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Cake day: Jun 12, 2023
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The city of Thunder Bay is known as the “Gateway to Northwest Ontario” and the 150,000 lakes and rivers in the area. Visitors come to experience rolling mountains, majestic forests, and Lake Superior—North America’s largest freshwater lake and, by many measures, one of the healthiest. Cruise companies are picking up on the region’s natural offerings. One 2025 Viking cruise, marketed as the “Undiscovered Great Lakes” voyage, will take passengers from Thunder Bay to Milwaukee to “hike boreal forests, watch for wildlife and learn about Anishinaabe First Nations heritage.” An eight-day voyage on these floating hotels with swimming pools, buffets, theatres, and spas starts at about $9,000 per person.
Cruise ships have been coming to Thunder Bay since 1996 but paused for some time amid infrastructure issues and changes in popular cruise ship itineraries. Following improvements to the city’s marina and cruise terminal, luxury cruiser fleet operators like Viking returned in 2022 after a decade-long absence. Now, while the global cruise industry battles growing concerns over its emissions, noise, and pollution, 2024 is set to see a record of seventeen cruise ships in the lake port from late spring into fall.
This pattern is expected to boom, creating tension between tourists who want to experience “unexplored” nature and the fact that the very act of arriving on cruise ships is poised to ruin the things drawing them to the region. Lax Canadian cruising regulations allow for luxury cruises to sail through giant loopholes in environmental protections.
In 2022, Transport Canada implemented interim measures for cruise ships to follow, including avoiding grey water and sewage discharge within three nautical miles of the shore and appropriately treating sewage, with filtration and chemical procedures or through biological composting, when possible. Its second interim order, a copy-paste of the first, expired in June this year. Now the agency has further renewed the interim order until 2025—which Stand.earth has called a “lazy” approach, especially given the increased number of cruise ships in new areas.
Over the past year, The Walrus has learned that nearly a dozen people—former students and a parent—have filed multi-million-dollar lawsuits against, or are planning to sue, RLA over a series of alleged abuses that former students experienced from the 1980s to the present. The allegations include physical and emotional violence by staff, racism, withholding of food, sleep deprivation, and sexual assault by fellow students that they say the school overlooked. The Walrus has obtained numerous statements of claim; the academy has not filed statements of defence.
Martin, who requested to go by only his first name, attended RLA starting in 2006, when he was twelve years old, after struggling in school; his parents believed a place with more structure would help. In his statement of claim, Martin states that, while at RLA, an older student who was tasked with overseeing him repeatedly abused him sexually, verbally, and physically. He is suing RLA for $5 million. The school administrators, Martin alleges, failed to document his abuser’s offences, warn teachers and other students about his abuser, and put in place reporting mechanisms and counselling. “They didn’t want me to talk to my parents about it,” he told me. “I always knew I hated it [there], but I just thought I had to kind of eat shit on the whole matter for a long time.”
Staff, he notes in his statement of claim, wilfully did not see the abuse and maintained what he calls “a system . . . designed to cover-up the existence of such behaviour.” Several former students allege in statements of claim as well as in interviews that a culture of fear and abuse was enabled by the school’s founder and former headmaster, Scott Bowman, and by other teachers and administrators. In a statement to The Walrus, Robert Land Academy noted, “The safety and well-being of our students is our top priority and these alleged incidents do not reflect the values of the school, past or present,” and that the school “will not comment on the specific allegations or individuals at this time.” (I reached out to Bowman for comment via LinkedIn. He declined an interview request and told The Walrus to direct questions to RLA.)
Several residents in Toronto's Riverdale neighbourhood say they're furious to learn their homes are being expropriated for construction of the new Ontario Line subway route — after being assured their properties would not be affected.
Peggy Leung's home is one of the 25 properties on Pape Avenue between Langley and Riverdale Avenue required by Metrolinx for the construction. Also among the properties is Riverdale Learning Loft, a brand new daycare.
Leung says the news of losing her home of 14 years has been consuming her. She grew up in Riverdale and runs her business from her home as well.
"I get a knock on the door, they say, 'We're taking your house.' Just like that," she said.
The government of Saskatchewan says it is "moving forward with constructing" a $1.15-billion irrigation project, despite having never completed or publicly released a feasibility study that was supposed to examine whether it is a good use of public money.
