TORONTO – Balloons, confetti and bubbles filled the air as thousands of people came together in downtown Toronto on Sunday for one of the biggest annual Pride celebrations in Canada.

The Toronto Pride Parade marked the culmination of a month’s worth of events celebrating the city’s LGBTQ+ community, with some attendees calling the event a symbol of friendship.

“It gets better every year, it multiplies, we love each other,” said Stephen Storey, who is celebrating his 22nd Pride in Toronto.

This year’s Pride events in Toronto featured many LGBTQ+ newcomers celebrating their first Pride in Canada, including Zhya Aramiy, who relocated to Toronto last year after fleeing persecution for his sexuality in Iraq.

“The feeling that I get here, it just makes me feel home,” said Aramiy. “It just makes me feel like all of these people around me, they are with me and they stand up with me, they support me.”

The parade began at Bloor Street and Church Street with more than 250 groups marching together along Yonge Street down to Nathan Phillips Square.

The groups included LGBTQ+ organizations such as the African Centre for Refugees and Toronto Pflag, all waving Pride flags and cheering alongside the crowds.

A Toronto fire truck also drove along the parade route, draped in Pride flags with rainbow balloons pinned to its roof.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow celebrated on a parade float, donning a rainbow feather boa and blowing kisses to the crowd.

“It’s incredible to see everyone supporting each other,” said Michelle O’Neil, who drove two hours from Trenton, Ont., to celebrate the event with her friends as an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. “It’s an event that’s all about love and inclusivity, and I just love that.”

At one point during the parade, the clouds darkened and light rain briefly fell, but it didn’t keep celebrants from dancing and smiling, walking to the sound of drums and whistles in colourful outfits.

Toronto police tweeted at around 6 p.m. local time that a demonstration during the parade had caused a disruption, and that the parade was “paused temporarily.”

This year’s parade theme was “Be,” which Pride Toronto called “a resounding statement that says, ‘We are here and always will be.’”

“It’s lovely,” said Megen Rependa, who was celebrating Pride in Toronto for her first time, despite coming out more than ten years ago. “The interactions that you have with people, for the most part, people are happy, they are looking to make connections, everyone’s being quite kind to each other.”

For Stephen Storey, whose attendance at Toronto’s Pride celebrations is an annual tradition that he plans to continue in the years to come, Pride can be summarized in four words.

“Peace, love, unity and respect,” Storey said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 30, 2024.

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CALGARY – Weeks of water restrictions in Calgary could be eased in a matter of days, the city’s mayor and officials say, if the water system holds while crews turn valves back on after they were closed in early June to repair a burst feeder main.

Mayor Jyoti Gondek told a media briefing Sunday that water tested by Alberta Health Services following flushing of the repairs exceeded quality guidelines, meaning crews are now proceeding to the next step — re-establishing pressure to certain areas of the water-supply system.

But she warns that step involves the greatest risk, so she says valves and pumps are being turned on slowly to prevent straining the system and causing new leaks.

Francois Bouchard, Calgary’s infrastructure director, says with each increase in pressure, crews will pause to monitor for breaks and will be ready to go if there are any.

Bouchard says easing indoor water-use restrictions would be the priority, and if all goes well, he believes the city could start to ease restrictions within three to five days.

Gondek and other city officials say residents must keep conserving water until then to avoid taps, or fire hydrants, running dry.

“We are at the final and riskiest stage of water restoration right now. Now is the time to keep up your tremendous water-saving efforts,” Gondek said Sunday.

“Anyone with pipeline experience will tell you that this stage is risky and we are not out of the woods yet. Risks still remain.”

Gondek said an overnight fire that swept through a bar and restaurant shows the importance of conserving water. Calgary fire officials said in a news release that fighting the blaze consumed 1.2 million litres of water.

There were no reported injuries.

Water-use data for Saturday showed the entire city used 447 million litres that day and 460 million litres on Friday. But for much of last week, water use crept upward and reached 500 million litres on Thursday, prompting a plea from Gondek for people to keep up their water-conservation efforts.

Since the pipe break on June 5, Calgarians have been asked to reduce their water use by a quarter as repairs are conducted to the main, which carried 60 per cent of the city’s water.

Those restrictions were extended after repair crews found and repaired another five spots in the pipe that were nearing failure.

Crews have been scrambling to have the line running before the city’s major summer festival, the Calgary Stampede, begins July 5.

Almost every day since the pipe break, Gondek has asked Calgary’s 1.6 million residents and those in surrounding communities to restrict their indoor water use by flushing their toilets less often, taking three-minute showers and doing fewer loads of laundry.

Outdoor water use has been banned. Residents have been encouraged to rely on rainwater for their gardens.

Gondek has promised a wide-ranging examination of the city’s underground infrastructure.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 30, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

A strike by WestJet plane mechanics forced the airline to tcanel hundreds more flights on Sunday, upending the plans of roughly 110,000 travellers over the Canada Day long weekend and prompting the carrier to demand action from the federal government.

Some 680 workers, whose daily inspections and repairs are essential to airline operations, walked off the job on Friday evening despite a directive for binding arbitration from the labour minister.

