The Souris River twists and turns over the border twice: once down through southeastern Saskatchewan, and into North Dakota, and then back across the border into Manitoba, where it flows into the Assiniboine River.

But lately, it hasn't just been flowing; it's been swelling. And fast. And that's been devastating to residents on both sides to the border. Yesterday was an especially trying day in Minot, North Dakota. By the time the emergency siren rang in the afternoon, a quarter of Minot's population -- ten thousand people -- had fled their homes.

Ron Tarasenko is one of those people. We reached him in Minot, on the bridge where he's been spending the last few days, watching events unfold.

There were three minutes left in the Canada-England FIFA Under-17 World Cup Match. And Canada was losing two-to-one.

Here is the sound of Canadian backup goalie Quillan Roberts taking a kick at the ball...from the halfway line.

That shot meant yesterday's game ended in a two-two tie -- and ended Canada's twenty-four-year-long losing streak at the World Cup.

Rob Gale is the assistant coach for the Canadian team. We reached him in Mexico City.

They were unanimous in their dissonance.

Yesterday, the members of the Halifax Regional School Board voted to rename Cornwallis Junior High. The school is named for Edward Cornwallis, a British military officer who founded Halifax in 1749. He's the city's founder -- but Cornwallis also put a bounty on the Mi'kmaq. Which significantly tarnishes his legacy.

Mi'kmaq historian Daniel Paul has been fighting for the name change for twenty-five years. We reached him at home in Halifax.

And now, a baffling edition of "Quote/Unquote".

Originally, we were going to quote Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the United States Federal Reserve. Yesterday he gave a press conference about the weirdly sluggish economy, and we were going to tell you what he said. But then, another quote from a Bloomberg article on the subject of the press conference captured our attention -- and has haunted us ever since.

It's from a guy named Jason Schenker, who's the president of Prestige Economics LLC in Austin, Texas. He said that, when it comes to the Fed potentially buying more bonds to stimulate the economy, quote: "The camel's nose is under the tent."

Unquote.

That's hard to parse. If you're inside the tent, it's bad if a camel's nose is under it, I guess. Unless your camel has been lost, in which case it's good. If you're the camel, it's good, provided there's also camel food under the tent. Or it's bad, if you're allergic to tents. And I'm not even considering the possibility that the camel's nose is no longer attached to the camel, which would obviously be horrible.

A cursory search of Google News reveals that a lot of metaphorical camel noses are under a lot of metaphorical tents nowadays. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, it's the most widely-used expression in the world. But we have no idea what it means.

Of course, we could just look on the web. But we thought we'd ask you.

Earlier today, I posted the quote on Facebook, and a few listeners provided possible explanations. Debbie Wilton wrote, "Sounds like there might be a sandstorm coming...either that or the camel should mind his own business." And then Kent Steinbrenner contributed what seems like a reasonable explanation. He wrote, "I've always taken that phrase to mean, 'That which you have tried to keep out is trying to get in.'" To which M.J. Winkler-Callighen added, "The implication is that the nose is small, but when it's followed by the rest of the camel and it won't leave, you've got a big problem!"

Thanks for all those messages. You really put the camel's nose inside the tent there. Did I use that right? No? Oh. Well, here's Tarig Abubakar, with "Camel".

Last week, Marcia Rasmussen was training for a marathon in Sequoia National Park in California -- where last winter's snows are just starting to melt. With thirty years of experience training wilderness search-and-rescue teams in Virginia, Ms. Rasmussen thought she had a pretty good idea of what was safe when she crossed a snow bridge over part of the trail.

She was wrong. She ended up under the ice and fearing for her life.

We reached Marcia Rasmussen in Squaw Valley, California.

We need no further proof of the power of words than the act of book burning. And as we've told you over the past couple of nights, one word in particular has set off an incendiary protest in Amsterdam. The word is "Negroes".