Earlier this year, Premier Scott Moe announced "we will begin construction of the early works" of the project in 2025.
That has critics worried that the government may be launching an ill-thought-out mega-project — spending more than a billion dollars to benefit just a handful of farmers.
Robert Halliday, a leading water resource engineer who has extensively studied the Saskatchewan river basin, says the lack of transparency has him worried.
"Faith in government is plummeting," he said. "This kind of stuff just gives government a bad name."
creator
to
The comment from the utube poster is priceless.
Pierre’s creepy wish.com “It’s Morning in America” ad because he’s a creepy weirdo. Saving this for when he eventually deletes it off twitter.
creator
toCN leadership 2022 - Hey, the feds have these new rules on fatigue and we need time to figure out how to bypass them. Let’s defer contract negotiations for a year.
CN leadership 2024 - Hey Trudeau, we need you to intervene in contract negotiations to force workers to keep making us money. For the good of the country, ofc.
It seems CN hierarchy is chock full of arrogant dumbfucks.
A labour dispute at both Canadian National and CPKC threatens to derail not only Peretz's business, but the scores of manufacturers he supplies in a complex, just-in-time supply chain. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has said the lockout could be devastating for small businesses that depend on rail service.
Railways carry more than $1 billion worth of goods each day, according to the Railway Association of Canada, and over half of the country's exports travel by rail.
Contract talks between the Teamsters union and the companies usually take place a year apart, but in 2022, after the federal government introduced new rules, CN requested a year-long extension to its existing deal rather than negotiate a new one.
This meant both companies' labour agreements expired at the end of 2023 and talks have been ongoing since.
The trial for two central figures in the Freedom Convoy will continue Tuesday with defence lawyers challenging the prosecution's portrayal of the three-week Ottawa protest as a single event under the sole direction of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber.
The two have pleaded not guilty to charges of mischief, intimidation, obstruction and other offences related to the February 2022 protests against COVID-19 mandates that saw trucks block downtown streets in Ottawa's core.
At issue is whether Barber and Lich crossed the line into committing crimes and encouraged others to come to the city.
Prosecutors are attempting to link Lich and Barber as co-conspirators who worked together to finance, fuel, promote and organize the Freedom Convoy, asserting evidence against one should apply to the other.
The Conservative Party of Canada has deleted a video that was meant to promote its Canadian values but featured images of what the Defence Minister's office says are Russian fighter jets.
The party acknowledged on Monday that mistakes happen, while also pointing out that the Liberals have dealt with a stock image backlash in the past.
The video in question was posted by the party on X on Saturday with the slogan "Canada. Our Home" and featured a speech delivered by leader Pierre Poilievre from the Calgary Stampede.
In the video, Poilievre describes a Canadian man driving on a highway on his way to work after dropping off his kid at school, and spots a brand new fighter jet in the sky.
Buying a home in Canada became slightly easier in July, according to a new report that cites dropping mortgage rates and lowering average home prices.
The minimum income required to purchase a home dipped last month across the 13 major cities studied by Ratehub.ca, according to [their recent blog post](https://www.ratehub.ca/blog/rate-cuts-improved-home-affordability-across-canada-in-july/).
That salary threshold dropped by more than $5,000 in Canada’s two priciest markets of Toronto and Vancouver, and it was overall lower across the board.
One factor in the drop was average home prices, which went down month-over-month in Canada’s largest markets.
Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are the only provinces that offer post-secondary students free vaccination against meningitis B, a rare but deadly bacterial infection.
With Canadian universities and colleges about to welcome thousands of freshmen in September, more provinces are being urged to cover the vaccines, which can cost $300 or more for two required doses.
"Meningococci can kill within hours," Meningitis Foundation Canada medical adviser Dr. Ronlad Gold told CTVNews.ca. "The best protection is vaccination."
Meningitis B, or MenB for short, is caused by Group B meningococcus bacteria. While most Canadian children receive a vaccine that covers four other strains of meningitis – groups A, C, W and Y – the comparatively new shots for group B are not part of any routine vaccination program in Canada.
A building near Toronto’s Kensington Market that was partially demolished Saturday after it leaned over the sidewalk(opens in a new tab) was deemed “unsafe” by the city a decade ago, publicly-accessible records show.
