Bret Hart’s longtime connection with the late Iron Sheik was first made in the early 1970s when an Iranian amateur wrestler — real name Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri — came to Calgary to learn from promoter Stu Hart.

It was in the infamous wrestling dungeon at the Hart family residence that promoter Stu — with teenage son Bret helping out — worked with the Iron Sheik to help him make the transition to the professional style.

“I was mostly just used as a practice dummy, but I got to be one of those guys that he trained with when he first started,” Hart said from Calgary. “When I met him years later in the WWF (now WWE) when he was really in his prime, he never forgot that I started with him.”

The Iron Sheik, who became one of sports entertainment’s biggest stars in the Hulkamania-fuelled mid-1980s, died Wednesday at 81, the WWE said.

“He treated me and often spoke of me like I was his student,” Hart recalled in an interview with The Canadian Press. “We had a great relationship because he had this start with me when he was nobody, when he was this young amateur wrestler and how I helped him.

“I always had that special relationship with him. He was a character.”

The Iron Sheik was competitive in Greco-Roman wrestling, competing in the Amateur Athletic Union and becoming a gold medallist in 1971, the WWE said.

In a documentary about his life called “The Sheik,” he said he once served as a bodyguard for the Shah. In the squared circle, he acknowledged taking advantage of anti-Iranian sentiment following the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis.

In 1983, the Iron Sheik won the WWF heavyweight title from Bob Backlund before dropping the belt to Hulk Hogan a few weeks later. He also won the promotion’s tag team championship in 1985 with Nikolai Volkoff at the first WrestleMania.

Hart, nicknamed “Hitman,” also became a star in the promotion as a tag team with Jim Neidhart and later as a solo performer. The Hart Foundation tag team wrestled the Iron Sheik and Volkoff on occasion.

“They always had a ton of heat because they had that Russian/Iran connection thing going,” Hart said. “It was always easy. For the lack of a better word, it was kind of cartoony.

“Like cartoon wrestling, it was so easy. There were good guys, bad guys and they were the total bad guys. It didn’t matter what happened.”

The Iron Sheik worked with Minnesota-based promoter Verne Gagne before heading north to Calgary. He later returned to Minneapolis and was soon on his way to working his gimmick — with the Camel Clutch as his finishing move — to great success.

“He wasn’t the greatest technical wrestler in pro wrestling terms,” Hart said. “He was often a guy that you had to wing it out there a little bit with him.

“He could ad-lib and at the same time he was a guy you could have a lot of laughs with (after).”

Hart’s late father, who ran the Stampede Wrestling promotion for decades, would often help develop athletes who had amateur wrestling, football or bodybuilding backgrounds.

“He would turn out these guys because he could pick their best qualities and show them what to do if they wanted to be professional wrestlers,” Hart said. “He always tried to toughen them up and show them what they needed to know (in) the ring.”

Hart said the Iron Sheik became arguably the most hated wrestler — ever — in the United States.

“He was actually a very pro-American guy in real life,” he said. “If you knew him, you knew what a good man he was. He had his good qualities. He was a real friend to the end and he was always a friend to me.

“I always had a love and respect for him. I know a lot of guys did.”

Hart worked as both a babyface and heel — a ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ in wrestling parlance — at various stages of his career.

The heat generated from storylines — especially for someone with a hot character like the Iron Sheik’s — often made things challenging outside the ring, Hart said.

“It’s not easy for someone like him. It becomes very real,” he said. “People try to kill you and people try to run you off the road.”

Hart said there were occasional bomb threats at venues in those days. Sometimes people would be waiting outside the arena exit for the heel wrestlers at the end of the night.

“You could joke that it was all pro wrestling and everyone knows it’s a show but it was pretty serious stuff back then,” he said.

The Iron Sheik was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005.

“Even right now I’m thinking of him pulling on his moustache and laughing about the escapades that him and Nikolai Volkoff got into going from one town to another,” Hart said with a chuckle.

“They were great characters and loved by everybody in the business.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 8, 2023.

With files from The Associated Press

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Canada has partnered with a non-profit to seek out LGBTQ people fleeing violence all over the world and refer them to Canada as government-assisted refugees.

Rainbow Railroad is based in North America and aims to help people facing persecution from systemic, state-enabled homophobia and transphobia all over the world.

Until now, the agency has done that by offering emergency relocation, crisis response and cash assistance to people in danger.

The partnership with Canada is the first that would see Rainbow Railroad facilitate government-sponsored refugee resettlement.

