Your forecast
Sunny this morning, then a mix of sun and cloud with a 30 per cent chance of showers late this afternoon and a risk of a thunderstorm. Hazy. High 28 C, Humidex 32, UV index 7 or high.
A blistering heat wave is moving across Western Canada, pushing record temperatures and the threat of wildfires into Saskatchewan today.
Environment Canada meteorologist Jennifer Smith says a ridge of high pressure from Northern California crept into British Columbia on the weekend before invading the Northwest Territories and Alberta on Monday.
She says the heat will travel into Manitoba by Wednesday and may reach the edge of the northwestern Ontario border before it moves south into the United States again. Read more here.
A runner cools off at a misting station in Vancouver on July 7. (Ethan Cairns / The Canadian Press files)
What’s happening today
The Assembly of First Nations annual meeting begins in Montreal today where leaders are expected to provide an update on negotiations to reform Canada’s child welfare system and compensation for the systems’ past harms.
The meeting is the first AFN annual general assembly taking place since Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak was elected national chief in December. The Canadian Press reports.
Today’s must-read
Organizers of Manitoba’s summer festivals have been asked to include drug-testing in their lineups, against the backdrop of an increase in drug-related deaths across the province last year.
There were 445 drug-related deaths in Manitoba in 2023 — a record high — based on initial data released by the province’s chief medical examiner — more than double the number in 2019.
Drug use at music festivals is an open secret, and poisonings and overdoses could be prevented by judgment-free access to drug testing, be it through drug-checking machines or more affordable options such as fentanyl testing strips, said Arlene Last-Kolb of Moms Stop the Harm. Malak Abas has the story.
The Winnipeg Folk Fest, which has a cumulative attendance that exceeds 70,000 annually, introduced naloxone training to security staff and first-aid teams in 2017. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Free Press files)
On the bright side
Scientists in South Africa have been stunned to discover that termite mounds that are still inhabited in an arid region of the country are more than 30,000 years old, meaning they are the oldest known active termite hills.
Some of the mounds near the Buffels River in Namaqualand were estimated by radiocarbon dating to be 34,000 years old, according to the researchers from Stellenbosch University.
“We knew they were old, but not that old,” said Michele Francis, senior lecturer in the university’s department of soil science who led the study. Her paper was published in May. The Associated Press has more here.
Stellenbosch University researcher, Michele Francis, right, and other researchers, pose for a selfie, next to an ancient termite mound in Namaqualand, South Africa. (Michele Francis photo / The Associated Press files)
On this date
On July 9, 1930: The Manitoba Free Press reported hail exacted a heavy toll across the prairies from eastern Alberta to central Manitoba, with some of the worst damage to crops cited at Springwater Zone, Sask., where fields of wheat expected to yield 500,000 bushels were destroyed. A heat wave driving many Manitobans to seek relief swimming resulted in three deaths by drowning. Read the rest of this day’s paper here. Search our archives for more here.
Today’s front page
Get the full story: Read today’s e-edition of the Free Press.
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