According to a July 15, 2014 inspection of the building on Dundas Street near Augusta Avenue(opens in a new tab), the property owner was issued an “order to remedy unsafe building,” the status of which is listed as “not resolved.”
“The building (or part of) was deemed to be unsafe; steps must be taken to render the building safe,” the order read.
Chants of "no justice, no peace" were heard in downtown Edmonton on Saturday at a rally in honour of a man shot and killed by an Edmonton police officer.
A crowd gathered outside the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) headquarters to call for the suspension of the officer who fatally shot 28-year-old father Mathios Arkangelo on a residential street in Fraser the night of June 29.
At the time, police said he matched the description of a driver who had walked away from a single-vehicle rollover on Anthony Henday Drive.
A compilation of security footage gathered by the family was posted to [YouTube](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DBO5B8zKzCo). In it, the interaction between Mathios and the officer leading up to the shooting can be seen from multiple angles.
creator
toTbf Trudeau gave the provinces $46.2 billion over 10 years for healthcare. Ontario alone received $3.1 billion in Feb 2024. The problem is the provinces refused to sign agreements locking that money into healthcare spending alone … so they can essentially spend it however they want. source
If you wanna point fingers at anyone, it’s each and ever premier who needs to answer the question of where all that money went.
The federal government's Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) has been gradually expanding eligibility for subsidized dental care to low- and middle-income Canadian residents who don't have private insurance. On June 27, people with disabilities were told they could apply.
But advocates say only a fraction of people with disabilities will be covered.
A recent parliamentary budget officer report said up to 1.4 million severely disabled Canadians could be eligible for the proposed Canada Disability Benefit — a statistic advocates say indicates how many people with disabilities ought to have access to the CDCP.
The problem, advocates say, is that Ottawa is using its disability tax credit to decide whether someone qualifies for programs like the CDCP or the Canada Disability Benefit.
"The disability tax credit is increasingly becoming a gateway to social programs and it was never designed to be that," said Michelle Hewitt, board chair for the advocacy organization Disability Without Poverty.
A Florida-based company is facing multiple proposed class actions, after a massive data breach that one suit claims leaked nearly three billion files containing personal data on people in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., including names and home addresses.
One of the first suit to be reported on was a proposed class action filed Aug. 1 by California resident Christopher Hofmann in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. It alleges that a hacking group called USDoD posted a database on April 8 called "National Public Data" on a dark web forum claiming to have the personal data of 2.9 billion individuals, and attempted to sell it for $3.5 million US.
Tech site Bleeping Computer reported that a hacker then leaked a version of the stolen data for free on a hacking forum on Aug. 6.
At least six complaints have been filed against the company, National Public Data, this month.
Northern B.C. has been hit hard by emergency closures again this summer. Between July 22 to July 28, there was at least one ER service interruption per day in the northern half of the province, prompting rallies in parts of the region.
The ER at the largest hospital in the area — serving nearly 30,000 residents — was shuttered five times in just one week.
But the crisis is also playing out country-wide, with no clear solutions in sight.
"There continue to be just unprecedented numbers of emergency department closures," said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, an advocacy group that released last year's headline-making tally of shutdowns in the province.
About 150,000 homes are under a boil-water advisory and multiple roads were closed after a massive water main break Friday morning in Montreal's Ville-Marie borough sent water spewing several metres into the air, flooding streets and basements.
Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante told reporters that it would likely take hours to repair the pipe, which she described as "enormous" at around a metre wide.
The city has put a boil-water advisory in place for three boroughs: Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Riviere-des-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Trembles and the City of Montreal-East. A map of affected residences is [available here](https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/6e74e58714024d99b08aeface0ffb251?org=CSC).
An Interlake-area man is being hailed a Hometown Hero for taking his neighbours into Winnipeg for medical appointments and other important life moments.
Kenn Shier moved out to the Petersfield, Man., area three years ago after he retired. Shortly after he made the move, he said his dog Boo died, and he suddenly found himself with a lot of time on his hands.
He told CTV News he first noticed the need for transportation on social media. He said there is no bus service, and the local taxi services are also limited. So he sat down and planned a way to make a ride into the city as affordable, accessible and safe as possible.
Two years later, he's still running strong. Shier will pick someone up at home, wait with them at clinics and chauffer them around the city before driving them home. All he charges is the cost of gas.
