Some Canadians barricaded in hotel amid Mexican unrest
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Some Canadians barricaded in hotel amid Mexican unrest, others see calm return

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Canadians barricaded in hotel Mexican

Some Canadian tourists in Mexico remained barricaded in their hotel Friday while others saw calm return after the arrest of a major alleged drug cartel leader led to violence in parts of the country.

Vancouverite Dominique Carole Maraj said Mazatlan seemed to have mostly returned to normal with people back out enjoying the beach.

“It’s fairly calm and relatively uneventful,” Maraj said from an apartment on a private beach. “Everyone’s just hoping everything goes back to normal.”

Meanwhile, others remained behind barricades.

“They’re safe in their hotel,” said Tina Dahl, an Edmonton woman with relatives stranded in Mazatlan.

She said her six family members had been staying in their hotel rooms since Thursday afternoon.

Several cities in the Mexican state of Sinaloa exploded into violence Thursday after the arrest of alleged drug trafficker Ovidio (The Mouse) Guzman, who is a son of former cartel boss Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman. The violence is particularly fierce in Culiacan, Mazatlan, Los Mochis and Guasave.

A Canadian government official said the Culiacan and Mazatlan airports reopened Friday, although it wasn’t clear when Canadian flights would resume. The Los Mochis airport remained closed.

Dahl’s brother, sister-in-law, their three children and her sister-in-law’s mother are all in Mazatlan. The children are ages 10, eight and seven.

They were to fly out Thursday evening, but street fighting closed the airport and buses that were to take them there were burned in front of the hotel.

Dahl, who has been in touch with her family through social media, said they described a scene of chaos.

Stranded travellers who had checked out of their rooms but whose flights were cancelled slept in the lobby of the hotel, the gates of which remained barricaded, she said. Military and police vehicles trundled up and down beaches.

Helicopters patrolled the skies. One restaurant that remained open was packed, she said.

“My brother did call my mom and dad yesterday and he’s like, ‘It’s something I’ve never seen before. It’s like something in the middle of a war zone and I don’t know what to think and feel.’

“He’s definitely shaken, for sure.”

Dahl said her family was to talk with Sunwing on Friday to see when they could get a flight home.

Hailey Bronson said she expected to be heading home to Cochrane, Alta., as planned on Sunday, although a few of her friends had their flights rescheduled.

She was staying in an apartment downtown and said it was strange to see the usually busy town of Mazatlan turn silent Thursday.

“I’ve never seen Mazatlan so quiet in my life,” Bronson said in a message. “But today everything is back to normal.”

Winnipegger Sheila North, in Mazatlan with two adult children and her two-year-old grandson, was on a catamaran excursion when she saw plumes of smoke in two different areas and black helicopters flying around Thursday.

“(The staff) wanted to create a sense of calm, but you could tell that they were being told stuff on their phones that something was going on,” North said in a phone interview.

“So we stayed on the excursion until it was done and when we came back to the hotel, that’s when we saw long lineups.”

People waited hours in line to get into the hotel restaurant, North said.

Some families were forced to sleep in the hotel lobby, while some staff members opted to stay overnight at work, she said.

North and her family were supposed to fly back to Winnipeg on Friday but said it has been changed to Sunday.

“There’s a general sense of uneasiness. People are regrouping, but I can see that some parents are really stressed.”

The Canadian government advised travellers in Mexico to shelter in place, avoid crowds and demonstrations, and not to try to cross blockades, even if they appear unmanned.

WestJet said it cancelled two flights in and out of Mazatlan on Friday. Air Canada said none of its flights were affected by the unrest. Sunwing did not respond to a request for information on its flights.

On Thursday, at least two passenger airplanes were hit by gunfire. Alleged cartel members were also carjacking Culiacan residents and setting vehicles ablaze.

The fighting came days before President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was to host Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden at a summit in Mexico City.

A spokeswoman from Trudeau’s office said his plan for the summit hadn’t changed.

An attempt to arrest Ovidio Guzman also led to violence three years ago. An aborted operation to capture him set off violence in Culiacan that ultimately led the Mexican president to order the military to let him go.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 6, 2023.

— With files from Kelly Malone in Saskatoon, Brittany Hobson in Winnipeg and The Associated Press

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Canada’s Denis Shapovalov wins Belgrade Open for his second ATP Tour title

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BELGRADE, Serbia – Canada’s Denis Shapovalov is back in the winner’s circle.

The 25-year-old Shapovalov beat Serbia’s Hamad Medjedovic 6-4, 6-4 in the Belgrade Open final on Saturday.

It’s Shapovalov’s second ATP Tour title after winning the Stockholm Open in 2019. He is the first Canadian to win an ATP Tour-level title this season.

His last appearance in a tournament final was in Vienna in 2022.

Shapovalov missed the second half of last season due to injury and spent most of this year regaining his best level of play.

He came through qualifying in Belgrade and dropped just one set on his way to winning the trophy.

Shapovalov’s best results this season were at ATP 500 events in Washington and Basel, where he reached the quarterfinals.

Medjedovic was playing in his first-ever ATP Tour final.

The 21-year-old, who won the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF title last year, ends 2024 holding a 9-8 tour-level record on the season.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Talks to resume in B.C. port dispute in bid to end multi-day lockout

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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 Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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The Royal Canadian Legion turns to Amazon for annual poppy campaign boost

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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.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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