Rain, cool temperatures help Western wildfires – Winnipeg Free Press

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Rain, cool temperatures will help Western wildfires

Fort McMurray's oil sands center was spared a dangerous wildfire Thursday as rain and water cannons blasted dry ditches.

Alberta Wildfire information officer Christy Tucker said the blaze is out of control — the only fire in the province — but it didn't grow overnight and is about 200 square kilometers.

The blaze was still less than six kilometers from the southwest edge of the northeastern Alberta community and less than five kilometers from a major highway to the south.

The fire forced 6,600 residents of four districts to leave their homes on Tuesday.

Evacuees were told they could return after a long vacation. The rest of the city — about 61,000 residents — and so on

Here's what else we're seeing…

Wildfires, smoke threaten Canada's tourism sector

At Andrew Lake Lodge — a remote campground in Alberta's northeast corner — owner Dan Wettlaufer is looking forward to welcoming this year's first crop of tourists this weekend.

But the wildfires burning out of control near Fort McMurray may taper off this May over the long weekend and the start of the summer tourist season, Wettlaufer acknowledged.

Andrew Lake Lodge welcomes visitors from across the country, the US, Europe and Asia to enjoy fishing, hunting and wildlife viewing in a beautiful wilderness setting.

But Wettlaufer, like many in Canada's tourism sector, is concerned about the impact of increased wildfire activity on his industry. Last year, he had to cancel or reschedule a number of his clients' trips because smoke from the Northwest Territories fires made it too dangerous to take off and land on his lodge's airstrip.

Wettlaufer said he is concerned not only about the potential costs associated with evacuation orders, travel difficulties and smog-filled skies, but also about the side effects, such as reputational damage to the country as a whole.

Canada loses bid to overturn defamation lawsuit

Mark and Craig Kielburger's mother's defamation lawsuit against the Canadian podcast and its owner will go to trial after an Ontario court rejected a motion to dismiss it, saying there was reason to believe the claim had “substantiality.”

Canada, its host, Jesse Brown, and others on the podcast sought to end a lawsuit based on the episode about Kielburger-founded WE in August 2021, which was dismissed under legislation designed to protect people from lawsuits designed to silence critics or public debate. .

In a ruling earlier this month, an Ontario Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit against Isabelle Vincent, a guest reporter on the episode, but ruled it should continue against Brown and Canada.

Court Edward Morgan's ruling found that there was no reason to believe that Brown and Canada had “any valid defense,” that the episode omitted key information in a way that undermined its objectivity, and that Brown showed “reckless disregard” for Teresa Kielburger's reputation. definition.

Most Canadians support abortion: poll

Eight in 10 Canadians support a woman's right to an abortion, and two-thirds do not want the clause used to limit access to abortion, a new poll shows.

The Leger poll also shows that support has fallen significantly since the collapse of the province's idea to use a clause banning the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.

Leger surveyed 1,545 people online between May 10 and 12. Although the results are statistically weighted, they cannot be assigned a margin of error because online surveys are not truly random samples.

The survey was conducted in the days following the annual anti-abortion march on Parliament Hill. The issue of abortion rights has been prominent in the American news cycle since 2022, when the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which protected abortion access south of the border.

Timeline: Tim Hortons celebrates its 60th birthday

60 years ago today, the famous Canadian circuit began.

The first Tim Hortons restaurant opened in 1964 in Hamilton, Ontario, named after Tim Horton, the famous NHL defenseman who played for the Toronto Maple Leafs at the time.

Since then, Tim Hortons has become part of the fabric of Canada with stores around the world and even added the term “double-double” to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

This Canadian Press report was first published on May 17, 2024.