Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
You weren't imagining it — last month was an unusually hot and dry July in the Yukon. "Well, it was warmer in June, but boy did [temperatures] ever take off in July," said David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada. "We saw temperatures in the Yukon that were two to three-and-a-half degrees warmer than normal."
Scientists are trying to define a new geological time period to recognise the changes we've made to the planet, and Crawford is their model example. Its sediments have captured fallout from intense fossil fuel burning, and even the plutonium from bomb tests. The muds would be symbolic of the onset of a proposed Anthropocene Epoch.
Halifax hasn't seen any snowbanks or snowplows so far this winter, and the lack of lasting flakes is about to break a record. Saturday will break the record for the latest date into winter without having at least two centimetres of snow on the ground at the Halifax Stanfield International Airport, according to Jim Abraham, president of the Canadian Meteorological Oceanographic Society.
Rising water levels in the St. Lawrence Seaway could cost the economy more than $1 billion, shippers and port operators say. A new study from the Chamber of Marine Commerce warns that opening the floodgates further at a dam in Cornwall, Ont., would wash away between $1 billion and $1.75 billion in revenue for businesses on both sides of the border. A board of control recently increased the flow at the Moses Saunders Dam — the only control point on the St. Lawrence Seaway, which includes the Great Lakes — to allow 10,400 cubic metres of water per second out of Lake Ontario.
