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(At the time in 2000, Trudeau was attending a festival sponsored by a brewery in British Columbia to accept a cheque from the Kokanee Glacier Alpine Campaign, in memory of his brother, Michel, who was killed in an avalanche.)

After Bonokoski’s June 8 column, radio talk show host Brian Lilley wrote about it again in the Sun on June 11.

Then, nothing substantive in any major Canadian media outlet until the National Post picked up the story June 22 — two weeks after Bonokoski’s column — under the spectacularly unprophetic headline, “Why an 18-year-old groping allegation against Justin Trudeau is not a #MeToo moment.”

Despite the headline, which appeared to downplay the controversy, the detailed Post story provided a significant piece of new information — that the editorial in the Creston Valley Advance that appeared in 2000 alleging Trudeau had groped a reporter and apologized saying, “I’m sorry, if I had known you were reporting for a national newspaper I never would have been so forward”, was written by the reporter herself.

(At the time, the Creston Valley Advance was part of a chain of papers including the National Post and Vancouver Sun).

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After the Post article appeared, the story began to gain traction in the Canadian and international media, until it has now snowballed into one of the biggest controversies Trudeau has faced since becoming prime minister in 2015.

On Friday, Rose Knight identified herself as the former reporter who wrote about the incident with Trudeau saying: “I issue this statement reluctantly, in response to mounting media pressure to confirm that I was the reporter who was the subject of the ‘Open Eyes’ editorial, published in the Creston Valley Advance in August of 2000. The incident referred to in the editorial did occur, as reported. Mr. Trudeau did apologize the next day. I did not pursue the incident at the time and will not be pursuing the incident further. I have had no subsequent contact with Mr. Trudeau, before or after he became Prime Minister. The debate, if it continues, will continue without my involvement.”