A winter storm hit Ottawa and the surrounding areas Friday night, covering the nation’s capital with 20 centimetres of heavy snow and knocking out power for hundreds of customers.
Environment Canada issued winter storm warnings Friday for almost the entire region except for communities along the water west of Brockville, Ont.
On Saturday afternoon, the warnings were called down.
Here’s everything you need to know as storm cleanup continues:
Power outages
Hydro Ottawa have had crews ready to respond to the storm since yesterday, the utility said.
As of 5 p.m., there were only a few dozen customers in the city without any power, down from several hundred earlier in the day.
Meanwhile, Hydro One crews are still tackling scattered outages across eastern Ontario, with the largest cluster as of late Saturday afternoon occurring near Brockville.
According to their outage map, more than 800 customers there were still without power as of 5 p.m.
An earlier outage near Maberly, Ont., that affected more than 700 customers has since been dealt with.
As of 5 p.m., there were only about 200 Hydro-Québec customers in the Outaouais who were still without power, down from about 1,700 earlier in the afternoon.
A snow plow clears a section of road during a snowstorm in Ottawa earlier in the week. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
Roads
The City of Ottawa said crews are clearing main roads like Baseline and Bank Street as well as priority sidewalks. Soon, they will be clearing residential streets and sidewalks, as well as bus stops.
Bryden Denyes, a manager with the City of Ottawa’s roads department, said the challenge on Saturday morning was snow and wind filling in areas that have already been plowed.
“It’s becoming a bit more passable out there right now,” Denyes added.
No roads have been closed, city officials said.
In Ottawa, a winter parking ban was issued Saturday for most city streets from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The city said Saturday evening it would not need to be extended.
Gatineau, Que., has also instituted a winter parking ban. It began at 3 a.m. Saturday and will continue overnight into Sunday.
Ontario Provincial Police told Radio-Canada they had dealt with roughly four dozen collisions in eastern Ontario since 6 p.m. Friday, though none of them were considered serious.
Ottawa police said Saturday they’d received reports of 42 crashes since 10 p.m. Friday.
Public transit
The Confederation Line launched at its normal time and trains were still running as of 5 p.m. Saturday, according to a late afternoon memo sent to council by OC Transpo general manager Renée Amilcar.
Double-car trains may run on the line this weekend, Amilcar said in an earlier memo Saturday — a decision made to ensure OC Transpo’s resources were focused on clearing snow and to simplify overnight operations.
Snow clearing crews were deployed overnight to keep the line and switches clear of snow and ice, and a system to de-ice the overhead wire that supplies electricity to the vehicles is currently in place.
Amilcar also warned in that earlier memo that bus and Para Transpo customers could face delays.
She said in her late afternoon update that those delays did materialize, with some buses getting stuck in heavy snow.
“Our teams have been working to clear these situations as quickly as possible and the situation has improved,” Amilcar wrote.
“We continue to encourage customers to allow plenty of time when planning their commute as this weather has had an impact everyone on the road.”
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VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