Canadian Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon has rejected a request by Canadian National Railway to initiate binding arbitration in a labor dispute with the Teamsters union, a spokesman for the minister said on Thursday.
In a letter to CN Rail's lawyers, MacKinnon said it was the shared responsibility of the company and the union to negotiate in good faith. The letter, sent on Wednesday, was released by the Teamsters.
Talks between CN Railway and Canadian Pacific Kansas City - the country's two largest rail companies - and the Teamsters are deadlocked, with each side blaming the other.
CN Rail said it was disappointed by MacKinnon's decision, saying he would have to reconsider if the union did not "get serious and engage meaningfully at the negotiating table".
creator
toOr who would want to buy it if it’s a loss?
If it doesn’t sell, fine. Then maybe people will stop buying up housing to have rental income. And while I understand why people do it, I in no way agree with it … because it’s only wealthier people who can afford to do it. The average person is priced out.
So let those who bought at low-now high interest rates lose their shirts, as it seems that’s the only way prices will come down … because every level of gov’t hasn’t done sweet fuck all to stop (or even hinder) the practice.
creator
toFirefighting is in the province’s purview, so they would have to sign on to the fed’s taking control … which will never happen.
Edit to add … On a good note DeHavilland is building a manufactuting plant in Calgary to pump out the “DHC-515 Firefighter … to build on the history of the Canadair CL-215 and CL-415 aircraft” source. That’s good news for the whole world as the 215 and 415 continue to be the workhorses of forest fire fighting.
Kim Dotcom, who is facing criminal charges relating to the defunct file-sharing website Megaupload, is to be extradited to the US, the New Zealand justice minister has said.
German-born Dotcom has New Zealand residency and has been fighting extradition to the US since 2012 following an FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion.
The justice minister, Paul Goldsmith, had signed an extradition order for Dotcom, a spokesperson said on Thursday.
“I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be surrendered to the US to face trial,” Goldsmith said in a statement.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Dotcom said: “The obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload,” in what appears to be a reference to the extradition order.
Two B.C. landlords whose costs have skyrocketed – due to their variable-rate mortgage – have been allowed to impose huge rent hikes on their tenants to offset their financial losses.
In a recent ruling, an arbitrator with the province's Residential Tenancy Branch approved increases totalling 23.5 per cent over two years for each of the landlords' four rental units.
That's on top of the 3.5 per cent annual increase previously approved by the B.C. government for 2024.
"The landlords experienced dramatic interest rate increases which have made managing the property unsustainable," reads the ruling, which was published in May.
The Calgary Humane Society is investigating after a dead kitten was found in the southwest community of Kingsland on Monday.
Peace officers found the feline zip-tied to a fence.
A necropsy determined the animal suffered blunt force trauma to its head and abdomen.
Officials say seven kittens in total, all in the range of six to eight weeks old, have been found in public spaces in "various states of distress" since May 30. Of those, two are dead.
"In several of these cases, kittens’ paws have been bound and they have been covered in a tar-like substance," said the humane society.
The Jasper re-entry on Friday will now be for residents only, officials announced Wednesday.
Previously, the incident management team had said there was no way to keep non-residents from returning to town on Friday.
They have now walked that statement back.
"Re-entry on Aug. 16 is for residents only," Parks Canada said in a post on its website on Wednesday.
"Resident security concerns have been heard. Your safe return is our priority. We are in this together."
Government-controlled protectionism is supposed to be good - and in a functioning democracy should benefit the people over businesses all of the time. The problem we have is far-(self)-righteous parties whose members only care about themselves and those who pad their pockets with bribes and “donations”.
THE MEETING HOUSE, formerly one of Canada’s most prominent evangelical megachurches, may now only be able to offer its popular Sunday ministry online instead of in person. In June, in the wake of numerous sexual abuse and misconduct allegations against church leadership and facing several multi-million-dollar civil suits, the church announced that it had been denied abuse insurance coverage and was therefore deciding to “pause” its in-person services, including Sunday worship. Without this insurance, the church has been forced to restructure how it offers ministry—and raises questions about the church’s future.
