Finally, some good news: A 'free' Canadian grocery store, an unbelievable dinosaur discovery, and a graduation held 50 years later

In a world often dominated by challenging headlines, Yahoo News Canada aims to spotlight uplifting news stories both local and beyond.

This week's roundup includes a graduation class of 1974 finally able to walk across the stage 50 years later after a tornado halted their ceremony, and three schoolboys who were left 'speechless' after a shocking discovery.

🎓 'Our dream was to have a graduation': Class graduates 50 years later

Fifty years after a tornado warning and encroaching wall cloud cut short their graduation ceremony, remaining members of the Moore High School Class of 1974 are finally turning their tassels.

On May 23, 1974, a group of about 500 seniors donned blue graduation gowns and gathered inside the football stadium on a sunny spring evening.

Meanwhile, a literal storm was brewing in Moore.

READ MORE: Graduation ceremony finally happens, 50 years later

As many graduates recall, immediately after class president Bob Baker gave the invocation, Principal George Hays interrupted the ceremony and urged everyone to leave. Moore was under a tornado warning.

"Everyone in the stands started getting squirrelly. And the principal got on the microphone and basically said get out of here. And that was it,” Sterling Crim, one of the 1974 graduates, told The Oklahoman.

The effort to revive a graduation ceremony started last fall when Mike Wilson, a Moore High School’s sports announcer and a 1974 graduate, discussed the idea with school and district officials.

“Moore Schools has just been phenomenal,” Wilson said. “One thing led to another and here we are.”

Moore High School Principal Rachel Stark, a 1988 graduate, said work has been done to make the ceremony as close to what the 1974 class anticipated 50 years ago.

🦖 Three schoolboys left ‘completely speechless’ after discovering Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton

Two young brothers and their cousin were wandering through a fossil-rich stretch of the North Dakota Badlands in 2022 when they made the stunning discovery, which left them “completely speechless,” they said in a report by The Independent.

The brothers, Liam and Jessin Fisher, then seven and ten, and their cousin Kaiden Madsen, who was nine, and their father Sam, first discovered a large leg bone which they sent a picture of to Dr Tyler Lyson, a family friend who is the associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

READ MORE: Three schoolboys left ‘completely speechless’ after discovering T rex skeleton in North Dakota

Lyson then organized an excavation that began 11 months later, suspecting it was a relatively common duckbill dinosaur. But it didn’t take long to determine they had found something more special. Lyson recalled that he started digging with Jessin where he thought he might find a neck bone.

“Instead of finding a cervical vertebrae, we found the lower jaw with several teeth sticking out of it,” Lyson said. “And it doesn’t get any more diagnostic than that, seeing these giant tyrannosaurus teeth staring back at you.”

A Black Hawk helicopter airlifted the plaster-clad mass to a waiting truck to drive it to the Denver museum.

A documentary crew with Giant Screen Films was there to capture the discovery.

“It was electric. You got goosebumps,” recalled Dave Clark, who was part of the crew filming the documentary that later was narrated by Jurassic Park actor Sir Sam Neill.

🥦Canada's first full-scale free grocery store set to open

Imagine facing food insecurity amid Canada's affordability crisis, and being able to walk into a store and pick out your groceries and not having to hand over any money?

Sounds like a dream too good to be true, but this Regina food bank is making it a reality.

The new Regina Food Bank Community Food Hub, modelled after a traditional grocery store, is set to open this summer in the former government liquor store location downtown.

"None of us fit in a box, but that's what we give our clients today," said Regina Food Bank vice-president David Froh in an interview with CBC. "When you give choices, you give not just dignity, but actually, we figure we can feed about 25 per cent more people."

READ MORE: Canada's 1st full-scale free grocery store to open in Regina

So how does it work?

When someone comes for help, Froh said the food bank just asks a few questions about their source of income and family size.

Once they're registered with the food bank, they will be able to stop in every two weeks, by appointment.

Food bank clients will then leave with about $200 worth of food, per person.

Froh expects the hub to serve 200 families a day out of the new location, in addition to the clients served out of the food bank's current location, which will remain open. The hope is to help 25,000 people every month once they're at full-capacity.

Froh said their two largest growing demographics are people who work full time — now 18 per cent of food bank clients in the city — and new Canadians.

Froh said he's excited about paving the way with a space that's the first of its kind in Canada, but he said the best part is knowing the impact it will have on clients.

"When people come here, they're going to be met with a smile and they're going to leave with the food they need and that's awesome."

🐈 Cat reunites with owner after missing 12 years

U.K. resident Theo-Will McKenna’s cat Artie went missing from their family home in 2012. While they were moving from Blacon, Chester, to Flintshire, Wales, the feline managed to escape.

After looking for him for months, his owners lost hope of finding him, a report by Cattime states.

Artie finally reunited with McKenna this May, when he was spotted in a garden where the family previously stayed. After spending about four days there, the family who currently stay there took him to the vet. Fortunately, the feline was microchipped, as the vet could successfully find that Artie belonged to the McKennas.

Currently, McKenna has another cat, so Artie is slowly getting used to living alongside her. However, he was happy to note that the feline is doing perfectly fine and “purring up a storm” when he is with his human.

READ MORE: U.K. cat reunites with owner, went missing for 12 years

McKenna notes that this miraculous reunion was all due to “community kindness.”

Do you have an uplifting moment or story you would like to share with the Yahoo Canada audience? Email corne.vanhoepen@yahooinc.com