Snowbird kitty: Lost cat heads home to Maine – from Florida

Federal Court awards OCN $27M, 62 years after construction of hydro dam

The Federal Court has ordered Ottawa pay Opaskwayak Cree Nation $27 million over damages suffered due to the construction of the Grand Rapids hydro dam in the 1960s.

In a decision dated Sept. 3, Federal Court Justice Sébastien Grammond says the federal government had a fiduciary duty to protect the community from the impacts of the dam.

“When the Crown exercises a discretionary power over an Indigenous interest, it has a fiduciary duty and it must exercise the discretion in the best interests of the Indigenous group,” the ruling said. “Canada breached its fiduciary duty to OCN because it approved the (project) without ensuring that the impacts of the Grand Rapids dam on OCN’s traditional way of life were mitigated or compensated.”

The First Nation took the federal government to court in February over impacts on the community after the dam, located about 145 kilometres southeast of Opaskwayak Cree Nation, was installed on the Saskatchewan River in 1964. The case was heard over 14 days in a judge-alone trial in Winnipeg.

City wants short-term rental unit property owners to report all emergency-service responses

New rules could require the owners of short-term rental units, such as Airbnbs and VRBOs, to tell the city every time an emergency responder is called to their properties.

Rogers, Telus deny blame for June twister alert barrage

Telecom companies say they aren’t to blame for the barrage of tornado alerts Manitobans received during severe thunderstorms in early June.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced in August it would investigate the unusually high number of alerts, and called on the Pelmorex Corp., which operates the national Alert Ready system, along with telecom companies Bell, Rogers and Telus to respond to a number of questions.

They were given until last Friday to describe their possible roles in the creation, receipt, processing or distribution of alerts issued from Environment and Climate Change Canada in the midst of the June 9 storm.

Telus said in its response that it received 133 alert requests targeted to Manitoba created by Environment Canada and forwarded by Pelmorex between 2:35 p.m. June 9 and 3:29 a.m. the following day. While the majority of those messages contained identical information and were automatically suppressed, 17 were ultimately sent out as alerts in Winnipeg.

Man, 21, killed in animal attack on Manitoba First Nation

The family of “a kind and gentle giant” is grief-stricken as officials try to determine what kind of animal killed the 21-year-old man in western Manitoba.

Moses Campeau was walking on a road to a friend’s house in Sapotaweyak Cree Nation, about 600 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, when he was fatally injured Sept. 9, his mother, Paula Campeau, said Monday.

“Moses was a kind and gentle giant,” she said. “He was a person who (people) would ask to come and help them, and he would go without even hesitating.”

Manitoba RCMP said officers from the Swan River detachment responded to a report of a suspicious death at about 3:10 a.m. The scene was held and the RCMP’s major crime services took over the investigation.