The moment comes as the Meeting House, which once peaked at more than 5,000 members, nineteen satellite sites, and around 200 “home churches” across Ontario, has been reckoning with accusations that it failed to protect its parishioners, including children, from abuse by church leadership over many years. The ministry became embroiled in scandal in 2021 after a wave of sexual assault and misconduct accusations emerged against former lead teaching pastor Bruxy Cavey, resulting in his resignation from the church in early 2022. That year, Cavey was charged with one count of sexual assault against one woman, and the following year, he was charged with two additional counts of sexual assault involving a separate person. Cavey’s first sexual assault charge was dismissed by a Hamilton judge in July due to delays at court. Proceedings for the two outstanding sexual assault charges are ongoing.
The company at the heart of the travel-nurse controversy is now the subject of a complaint over unpaid wages under New Brunswick's Employment Standards Act.
A nurse who moved to the province from France to work for Canadian Health Labs as a personal support worker says the company turned his life upside down when its contract with the Vitalité health authority expired in May.
Youenn Siviniant was still on the job in mid-June when Vitalité told him to stop coming to work. He is still officially an employee of the company but has not been paid since June 19.
"It further demonstrates the depth of the problem that we're facing with CHL, not just gouging the taxpayers with these exorbitant contracts but also with respect to the way it treats its own employees," said Liberal MLA and health critic Rob McKee.
"That's the problem with privatization."
Canadian b-boy Phil Wizard (Philip Kim) took gold in the first Olympic men’s breaking tournament Saturday.
“I never thought I’d be here in my life,” the 27-year-old said, wiping away tears. He spent the last few sleepless nights “tossing and turning” because he was “stressed out of my mind.”
“I cried yesterday because I was so scared to do this, and, I’m just happy. I’m just happy,” he said.
Hometown favorite French b-boy Dany Dann (Danis Civil) won silver, and American b-boy Victor (Victor Montalvo) took the bronze after taking out Japanese b-boy Shigekix (Shigeyuki Nakarai). These Olympic medals may be the last for breaking, at least for some time — the dance form is not in the lineup of sports for the Los Angeles 2028 Games.
Years after 17-year-old Ben Teague died during an overnight “team building” event hosted by his Oakville Rangers minor hockey team, four York Regional Police Service officers involved in investigating his death have been found negligent by the Ontario Provincial Police.
Jennifer Ross, a detective sergeant in the OPP's professional standards unit, concluded in an Oct. 23, 2023, report that allegations of “neglect of duty” had been substantiated against detective sergeants Heather Bentham and Kenneth Golding, Det. John Loughry, and Sgt. Robert Worthman. Ontario’s police watchdog, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, commissioned the OPP to investigate York Regional Police.
Two years after Ben’s death, police still had not interviewed all of the Rangers players and coaches. In September 2021, Dr. Chris Veenama, a coroner involved with the case, issued a warrant for police to obtain the roster of players and personnel in attendance at the camp, the report says.
(Even today, several of the players still have not been interviewed.)
It's unclear whether York Regional Police disciplined any of the officers who were found negligent.
Even as federal Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre was publicly denouncing lobbyists, he and his staff were being lobbied dozens of times by oil and gas interests, according to an analysis by The Narwhal.
For the 12-month period that ended June 2024, the Narwhal found 46 records on the federal lobbying commissioner’s online registry that showed either Poilievre or staff in his offices communicating with oil and gas interests. One company confirmed that in April, Poilievre’s staff participated in a Hill Day, a type of Parliament Hill lobbying event their boss criticized just days later. Another told The Narwhal Poilievre’s office proactively reached out to set up what would become a lobbying session.
Notably, Poilievre’s anti-lobbying sentiment hasn’t stopped the former Harper government minister from communicating with lobbyists dozens of times over the last year, as well as allowing federal lobbyists to pay to attend his fundraisers in tony neighbourhoods and clubs.
The Narwhal’s review of federal lobbying records shows staff members in Poilievre’s parliamentary office have communicated with a parade of lobbyists, including those representing oil and gas interests. So have staff in another office that falls under Poilievre’s oversight and operates closely with his own, called the Conservative Research Bureau.
"Flair says it cancelled the flight because the airplane for the flight experienced bird strikes while landing in Vancouver," tribunal member Jeffrey Drozdiak's decision said.
But the airline argued that it should not have to pay.
But Donner and Broadhurst did their own research, consulting the [Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System](https://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/saf-sec-sur/2/cadors-screaq/m.aspx?lang=eng) – a federal database that tracks incidents including medical emergencies, navigation errors and flight diversions.
