An Ottawa bus driver who came to the defence of a student wearing niqab in 2016 is fighting cancer and getting help from the same community he tried to protect. 118 OC Transpo bus yelled Islamophobic taunts at an Ottawa woman named Hailey DeJong, a convert to Islam who started wearing niqab in the fall of 2015. And when they continued, Alain Charette parked the bus and came to her defence, saying he had called authorities. When he started suffering significant back pain, he attributed it to his 37 years as a bus driver. DeJong, a student at the University of Ottawa, wrote a public letter, shortly after, thanking the bus driver on Muslim Link.

Source: CBC News May 28, 2018 10:24 UTC