Despite a lack of significant growth Saturday, officials from municipalities west of Edmonton say the wildfire situation remains serious with flames less than two kilometres from the town of Edson, Alta.
An evacuation order was issued for the town and parts of Yellowhead County, Alta., Friday evening as fires jumped guards and moved closer to populated areas.
In a Saturday afternoon video update, Edson Mayor Kevin Zahara pleaded for anyone still in the community of about 8,000 people to leave.
“This is going to be a very dire situation. We’ve always said we’re going to be honest about what’s going on. This is not good and this fire is a beast,” he said.
In an update Saturday around 7 p.m., officials said fires did not grow significantly Saturday as anticipated, but were still an active threat.
“It’s not done by far,” Yellowhead County chief administrative officer Luc Mercier said, adding that the lack of growth was due to slight precipitation, the cooling effect of smoke and winds that were not as strong as expected.
Earlier on Saturday, Mercier said that the main fire threatening communities spans 130,000 hectares and had “grown drastically” over 24 hours, with the fire spreading in three different directions.
Mercier said one of those areas is burning just 1.5 kilometres south of Edson.
No properties are yet known to have been destroyed by fire, he said Saturday evening. The Cascade power plant has not been impacted.
Officials warned the situation was fluid and could change as winds are anticipated to blow toward the town starting later in the evening.
Warm weather over the next few days is also a concern.
“We’ve got some good news for today,” Mercier said. “We have a lot of resources there, as much as we can on those fires.”
Yellowhead County Mayor Wade Williams says he and Zahara spoke with Todd Loewen, Alberta’s forestry, parks and tourism minister, on Saturday morning.
He said Loewen assured them more resources are being moved in to fight the fire.
“We cannot stress enough: it is time to leave this area. Pack up and head out,” Williams said Saturday afternoon.
“Last night, the fire that hit Highway 47 travelled in excess of 30 [kilometres] in the last 24 hours,” he said. “That is unbelievable. That is not something that is ever seen.”
Officials warn that residents who have been forced to leave their homes should anticipate to be away for some time. Mercier said people should expect the evacuation order to be in effect until at least Wednesday, although he cautioned that was only an estimate and not definitive.
Extreme fire danger in Edson forest area
This is the second time Edson residents have been forced to flee their homes in a little over a month.
The town was evacuated May 5 because of an encroaching wildfire, but residents were allowed to return on May 8. Other parts of Yellowhead County also had to evacuate in May, but by the end of the month, everyone had been allowed to return.
Zahara said in an interview that the wildfire damaged the overflow campground in Edson’s Willmore Park on Friday, but otherwise flames haven’t reached homes or structures in the town.
“We are anticipating that to potentially change with the changing weather conditions,” he said.
“I know that over the last number of weeks it’s been fairly calm after our first evacuation, but things have changed drastically over the last 48 hours.”
In the hamlet of Peers, Alta., on Saturday, within the Yellowhead County evacuation zone, Alex Leonard said the situation is “surreal.”
He said he’s staying around for now.
“I know everybody — I run vehicles that can help people,” he said.
But he said the fire danger over the last month has put people on edge.
“I go to work and I go out into the woods — is it going to be on fire when I get there? Am I going to be able to get out? Am I going to be safe?”
Alex Leonard said wildfire worries are taking a toll in Peers, Alta., on June 10, 2023. (Jamie McCannel/CBC)
Melissa Story, Alberta Wildfire provincial information officer, said over 100 wildland firefighters are battling the fire closest to Edson, which is part of the larger Pembina complex wildfire.
“We’re doing everything we can to reinforce containment lines on the north side of [the fire],” she said in an interview.
“We’re seeing windy conditions in that area. We’re also seeing some elevated temperatures, which is going to add to the wildfire behaviour and wildfire danger in that area.”
Fire danger has been extreme in the Edson forest area as hot and dry conditions return to the province. Heat warnings are in effect for much of the province, with temperatures nearing 30 C.
Meteorologist Brennan Allen, with Environment and Climate Change Canada, said a typical daytime high for the Edson area at this time of year is 19 C.
“To give you an idea, today we’re forecasting a high of 29 C — that’s 10 degrees above normal, so that’s quite significant,” he told CBC on Saturday.
Allen said the area could see thunderstorms starting Saturday evening, but a more significant weather pattern change isn’t in the forecast until the middle of next week.