"The results show that Flair did not experience any reported bird strikes during that time. In its dispute response, Flair says the tower sends any occurrences to Transport Canada for input into CADORS," Drozdiak wrote.
The Canadian government says it decided to pull its diplomats' children and their guardians out of Israel, amid fears over an expanded Mideast war.
Global Affairs Canada says it has approved the temporary relocation of the children and their guardians to a safe third country.
Embassy staff are expected to remain in Israel.
Diplomats stationed in nearby Ramallah in the West Bank and in Beirut, Lebanon, do not have dependents living with them.
Toronto police say an internal investigation is underway after a video circulating on social media appeared to show an officer giving a citizen the middle finger over an argument about alleged illegal parking last week.
In the video, which has been viewed more than 425,000 times on TikTok, two Toronto police officers are seen ordering Starbucks in the area of Front and Berkeley streets near the city’s Distillery District on Friday afternoon.
The exchange continues for several minutes and the officers eventually get back in their cruiser. The video then shows one of them giving the citizen the middle finger from the passenger seat of the cruiser.
The individual who took the video later told CP24 that he doesn’t believe the officer knew they were being filmed as by that point he had put away the body camera he was using previously. The footage, he said, came from a pair of glasses with a built-in camera.
The Service de police de la ville de Gatineau (SVPG) is making changes following an investigation into a 2020 decision to cancel an ambulance for a man who later died.
A Quebec coroner's report is recommending police have better directives on when they are able to cancel ambulance services and more education on head trauma.
According to coroner Pascale Boulay's French-language report, emergency services were called to a Gatineau apartment on Aug. 21, 2020 around 8:30 p.m. after a neighbour became concerned the man in question was in the "grip of great confusion."
An SPVG member arrived and noted the man was confused, ***but an ambulance on its way to the scene was cancelled because the officer felt the man's condition was a result of his age and not a medical emergency.***
Two of the five former Team Canada world junior hockey team players awaiting trial on charges in connection with an alleged group sexual assault from 2018 have signed contracts to play in the Russia-based Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).
Astana Barys, a team based in Kazakhstan, announced Friday on Twitter the signing of former New Jersey Devils player Micheal McLeod to a deal that expires at the end of May 2025.
The Belarus-based KHL team Dinamo Minsk also has listed on its roster Dillon Dubé, a former Calgary Flames player who, like McLeod, is among the five Canadian junior players facing sexual assault charges. McLeod is also charged with one count of being party to the offence.
Professor Laura Misener of Western University is a sports scholar who focuses on safe sport and good governance. She said the seriousness of the charges would open the NHL to a firestorm of criticism if the players were allowed to play in Canada or the United States while the court process plays out. However, the bosses of Russia's top pro league don't appear to have the same concerns.
Saskatoon police say they have found Mackenzie Lee Trottier's remains at the Saskatoon landfill after months of searching.
Trottier, then 22, went missing in December 2020. The search for her body at the landfill began on May 1 and extended well beyond the initial 33-day timeframe.
Police Chief Cameron McBride said at a news conference Tuesday that searchers recovered partial remains on July 30 and then made the full recovery on Aug. 1.
He said an autopsy was performed and the cause of death is still undetermined, but the coroner will continue investigating.
We do have access to the Chinese market based on the FIPA Harper locked us into in 2014.
Canadian companies just haven’t taken advantage of it.
As far as locking out China, according to the FIPA we can’t.
This is gonna be a long, drawn-out battle we will lose … all because of that scumbag Harper.
The Calcite Creek fire, burning near the eastern edge of Manning Park, produced a pyrocumulonimbus cloud Sunday afternoon which generated thunder and lightning strikes.
According to the BC Wildfire Service, the phenomenon is not uncommon on large, intense wildfires.
"It is something that we see. That fire was burning rank four, so a crowning fire through the canopy, and when a fire burns that hot, one of the things that we can see is that it starts to generate its own weather," said Taylor Shantz, a fire information officer.
The fire is officially listed as 4,100 hectares in size, but Shantz said that is likely an underestimate because the weather being generated by the fire made it difficult for aircraft crews to clearly see the perimeter.
creator
toThat’s fair. But I do have to wonder why she went and picked him up on the 401 instead of making him pay for an Uber/taxi to get home. Unless ofc he’s under 18 at which point he shouldn’t be racing a fancy car down a King’s highway.
