has locations in Palmerston, Ontario and Calgary, Alberta. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Audio of the interview can be found at the bottom of this article. Craig Norris: Jennifer, what does your company do? Jennifer Appleby Vines: We make custom printed branded packaging. We are a packaging broker, so we help mostly food businesses. Our niche is to navigate what can be a pretty technical buy when the customer is buying. Doesn't sound like a donut box would be a technical buy, but it can be, there's a lot to navigate. So we help source, quote, get all of that organized. Craig Norris: What percentage of your business relies on the U.S.? Jennifer Appleby Vines: In any given year, on average, it's about 75 per cent and we buy about 75 per cent of our products in Canada. Craig Norris: Dave, give us a sense of what your company does and what percentage of your business relies on the U.S.? Dave Caputo: Trusscore is a material science company for sustainable building materials with the ultimate vision of creating a true painted drywall alternative. Our business initially had a lot of success in agriculture. A lot of people used polymer based panels to line barns and that sort of thing. But over the past five years we've been introduced to the garage and that's what's really driven our business in the United States. And over the past five years we went from maybe 10 per cent of our business to the U.S. to 60 per cent last year. So it's a super important market for us. Jennifer Appleby Vines: The biggest thing that's happening is the uncertainty. After the election happened, we definitely started having conversations with clients about being worried about this. Then the inauguration came and the night when [Trump] first announced the tariffs, I had a text from a customer who is in Santa Barbara. And he said, "I guess we're enemies now." And, you know, "am I still gonna get my packaging?" And that's really causing people to not want to commit to spend money. Uncertainty is a nuclear bomb for economies. People need to know, businesses need to plan and whether that's our business or the businesses we're serving. And if they can't plan, they're going to hold on to their money. We've seen a huge, huge drop in people just committing to buying in the last three months. Craig Norris: What about you, Dave? Dave Caputo: Trusscore has two plants, one in Palmerston, Ontario and the other one in Calgary, Alberta and these plants run 24/7. So it's a continuous manufacturing process. And so every day, two or three trucks leave these facilities and two of those 3 trucks could be headed to the US or all three could be headed to the US. And so every morning I wake up and I think what's going on with the tariffs? Am I dreaming or am I living in a simulation? And a chaos monkey is changing the rules literally every couple of days. We have to spend a lot of time thinking about what shipments are going out, Who are they going to, Do they know what a tariff is? Are they are they expecting to clear it? The tariff bill could be an additional $15,000 U.S. on it. And customers are unclear exactly who's going to pay for it. And we explained to them, well, you're bringing the product in, you have to pay for it. As Jennifer said, it creates a ton of uncertainty. Dave Caputo: On the very tactical level, we look at what are the next orders [and where are they] going. Let's get on the phone with those customers. Are they going to accept this additional charge or should we not ship it to them? I would say four out of five say still ship because they're saying we have actual projects. Trusscore is perfect for the application, and it's one of the last things that goes in on the job and it still needs to get done. But I imagine they're then having those phone calls with their customers to say, 'Hey, the price of this just went up and that slows things down.' From a higher level, stepping back, we're talking to everybody in the U.S. who's capable of manufacturing our product and saying, 'Hey, is there anything that you're selling into Canada? Is there something we could manufacture for you that's destined for Canada while you potentially manufacture our product in the U.S.?' Craig Norris: Is that a possibility for you at all, Jennifer? Jennifer Appleby Vines: We do have U.S. suppliers. We always have, we've always wanted to expand to that market, and we just ramped that up. It's just it's harder to compete because the currency obviously comes into play. As well it's always been our wish list to look at expanding to other countries. Now, obviously, just like everybody in Canada were like, OK, we have to stop relying on the U.S. so much. We, need to look at Europe and Middle East and other places. That's a good thing but it's not something that happens overnight. If I found a supplier today in Europe and then went out and found some customers, I'm probably a year away from actually making money off of that. Craig Norris: Jennifer, that is interesting regarding the tariffs and people wanting to know who pays them. Are you experiencing that with your customers? Jennifer Appleby Vines: So when Trump was first in office, the first time he imposed 25 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods and we actually had to deal with it at that time. We had U.S. customers who were buying, we were importing coffee cups from China and we had a few customers who were really not happy about it. There were some words exchanged in terms of, this is a tax that you're president is imposing. We had a product to go across the border on the 4th of March, which was the day that the tariffs were put in. We begged and begged to get the factory to get it done before that, but they couldn't do it. It's shipped out on the 4th. I called my customer, he was like, o'Oh, well, we need these, please just send it and we'll deal with it.' I absorbed some of the tariff. In that case as they are a really good customer and I wanted to find a way to work with them. It's not always about completely imposing it. But then, they ended up shipping across the border two days later, and so they didn't get charged the tariff. It's just this whole, back and forth and you're just constantly trying to find a way to navigate it. Craig Norris: Dave, is Trusscore able to absorb 25 per cent of the tariff cost? Dave Caputo: If you're really good in the building materials business, you might have a 20 per cent gross margin. And so the U.S. government on the tariffs into the U.S. actually would make more money than Trusscore would in making that shipment. And so it's not actually something that's absorbable at those rates when it's 20 per cent. But there is a housing shortage. The price of housing is really going up. To think that softwood lumber and your two-by-fours go up 25 per cent, the steel goes up 25 per cent, all that's going to get passed directly to the consumer. There's just no other place for it to be paid. Craig Norris: Dave, what are you going to be doing differently now moving forward? Dave Caputo: We're looking for manufacturing partners in the U.S. I think there's some hope, but I think as this evolves, there's likely gonna be tariffs at the end of the day. Hopefully they're nowhere near 25 per cent. We're redoubling our focus in Canada, which has always been a strong market for us. And Canadians have garages too. And with Trusscore they could literally wash their car in the garage because drywall never gets wet. And it's a great product to buy Canadian. Craig Norris: Jennifer, what about you? What's gonna change permanently or otherwise about the way you do business? Jennifer Appleby Vines: Very, similar. Doubling down efforts to find suppliers in the U.S., doubling down efforts to find customers in Canada and marketing ourselves because we are a Canadian company and we do have Canadian suppliers. We can sell Canadian to Canadian. And then, just trying to navigate through the next few months in terms of what it means for my team employment. There's this high-level discussion about tariffs and how that affects things. And I think what a lot of the regular folks don't understand, when people who aren't involved in exporting every day is that this affects small and medium businesses. A lot of the people, probably work for small-medium businesses and it will affect employment. There's going to be people in this region that will lose their jobs because the companies can't afford to sustain that. And that's going to have a real affect on the economy.