“What this allows us to do that we haven’t been able to do to date is really triage really vulnerable cases and urgent cases for protection,” said Rainbow Railroad CEO Kimahli Powell.

Persecution based on sexual orientation and gender identity is on the rise. Just last week, Uganda adopted one of the harshest anti-homosexuality laws in the world.

Canadian politicians of all stripes have condemned the law, which prescribes the death penalty for people who engage in same-sex intimacy involving a partner with HIV, and long prison sentences for “promoting” homosexuality and engaging in same-sex relations.

Persecuted people are already referred to Canada by the United Nations refugee agency, but the situation in Uganda illustrates why an agency focused on LGBTQ refugees is so important, said Powell.

“Many people are fleeing Uganda to neighbouring Kenya, that also criminalizes same-sex intimacy,” Powell explained in an interview. The discrimination they face in Kenya makes it more difficult for them to access traditional refugee resources.

“A referring partner that has expertise in LGBTQI+ persons, like Rainbow Railroad, especially in times of crisis, can make resettlement safer for LGBTQI+ people at risk.”

Since the law passed, Rainbow Railroad has had 600 requests for help from Uganda, which is more than double the number they had all of last year from that country.

Powell says 67 countries have criminalized same-sex intimacy.

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser touted the arrangement as one of the first of its kind, and said in a written statement it will help Canada better respond to “emerging situations.”

The government is still negotiating how many refugees are likely to be referred through the program, but Powell hopes those referrals will begin as soon as possible.

Rainbow Railroad received some 10,000 requests for help last year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 8, 2023.

A previous version of this story referred to the organization as “Rainbow Road” in some instances. In fact, the name of the organization is “Rainbow Railroad.”

The federal budget implementation bill passed the House of Commons on Thursday, after days of Conservative attempts to block it.

By a vote of 177 to 146, Bill C-47, the Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1 as it’s titled, passed the final stage in the House with support from the Liberals and NDP while the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois voted “nay.” It is now off to the Senate, where a pre-study of the omnibus legislation is already underway.

The 430-page bill was tabled in April following Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland unveiling a plan of continued deficit spending targeted at Canadians’ pocketbooks, public health care, and the clean economy. 

After some hold-up at the House Finance Committee in May, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre came into the House this week with plans to try to halt its passage, after the Liberals signaled plans to use midnight sittings to work through the final stages of Bill C-47 over Monday and Tuesday. 

This journey into the Official Opposition’s procedural toolbox started with stacking the notice paper with more than 900 amendments seeking to wipe out most of the budget, and a demand from Poilievre that if the Liberals didn’t heed his demands to present a plan to balance the budget and cancel any future carbon price increases, that he’d use other measures to block it.

Then on Wednesday night, after MPs moved through the permissible amendments in batches, Poilievre vowed to filibuster debate at the final stage. Except the House had already passed a time allocation motion meaning that Poilievre could, and did, monopolize the final hours of debate, but he was cut off just before the clock struck midnight.

On Thursday, with the final vote already scheduled for Thursday afternoon, he came to the Hill with a new plan, telling reporters he was now willing, if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cancelled his other plans, to “work all summer long to rewrite a budget that balances budgets in order to bring down inflation and interest rates.” 

Poilievre said he thought his efforts this week, seeing the bill come to a vote a few days later than the Liberals had initially hoped, were “very successful.” 

By the time the vote took place, Poilievre was not in the Chamber, opting to vote virtually, instead.

The bill’s passage was met with cheers from the government side of the House, while one opposition MP could be heard suggesting that now the Liberals could prorogue, a rumour that continues to circulate despite repeated government denials.

In criticizing the Conservatives for trying to hold up the rest of the budget this week, a number of Liberals rose in the House and posted on social media to highlight the workers benefits and housing affordability measures they said the Official Opposition was delaying seeing rolled out the door to Canadians.

“Does [Poilievre] not support dental care? … Does he not support supports for workers or students? Does he not support the vast preponderance of what’s in the budget which is for health care and for changing to the new economy?” said Government House Leader Mark Holland on Thursday. 

With just a few weeks left before Parliament is slated to adjourn for the summer, even with the advanced study underway, it remains to be seen if Conservative senators try to tie up the legislation in their own ways.

In a move that had all-party backing, in May Freeland was able to fast-track and pass a bill that pulled out two measures from the federal budget: the grocery rebate and the health transfer top-ups.  

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