Strike 2 likely means he loses his license for a while. Maybe mom needs to stop rescuing him from himself now.
Nvidia scraped videos from Youtube and several other sources to compile training data for its AI products, internal Slack chats, emails, and documents obtained by 404 Media show.
When asked about legal and ethical aspects of using copyrighted content to train an AI model, Nvidia defended its practice as being “in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of copyright law.” Internal conversations at Nvidia viewed by 404 Media show when employees working on the project raised questions about potential legal issues surrounding the use of datasets compiled by academics for research purposes and YouTube videos, managers told them they had clearance to use that content from the highest levels of the company.
Emails from the project’s leadership to employees show that the goal of Cosmos (different from the company’s existing Cosmos deep learning product) was to build a state-of-the-art video foundation model “that encapsulates simulation of light transport, physics, and intelligence in one place to unlock various downstream applications critical to NVIDIA.”
Slack messages from inside a channel the company set up for the project show employees using an open-source YouTube video downloader called yt-dlp, combined with virtual machines that refresh IP addresses to avoid being blocked by YouTube. According to the messages, they were attempting to download full-length videos from a variety of sources including Netflix, but were focused on YouTube videos. Emails viewed by 404 Media show project managers discussing using 20 to 30 virtual machines in Amazon Web Services to download 80 years-worth of videos per day.
Health Canada has issued a recall for Gerber brand Oat Banana & Mango Baby Cereal due to possible Cronobacter contamination.
The affected products were sold online and in stores in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and possibly other provinces and territories.
The cereal was sold in 227 g packages with a best-before date of May 30, 2025.
The agency says food contaminated with Cronobacter may not look or smell spoiled but can still make you sick, and in rare cases it can cause serious or fatal infections.
Ontario Provincial Police say an Ottawa driver whose previous stunt driving charge from May is still before the courts is now facing a new stunt driving charge.
His charge was one of four OPP laid Sunday night on Highway 417 in Ottawa's west end. Images shown by police show drivers clocked at 160 km/h, 175 km/h, 173 km/h and 156 km/h.
The driver facing the repeat charge needed help from his mom to get home, OPP said.
"This is his second charge for stunt driving since then! The previous charge is still before the courts. At least he didn't flee police this time, and was lucky enough to have his mom come pick him up at the scene," police said on social media.
creator
toArea limits …
- Region 1 Vancouver Island and Channel islands - 3 wolves
- Region 2 Lower Mainland - 3 wolves
- Region 3 to 5 - 3 wolves, except multiple areas where there are no bag limits
- Region 6 - 3 wolves
- Region 7A - no bag limit
- Region 7B - 3 wolves
- Region 8 - 3 wolves Source
By using helicopters the kill rate is high (not limited by elevation, snow pack, etc) and the fur is not harvested.
Where does the 3wolves/1000km^2 come from.
From a Freedom of Information (FOI) request sent by the CBC to BC’s Ministry of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship.
“Documents obtained by CBC News through a freedom of information request provide a glimpse into how the wolf cull has been operating.” Source
Is this in certain areas or nationally surly in cities u would want this number a lot closer to 0wolves/1000km^2.
Wolves live in packs so do not enter cities. Coyotes do, but not wolves.
Attributing this purly to hunting being big business seems a little extreme.
Ok. Please show your data that supports that.
Here’s my data.
