Ottawa awards Telesat $2.3B Arctic military satellite contract

OTTAWA - A Canadian telecommunications firm has signed a deal with the federal government worth $2.3 billion to provide high-speed satellite communications to the Canadian Armed Forces in the Arctic.

The federal Defence Investment Agency and Telesat LEO announced the deal on Monday. The contract is meant to secure broadband coverage in remote northern locations for a range of Canadian military activities, including Norad.

This is the largest contract ever for the Ottawa-based Telesat, which has been in operation for about 60 years. It's expected to give the company's network growth plans a major boost.

Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg said the contract will allow his firm to increase the size of its planned low-Earth orbit satellite network by about 44 per cent by adding another 69 satellites.

Tracing South Asian community’s influence in Manitoba

When Pamela Rebello arrived in Winnipeg from India in 1968, following a few years in Cleveland, Ohio, she forged a path led by determination and courage with the vision to contribute to the province.

Those attributes could be found among many of the individuals who made up the first South Asian diaspora in Manitoba.

“We relied on each other,” says Rebello of the small group of newcomers who adjusted to a new home and way of life. Holding on to their cultural identity and values was key to that transition as well as dealing with feelings of isolation.

Rebello, along with other community leaders, took their interest in fostering South Asian culture a step further by establishing the India School of Dance, Music & Theatre in 1980.

Years after the pandemic, MPs are divided on hybrid Parliament rules

OTTAWA - During the pandemic, members of Parliament began voting and attending committee meetings from home. Six years later, Parliamentarians are divided over whether those hybrid rules should remain in place.

In March 2020, the House of Commons adopted a motion allowing the health and finance committees to meet virtually. Four months later, the first House of Commons sitting took place in hybrid format, with some members attending the Commons chamber in person and others dialing in by video conference.

Today, it's common for members of Parliament to cast votes on their phones during announcements, or even while they're out to dinner.

At the U.S.-Canada Summit in June, AI Minister Evan Solomon paused a discussion to vote from his phone.

Seven more belugas on the move from Marineland to U.S. aquarium

NIAGARA FALLS - Seven more whales are on the move from Marineland, headed to a new home at an aquarium in the United States.

Marineland says in a statement that it has begun the second phase of its whale relocation plan, just weeks after successfully transferring six belugas to Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and SeaWorld in San Antonio.

It says the whales getting shipped Monday – female belugas named Xena, Gemini, Skyla, Meeka, Eve, Neva and Calypso – are all going to SeaWorld's San Antonio location.

The park says the health, safety and well-being of the whales remain its top priority throughout the journey.

Duelling symbols: Alberta and Canada flags creating division ahead of referendum

EDMONTON -

Sarah Batchelor says it started a few weeks ago when a large blue flag bearing Alberta's shield of arms appeared on her neighbour's window in Airdrie, a city north of Calgary.

The 49-year-old music teacher, who has lived in the province for most of her life, says she would not have been bothered if her neighbour put it up a couple of years ago.

But now it irks her because of its widespread use by separatists.

Some Canadians tell Carney Ottawa’s spelling protocol should lean British

OTTAWA - It seems some Canadians feel quite at home with the federal government's preference for British spelling.

Messages to Prime Minister Mark Carney on the matter indicate several correspondents see the affectation as a way of countering U.S. cultural dominance.

A flurry of emails to Carney followed news last December that promoters of Canadian English objected to the federal government's use of British spelling in official documents.

Dozens of pages of messages were released to The Canadian Press in response to an Access to Information request.

Helium demand balloons as Mideast supplies deflate: Can Canada meet the moment?

CALGARY - An unusual inquiry came recently to the Calgary office of Avanti Helium Corp., an explorer for the ultralight gas used for applications as wide-ranging as party balloons and space exploration.

It was a prospective customer from the Middle East, where a sizable share of the world's helium supply normally originates, reaching out to a provider half a world away.

"Well, that's interesting," Chris Bakker, Avanti's chief executive, recalled thinking. "I never thought I'd be shipping right in their backyard like that."

Turmoil in the oil and natural gas markets may have garnered the most headlines since the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran in late February, but the conflict has also upended helium supplies. Canada has raw resource in the ground to help fill the gap — but industry players say the government lacks the right policies and incentives for them to develop and sell it.

Brandon laying groundwork for Arabian championship

BRANDON — It’s time to dish the dirt on what’s about to happen at Brandon’s Keystone Centre.