It's in the title of a Canadian novel that has sold hundreds of thousands of copies around the world. In Canada, it's called The Book of Negroes. In other countries, like the U.S., it was changed. But in The Netherlands, the publisher opted for a direct translation of the original title.

A group called The Foundation to Honor and Restore Payments to Victims of Slavery in Suriname is so incensed by that title that they staged a public book burning yesterday. Last night, we spoke to a representative of that group, and earlier this week we heard from the author, Lawrence Hill.

The Book of Negroes -- Het negerboek in Dutch - is published in The Netherlands by Ailantus. Lidewijde Paris is the publisher and we reached her in Amsterdam.

They are among the few standing in defence of asbestos.

Yesterday at a UN Summit in Geneva, the Canadian government blocked the listing of chrysotile asbestos on an international list of hazardous chemicals.

The UN Treaty known as the Rotterdam Convention lists pesticides and industrial chemicals that have been banned or severely restricted for health or environmental reasons. But in order to make the list the convention needs consensus. And as of today, Canada, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam still object to listing chrysotile asbestos as hazardous.

NDP leader Jack Layton has accused the government of hiding the health effects of asbestos. But in 1986, his father, Minister of Mines Robert Layton, defended the product, while he was serving in the Mulroney government.

He spoke with former As it Happens host Dennis Trudeau after the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. moved to ban absestos imports. Here's Robert Layton's reaction to that news, from our archives.

Canada's soldiers are finally coming home.

The first wave of combat troops withdrawing from Afghanistan arrived at CFB Val Cartier near Quebec City this week. By the end of July, all nineteen hundred will have returned to their home bases.

In their place, several hundred soldiers will be deployed to train and assist the Afghans as they take back control of the country. But those Canadian troops won't be fighting.

It's been almost a decade since the war in Afghanistan began. And it has been five-and-a-half years since Canada took on the tough and deadly job of wresting control of Kandahar province from insurgents.

Tonight, we look back at the Kandahar mission through the As It Happens archives. We'll hear from the soldiers who did the fighting, and their families -- and from regular Afghans living through the war.

We begin in the summer of 2005. Until then, the Canadian military had been stationed in Kabul, which was relatively secure. Kandahar province would be very different. But as the troops from the Provincial Reconstruction Team -- or PRT -- began to arrive, there was little sense in Canada of the danger that lay ahead.

In July, guest host Maureen Brosnahan spoke with the commander leading the first arrivals, Lieutenant-Colonel John Wates.

Of course, there were problems. Before long, suicide bombers began to target Canadian soldiers. Some were killed. Many others were injured.

The ramp ceremony, where coffins were carried onto planes on the Kandahar airfield, was becoming a familiar, solemn ritual for the troops -- and for Canadians watching from a distance.

One death in particular seem to drive home the reality that the mission was going to come at a cost. On January 16, 2006, a suicide bomber hit a military convoy near Kandahar City. Three soldiers were wounded. And a Canadian diplomat named Glyn Berry was killed.

The following day, guest host Peter Downie spoke with Colonel Steve Noonan, the Canadian commander in Afghanistan.

A few days later, hundreds of mourners gathered in London for Glyn Berry's funeral. Among them were his wife, Valerie, and his sons, Rhys and Gareth. Here is part of Gareth Berry's eulogy to his father, delivered that day.

Stephen Harper was elected a few weeks after Glyn Berry's death. His first trip as Prime Minister was a visit to the troops -- making it clear that the war in Afghanistan was Canada's fight -- one he felt was just, and one he wanted to win.

But by then, many Canadians were beginning to ask hard questions about what our troops were doing in Afghanistan -- whether the mission was the right one, and whether it was worth the cost.

As the Kandahar mission was debated inside and outside Parliament, the bodies of soldiers kept returning home. The government made the controversial decision to ban the media from the repatriation ceremonies -- and began to make the argument for Canada's involvement in the war more forcefully.

Canada's top general, Rick Hillier, was one of the strongest voices. In June 2006, he spoke to the Senate's defence committee.