“It might bring some significant rain. It’s a little bit too early to say what the amounts would look like, but definitely a big change from what we’ve been seeing the last few days. So that does look promising.”
Gerry Clarke, co-ordinator with the City of Edmonton emergency support response team, stands in front of the evacuee reception centre at the Edmonton Expo Centre on June 10, 2023. (Caleb Perreaux/Radio-Canada)
Edson is approximately 200 kilometres west of Edmonton, and evacuees have been told to register at the Edmonton Expo reception centre.
Gerry Clarke, co-ordinator with the City of Edmonton emergency support response team, said more than 250 people have registered at the reception centre, and about 50 people slept there overnight.
“The mood inside is pretty sombre,” he said.
“They’re willingly here — they don’t probably want to be here, but at least they have a roof over their head.”
Many more people have fled Edson, but Clarke said he suspects many have made their own plans to stay elsewhere.
As of 8 p.m. Saturday, Alberta’s wildfire dashboard listed 76 active wildfires inside forest protection areas, with 24 burning out of control.
Religious persecution
Misguided religious and cultural traditions
Fear of those who challenge the established order
Long ago a horrid thing happened in Europe and in many European Colonies. It was called the Inquisition, an instrument of the Catholic Church and used by the present-day public authorities to quell political and social protest and challenges from those considered rebels(Heretics).
In that day the Church of Rome was seen as the very roots of Western society, that which kept society on a path of righteousness and functioning practice. The political rulers of the day, kings, nobles and lords allied themselves to the church with absolute reason for doing so. The church kept them in power you see. There was a hierarchy prescribed to the present-day society where authority flowed from God to the Pope, Noblemen, Cardinals, and Priests to the public. Church law was often edited for the benefit of the higher classes. Therefore rebels standing against local or regional lords were viewed as heretics who stood against the wishes of the pope, church laws and God himself. This church-established a council of the Inquisition roamed Europe looking for heretics, those different, rebels, witches and those in league with the devil. Any form of social, cultural or political wrongdoing was dealt with with a heavy hand. The rich may have been accused of a wrongdoing, but able to seek their freedom through financial donations. The poor faced the Inquisition with terror and fear since no one was there to represent them. The church-Lord alliance maintained the most severe of punishments.
The Inquisition evolved into the massive witch-hunting movement. Millions of people perished having been accused of witchcraft and being in League with the Devil. There actually existed witch hunters who simply went to a village, watching who was odd, different, threatening to the authorities and voila, a witch was found and declared. Strange methods of finding a witch were developed. One involved sticking a pin into the back side of a person, usually a woman and if she did not cry out in pain, she was possibly a candidate for interrogation. The interrogators usually got a confession leading to that person’s death.
There exists today religious authorities with similar powers to prosecute and punish those deemed different or contrary to established religious or cultural practices. Arrest, torture and disappearances happen daily in places such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many African Nations. Fanatical Religious Dogma has cost millions of people their lives, and for what? The Acquisition and use of power. Power encompasses every aspect of control of others whether it be through intellect, threat or violence.
Never should such horrors happen in a civilized world. Just one question needs to be asked. Do we live in a civilized world?
TORONTO – An arbitrator has awarded Ontario’s doctors a nearly 10-per-cent compensation increase for the first year of their new Physician Services Agreement.
The province is in the midst of negotiations with the Ontario Medical Association for the four-year agreement, but an arbitrator was tasked with setting increases for the first year, while the two sides work on the 2025-2028 period.
The OMA had proposed a five-per-cent general increase plus 10.2 per cent as a catch up to account for inflation, while the government proposed three per cent.
Arbitrator William Kaplan concluded that while the OMA’s target was unprecedented, the government’s suggested three per cent was “completely unrealistic.”
He writes that other health-care workers like nurses have received far more for the same time period, and they do not have to pay the overhead costs of running a practice out of their compensation, as doctors do, so he awarded a three-per-cent general increase plus a “catch up” of 6.95 per cent.
The Ministry of Health’s arbitration arguments angered doctors, as the government wrote that recruitment and retention of doctors was “not a major concern” and there was “no concern of a diminished supply of physicians.”
Kaplan wrote that there is a physician shortage.
“Somewhere between 1.35 million and 2.3 million people in the province are not attached to a family doctor,” the arbitration decision said.
“These are real numbers. The Ministry’s own documents – which we ordered disclosed – demonstrate that there is a problem to address.”