Hundreds of horses and hundreds more spectators are about to descend on the site for Canada’s National Arabian Championship Aug. 6 to 15, and before that happens, the staging surface has to be perfect.

“We have been working on this day in and day out,” said Devin Epp, sales manager in the Ag Centre at the Keystone Centre.

Since July 24, staff have been working on a 24-hour schedule to build the competition floor. Dirt was hauled into the arena and has since been worked into place with tractors and hand-pushed equipment.

Long journey to home ownership for Eritrean couple

Solomon Ghebru and his family have been building a life together in Winnipeg for the past three years after years of living apart in various countries. Now, they are working toward a new goal: owning a home.

Their story is the focus of this year’s Habitat for Humanity Manitoba Cycle of Hope fundraising ride, a seven-day cycling event through southern Manitoba that begins Monday. The ride aims to raise $150,000 to support Ghebru, his wife, Mehret Awate, and their two daughters as they work toward affordable homeownership.

The couple’s journey to Canada started in Eritrea, where they grew up and attended the same church together. They left Eritrea separately, hoping to build a better life together out of the country. Ghebru travelled through Sudan and Libya before reaching Malta, while Awate travelled to Sudan and then Uganda.

After he found work in Malta, he tried to have his family join him, but government policies prevented them from reuniting. The couple married in Uganda in 2016, and their first daughter, Peniel, was born there the following year.

Crop storage headaches loom on horizon

A sense of calm descends over Prairie fields this time of year — at least on the surface.

Activities become more limited in the weeks leading up to harvest. There’s not much farmers can do now to support this year’s crop, other than monitor and protect it from diseases such as sclerotinia in canola and leaf stripe and fusarium head blight in wheat and barley.

July is when you might see farmers wading into a thick stand of canola, conducting a so-called “wet pants test” to get a low-tech read on how much disease-inducing moisture is lurking in the canopy.

Disease pressure is high in a humid, hot summer like this one and it’s kept aerial applicators busy applying fungicides. Sclerotinia spores live on plant residues in the soil and blossom into a mould that destroys the canola stem, starving the maturing pods.

Making water safety a priority

The headlines persist.

Every summer, across Canada, people learn of drownings and deaths that could have been prevented if the people involved had taken water-safety precautions — learning to swim, supervising children, observing boating safety rules, wearing personal flotation devices (PFDs) or being cautious in and around fast-moving waters.

Also every summer, the Royal Lifesaving Society of Canada — which runs the Swim for Life program of swimming lessons across the country — designates the third week of July as National Drowning Prevention Week, as July is when Canadian water-incident rates peak.

The aim of Drowning Prevention Week is to promote water safety of all kinds — and the need is real. According to the Lifesaving Society, over 450 Canadians die annually in preventable water-related incidents. In Manitoba, there are 22 fatal drownings, on average, every year.

Rushing to Rushing River

Every summer, Manitobans go rushing to Rushing River. I told Margie, “And that explains the name!”

Although 240 kilometres from Winnipeg, Ontario’s small Rushing River Provincial Park reports 51,000 annual visits by ’Tobans, about two-thirds of total entries. On some days, I’ve only seen Manitoba vehicles in the campground.

Yup, my new pastime is vacationing to survey licence plates.

This boreal beaut awaits down Ontario Highway 71, shortly after the Trans-Canada Highway’s clever sign explaining “Large vehicles need more room” — and after the intersection where Margie yelled, “Stop! A turtle is crossing!”

Reclaiming Icelandic ancestors, one photo at a time

When Blair Swanson tries to identify the images of people who have been lost to time, Facebook is his greatest tool.

Each month, he posts dozens of historical photos of Icelandic immigrants to Facebook groups in the hope that people will be able to identify them.

The Winnipegger works with Icelandic Roots, a global non-profit that traces the family line of more than 850,000 people of Icelandic heritage from around the world.

Swanson runs the organization’s Unknown Photos Project, which tries to uncover details about the lives of the people depicted in pictures sent in by the Icelandic community.

Chinese newcomers protest over delays in security screening clearance

Dozens of Chinese newcomers rallied outside Winnipeg’s federal immigration office Friday to protest what they describe as untenable delays to Canada’s security screening process.

The rally against Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada comes after a surge in immigration security screening requests created backlogs for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Protesters said the resulting delays have left them in limbo as they try to obtain permanent residency.

“We just want transparency,” said Pakying Chau, 26, who travelled from Hong Kong to Winnipeg in 2018 to study agribusiness.