“WestJet is in receipt of a binding arbitration order and awaits urgent clarity from the government that a strike and arbitration cannot exist simultaneously; this is something they have committed to address and like all Canadians we are waiting,” WestJet Airlines president Diederik Pen said in a release Sunday.

Since Thursday, WestJet has cancelled 829 flights scheduled to fly between then and Monday — the busiest travel weekend of the season — the carrier said.

The vast majority of Sunday’s trips were called off as WestJet pared down its 180-plane fleet to 32 active aircraft and topped the global list for cancellations among major airlines over the weekend.

Trevor Temple-Murray was one of thousands of customers scrambling to rebook after their trips were scrapped less than a day in advance.

“We’ll just have to wait it out,” said the resident of Lethbridge, Alta., who was on hold in the parking lot of the Victoria airport trying to get a plane to Calgary, his wife and two-year-old son beside him in the car.

Their 6:05 p.m. flight had been cancelled, and they wouldn’t know until the evening whether a scheduled 7 a.m. flight the next day would go ahead.

“There are a lot of angry people in there,” Temple-Murray said, pointing at the terminal.

Nearby, Grade 10 exchange student Marina Cebrian said she was supposed to be back home in Spain early Sunday, but now won’t return to her family until Tuesday after enduring three flight cancellations.

“It’s distressing,” she said. “I was supposed to be at home today, like seven hours ago, but I’m not.”

Both WestJet and the Airplane Mechanics Fraternal Association have accused the other side of refusing to negotiate in good faith.

The airline’s president has stressed what he calls the “continued reckless actions” of a union making “blatant efforts” to disrupt Canadians’ travel plans, while the association claimed the Calgary-based company has refused to respond to its latest counterproposal. In an update to members Sunday, it said mechanics were “the victim of WestJet’s virulent PR campaign that you are scofflaws,” citing “calumnies” against workers around their right to strike.

The job action comes after union members voted overwhelmingly to reject a tentative deal from WestJet in mid-June and following two weeks of tense talks between the two parties.

As the clock ticked down toward a Friday strike deadline, the impasse prompted Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan to step in, mandating that the airline and union undertake binding arbitration headed by the country’s labour tribunal.

That process typically sidesteps a work stoppage. WestJet clearly thought so, stating the union had “confirmed they will abide by the direction.”

“Given this, a strike or lockout will not occur, and the airline will no longer proceed in cancelling flights,” the airline said Thursday.

The mechanics took a different view. The union negotiating committee said it would “comply with the minister’s order and directs its members to refrain from any unlawful job action.” Less than 24 hours later, workers were on the picket lines.

A decision from the Canada Industrial Relations Board seemed to affirm the legality of their actions regardless of protocols around arbitration.

“The board finds that the ministerial referral does not have the effect of suspending the right to strike or lockout,” the tribunal wrote Friday.

O’Regan said the next day the board’s ruling was “clearly inconsistent” with the direction he provided, but later added he respected the body’s independence. He met with both sides Saturday evening.

“I told them they needed to work together with the Canada Industrial Relations Board to resolve their differences and get their first agreement done,” he said in a social media post, appearing to put the onus on the parties.

However, O’Regan has broad authority under the Canada Labour Code. Though his initial directive to the tribunal for binding arbitration may have presumed a strike was off the table due to precedent, the labour minister could take a range of steps to “secure industrial peace and to promote conditions favourable to the settlement of industrial disputes,” the legislation states.

“To those ends the minister may … direct the board to do such things as the minister deems necessary.”

Both parties were set to meet Sunday, the union said.

“It’s uncharted territory. We’re breaking a new precedent here,” Ian Evershed, a mechanic and union representative involved in the talks, said of the simultaneous strike and arbitration.

The union’s goal remains a deal hammered out through bargaining rather than by an arbitrator — a route it opposed from the get-go.

“That process could take months to go through,” he said in a phone interview, stressing a strike puts pressure on the employer. That stance clashes with the WestJet president’s reiteration Sunday that the job action “serves no purpose other than to inflict maximum damage to our airline and the country.”

In a submission to the tribunal last week, WestJet lawyers said the union sought “an unreasonable and extortionate outcome” and intentionally manoeuvred to place the strike date at the height of summer travel.

The union says its demands around wages would cost WestJet less than $8 million beyond what the company has offered for the first year of the collective agreement — the first contract between the two sides. It has acknowledged the gains would surpass compensation for industry colleagues across Canada and sit more on par with U.S. counterparts.

WestJet says it has offered a 12.5 per cent wage hike in the first year of the contract, and a compounded wage increase of 23 per cent over the rest of the five-and-a-half-year term.

Meanwhile, travellers continue to scramble.

Sergio Arizmendi, a Grade 11 exchange student from Mexico, said he was booked to fly from Victoria to Phoenix and then drive to his home south of the border, but he now plans to take a ferry to Vancouver and then hop an Air Canada flight to Arizona, returning to his family two days late.

“My parents, they’ve been fighting with the airline,” said Arizimendi, who was hauling three large suitcases and a backpack.

Not everyone was vexed by the weekend’s labour turbulence.

“We are seeing a huge surge in bookings, presumably from passengers scrambling to save their long weekends,” said Flair Airlines spokeswoman Kim Bowie.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 30, 2024.