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I will amend my assumption that hunting income is a prime reason for the wolf cull as BC does not publish income data specific to the wolf cull (except for costs of the heli cull) here. The primary reasons are that mountain caribou populations are severly impacted by the harvesting of old growth forests. In 2021 logging (in BC) brought in $1.8 billion in stumpage fees (fee paid when timber is harvested from Crown land) (Source) and construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline (which will destroy vital caribou old-growth habitat). Source
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Wolf control, often presented as a ‘solution’ to stabilize caribou populations, ultimately allows continued approval by governments of resource exploitation, including logging in habitats deemed “critical” to caribou. That’s the central message of a new letter in Science, published by Raincoast scientists. Source
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Deep-Snow Mountain caribou are obligately bound to forests old enough to support accessible arboreal hair lichens in quantities sufficient to offset the costs of locomotion and other physiological processes (Antifeau 1987), a habitat requirement incompatible with large-scale clearcut forestry (Stevenson et al. 2001). PDF source
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A government-sponsored wolf kill in Western Canada has had “no detectable effect” on reversing the decline of endangered caribou populations, a study says. Source
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For Van Tighem, the winter cull is a symptom of an ecosystem out of balance, a natural world so disturbed by human activity that we are forced into playing an ecological version of whack a mole (or, in this case, shoot a wolf). All the while, we clear-cut the old-growth forests on which southern mountain caribou depend, seeding their habitat with oil and gas operations and splintering it with roads. Source
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Intensifying resource extraction poses an existential threat to the world’s biodiversity. This threat is exemplified in the case of British Columbia’s (BC) endangered woodland caribou herds (Rangifer tarandus), which are facing extirpation due to extraction-driven habitat destruction, primarily from oil & gas development and forest harvest. Source
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The acceptance of triage (allowing the smallest herds of mountain/woodland caribou to die off) could even provide perverse incentives for this outcome, as exemplified by the disturbingly common frequency with which decisions to approve major industrial projects have used the rationale that caribou habitat in the project area was already degraded or caribou were extirpated (Collard et al., 2020). Source
creator
towould assume Canada follow a scheme where the number of animals that can be killed
Only non-residents have to pay for a wolf hunting license. Canadian residents can kill as many as they want.
The province also has a wolf cull that uses helicopters to hunt.
is limited to to keep populations at correct levels
"The province sets a goal of reducing the wolf population in targeted areas by 80 per cent, documents read. This includes the elimination of entire packs so that population density is below three wolves per 1,000 square kilometres." Source
The province isn’t looking to keep the wolf population in check. It’s looking to decimate it because hunting is BIG business in BC and brings in millions per year.
Ever since he was killed by a hunter in 2020, the Canadian sea wolf Takaya has appeared all over the world.
Paintings, poems, sculptures and statues – including a 150lb (68kg) mixture of driftwood, sea shells and dried kelp – have memorialized a wolf whose legacy reflects the complex relationship between humans and wildlife.
But photographer Cheryl Alexander, a relentless advocate against government-sanctioned wolf culls, was shocked to see her most famous image used to advertise a big game hunting company.
“I was shocked and a bit horrified. And it really pissed me off that company was using Takaya as an advertisement to come up to Canada and kill a wolf,” she told the Guardian. “It hurt too because Takaya has become, in many ways, an international image for positive coexistence with humans.”
Mounties in Surrey say they have found the stolen car he fled in, but the man who allegedly lit a shopkeeper on fire Friday remains at large.
In an update Saturday afternoon, the Surrey RCMP said the public helped police recover a white Mini Cooper the suspect stole and drove away in after the terrifying attack at a currency exchange in Whalley.
The suspect, described by police as a young man, has not been apprehended.
Police also confirmed the assailant threw accelerant at the victim and lit him on fire, having previously only publicly stated that a serious assault occurred and that the victim was severely injured.
A jury returned a verdict of not guilty late Friday for two men accused of conspiring to kill RCMP officers at the border blockade at Coutts, Alta.
But Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert were both convicted on other charges of mischief and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose. Olienick was also convicted of possessing a pipe bomb.
The two were arrested after police found a cache of weapons, ammunition and body armour near the blockade at the Canada-U.S. border crossing in 2022. The blockade was one of several held across the country to protest COVID-19 rules and vaccine mandates.
There was a loud gasp in the packed courtroom in Lethbridge, Alta., as the jury announced the acquittal of the most serious charge: Conspiracy to commit murder. The men showed little emotion, and the case was put over to Aug. 12 to deal with the convictions on the lesser charges.
Last year, Forrest Sandifer of St. John's wasn't feeling well. He was having stomach issues and found no answers and no relief after multiple doctor visits.
After blood work and other tests, his physician started talking about what some fear most: cancer. Specifically, a pituitary gland tumour.
Further testing and an MRI were scheduled. But the 27-year-old had a gut feeling.
While waiting for his next appointments, he took two more tests at home, and the mystery was solved. There was no tumour at all; he was pregnant.
Scott Moe, asshole of the Prairies, proving yet again who he really serves.