Giant Tiger decision creates giant void for desperate population

A lot of Winnipeggers may shrug, but the end of Giant Tiger’s downtown store is a giant problem for many of the people living in the centre of the city.

It would have been difficult for anyone going into or passing by the Canadian discount chain’s Donald Street and Ellice Avenue location Thursday to miss the red notices posted on the store’s windows advising it will close on Nov. 7.

According to a 2024 Downtown Winnipeg BIZ report, about 18,000 people live in Winnipeg’s downtown.

More than 60,000 people work there, and some days — when there’s a big concert or the Jets play at Canada Life Centre, for example — the number of people spending time in the area increases significantly.

FCC chairman defends actions against ABC, says broadcasters must operate ‘in the public interest’

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr on Friday defended his agency’s recent actions against ABC, saying broadcasters have a duty to “operate in the public interest” and the FCC is merely trying to restore that standard.

Broadcasters like ABC, Carr said in an interview on the Fox Business Network, “struck a deal with the American people. You broadcasters get subsidized access, free access to a valuable public resource, the airwaves, worth billions of dollars. In exchange, you have to operate in the public interest.”

“Look, as a country, we should have a trusted, respected news media, and we’re not there,” Carr told anchor Maria Bartiromo. “So I hope more broadcasters return to their public interest obligations.”

The FCC has been pushing ABC

Ottawa approves northern Ontario nickel mine

OTTAWA - The federal government says it has approved the Crawford Nickel Mine project in northern Ontario.

Announcing the approval in a news release Friday, Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin said "the potential effects within federal jurisdiction are justified when taking into account the benefits this project will provide."

The government says the project could create $5 billion in investment and 4,000 new jobs.

“Today's decision recognizes the strategic importance of responsibly developing Canada's critical mineral resources in partnership with all levels of government and Indigenous Nations while maintaining rigorous environmental standards,” Canada Nickel CEO Mark Selby said in a statement.

Bill Wilson, one of Canada’s last Second World War veterans, dies at 101

Veterans Affairs Canada says one of the country's last surviving Second World War veterans has died.

A social media post from the federal agency says William (Bill) Wilson died Monday at 101.

It says he was born in Manitoba in 1924, and served aboard the HMCS Ottawa and took part in the bloody D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

The post says after the war, Wilson was part of the Canadian delegations to D-Day and Netherlands anniversary commemorations.

UN, scientists warn that strong El Nino will add fuel to ‘a planet already on fire’

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A strengthening El Nino has already broken records for intensity at its early stages, and it likely will spark even more wild weather worldwide as it grows, “adding fuel to a planet already on fire,” United Nations officials warned Friday.

A key area of the Pacific Ocean used to measure the strength of El Nino this week reached its warmest and most intense level ever recorded for the 15th week since it formed, which is early in its lifetime, scientists at Columbia University reported.

El Nino — a natural warming of the Pacific near the equator that warps weather patterns worldwide — won't peak for several months and should last through spring 2027. The World Meteorological Organization, a U.N. agency, cautioned on Friday that it will likely trigger extreme heat, drought and rainfall well into next year.

“Two months ago, I warned that El Nino was arriving on our doorstep. Now it is inside the house — and turning up the heat,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters Friday. “We have already endured a summer of extremes — record-shattering heat domes; apocalyptic wildfires raging in Spain, France and far beyond; thousands of lives lost in the scorching conditions.”

On eve of Folklorama, Ghana pavilion scrambles to replace stolen outfits

Volunteers from Folklorama’s Ghana pavilion scrambled to replace cultural costumes for about 40 young dancers after the outfits were stolen in Winnipeg days before the annual festival begins.

Two plastic storage bins containing the costumes, to be worn by children and teenagers, were taken from the trunk of a parked car on Banning Street, near Notre Dame Avenue in the West End, likely late Wednesday or early Thursday.

“I felt sad that this has happened. I felt completely devastated for the mother who had them in her car,” said pavilion co-ordinator Abigail Larson. “The initial feeling of sadness changed to, ‘OK, how do we make this a positive?’”

The costumes belong to the Ghana Union of Manitoba Dancers, whose members have rehearsed for months for Folklorama, which begins Sunday.

The bountiful harvest: Thousands of visitors flock to St. Norbert Farmers’ Market every Saturday

While most of Winnipeg is still sleeping, or perhaps just starting to think about making the morning coffee, a patch of shade and sun just south of the Perimeter Highway is already humming with life.

Government wants public input on use of AI

The province says it’s taking the lead when it comes to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, but is it moving in the right direction?