At that time, it seemed many Afghans were indeed hopeful about what the NATO-led mission would mean for their future.

That fall, the Canadian military led an effort called Operation Medusa to push the Taliban out of Kandahar. The insurgents were driven off the battlefield.

The operation was costly, both for the troops and for the local civilian population: some lost their homes, their crops and even their loved ones. But many Afghans were pleased to see the Taliban in retreat.

In the midst of the operation, Carol spoke to an Afghan relief worker named Abdul Salam Sadiqui in Kandahar City.

Operation Medusa was considered a victory for the Canadian-led forces. And it reinforced to Canadians that our troops were not simply neutral peacekeepers.

Brigadier-General David Fraser was the Canadian soldier who oversaw the operation, as commander of the NATO mission in southern Afghanistan.

After he returned from his eight-month tour of duty, he visited the As It Happens studio to explain what he thought had been accomplished.

Canadians would soon become aware of other difficult facts about the military operation in Afghanistan. News broke that the Canadian military was handing detainees over to Afghan authorities with virtually no monitoring of how they were treated in custody.

Graeme Smith of The Globe and Mail interviewed thirty prisoners. He spoke to As It Happens about what he discovered.

Government leaders at first denied that Canada had failed to ensure the rights of the Afghan detainees. Then Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said that the Red Cross was monitoring the fate of the prisoners, and had found no problems. He was forced to apologize when the Red Cross made it clear it had played no such role.

Ottawa drafted a new detainee transfer agreement with Kabul. But questions about Canada's handling of the prisoners remained.

The government continued to argue that nothing had gone wrong. And some ministers even questioned the loyalities of those who raised the issue -- including Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin.

During the time when detainees were said to be abused, Mr. Colvin was working in Afghanistan. Later, in November 2009, he appeared before a committee on Parliament Hill to explain what he saw during his posting.

Yesterday, the government finally released thousands of documents on the detainees -- and held back tens of thousands of others. The judges who reviewed the files said Canada broke no laws in its treatment of the Afghan prisoners.

When reports of the detainee abuses first broke in 2007 -- and as the war continued to grind on -- Afghans began to grow more disenchanted with the foreign troops, and with their own government.

Here is what some Afghans living in Kabul said to As It Happens about the NATO-led mission in their country, as it entered its seventh year.

Although the Taliban had suffered serious setbacks, the insurgents remained tenacious, continuing their campaign of suicide bombings with support from allies across the border in Pakistan.

In 2008, Parliament passed a motion to end the combat mission by 2011.

But the troops remained in harm's way. Which was made painfully clear on the day that the one hundredth Canadian soldier died in Afghanistan.

In December 2008, after three soldiers were killed on patrol in Kandahar, one mother marked that milestone on As It Happens. Sherry Clark's son Joel Wiebe had died the previous year in a roadside bombing. After that, she kept a diary. She read an entry, for the record.

Not long after that grim occasion, the Canadian forces received some back-up, in the form of a troop surge ordered by President Barack Obama.

There have since been enough gains on the ground in Afghanistan for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to travel there again, and to declare that the country is no longer a threat to the world.

But it is clear that the conflict in Afghanistan is not over -- and that it will not be won on the battlefield.

After the prime minister's trip there last month, we spoke with Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who was, until last year, Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan.

It's still not clear how serious the United States is about talking to the Taliban. But Washington has signalled that it's winding down the fighting. Last night, President Obama announced that he is accelerating the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

The future, it seems, will not be left in the hands of soldiers.

Those soldiers have been committed to the battle since the start. But this summer's homecoming will be a relief for them and for their families.

We heard some of that feeling a few years ago, in 2007, when As It Happens travelled to CFB Petawawa. Soldiers from the 1st Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group were returning home, after a long fall and winter fighting in Kandahar.

Here is what that homecoming sounded like:

You've been listening to a special As It Happens look back at the Canadian mission in Afghanistan.

The Canadian combat soldiers stationed there are now returning home. All nineteen hundred will be back by the end of July.