Kaplan cites a ministry document that showed the growth rate for family doctors was 1.4 per cent, which was below the growth rate for the population, at 1.6 per cent.
“What was being said, in other words, in the Ministry’s words, in this Ministry document, was that the problem is structural: the number of new family doctors needs to significantly exceed population growth and until and unless it begins to do so, the attachment problem will persist and deteriorate.”
The OMA said in a statement that while it is encouraged by the award, there is still much to be done to address the fact that more than two million Ontarians do not have a family doctor.
“The OMA also remains concerned about access to care, particularly in northern and rural Ontario, and ensuring that specialist consults, surgeries, and diagnostic tests are provided to patients in a timely manner so that people receive the best outcome possible,” the group wrote.
Health Minister Sylvia Jones said in a statement that the agreement also provides for specific funding to be allocated to “targeted investments” to help enhance and connect people to primary care.
“This agreement builds on the $17.5 billion the province currently spends to connect people to family doctors, primary care and other services across the province, 50 per cent more than when we took office in 2018,” she wrote.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Ongoing controversy over the documentary “Russians at War” has brought scrutiny to Ontario’s public broadcaster, which has said it will not air the film it helped fund.
One media expert says TVO is getting “the worst of all worlds” by investing in a project that can no longer be shown or monetized.
“TVO created a thing which their audience doesn’t get to see, other audiences will get to see and they’ve footed the bill and gotten no reward for it,” Chris Arsenault, chair of Western University’s master of media in journalism and communication program, said in an interview.
“I can’t think of a worse outcome for a network than what’s happened.”
“Russians at War,” a film rebuked by the Ukrainian community and some Canadian politicians, was part of the Toronto International Film Festival’s lineup until organizers suspended all screenings this week due to “significant threats” to festival operations. It shows the disillusionment of some Russian soldiers on the front lines of the war in Ukraine.
TVO had planned to air the story in the coming months, but the network’s board of directors withdrew support for the film on Tuesday, citing feedback it received. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Ukraine’s consul-general in Toronto and others have called the film Russian propaganda and a “whitewashing” of Russian military war crimes in Ukraine – claims the film’s producers and TIFF have rejected.
The TVO board’s announcement came just days after the network defended the film as “antiwar” at its core. It was an about-face the Documentary Organization of Canada said “poses a serious threat” to media independence and raises questions about political interference.
TVO has not responded to requests for comment and board chair Chris Day declined to elaborate on the decision to pull the film.
“Suffice it to say, we heard significant concerns and we responded,” Day wrote to The Canadian Press in an emailed response to an interview request.
Arsenault, who has not seen the documentary and could not comment on its content, said he’s nevertheless worried about the spectre of board intervention in independent editorial decisions, which he said “opens the doors” to further meddling in the production of documentaries and journalism.
“Russians at War,” a Canada-France co-production, was funded in part by the Canada Media Fund, which provided $340,000 for the project through its broadcaster envelope program. A spokesperson for the fund said TVO independently chose to use that money to support the production of the documentary.
One of the film’s producers, Cornelia Principe, said that TVO also had to pay a licensing fee to air the documentary. Such fees can range from $50,000 to $100,000, she said.
Principe, who has defended the documentary and its Canadian-Russian director Anastasia Trofimova, said she was shocked by the TVO board’s decision.
“Anastasia and I have been working with TVO on this for two and a half years.… I was a little bit out of it for hours. I just couldn’t believe it.”
What happens next, she said, is “uncharted territory” for TVO.
“This has, as far as I know, never happened before,” said Principe, who has worked with the broadcaster on various documentaries over the years.
TVO’s board has said the network will be “reviewing the process by which this project was funded and our brand leveraged.”
Ontario’s Minister of Education Jill Dunlop said in a statement that the decision made by TVO’s board of directors “was the right thing to do,” but did not elaborate.
As a non-profit government agency, TVO has a mandate to distribute educational materials and programs but the ministry is not involved with its broadcasting arm due to CRTC licensing rules.
Another public broadcaster, British Columbia’s Knowledge Network, has confirmed that it made a licence fee contribution of $15,000 for “Russians at War” so that it can be a “second window” broadcaster for the film.
Asked whether the documentary will still air at some point in British Columbia, a spokesperson for the network said it’s “working on a public response.”
Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has denounced the use of public funds for “Russians at War,” saying she shares the “grave concerns” Ukrainian officials and community members in Canada have raised about the film.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress has said it will keep protesting “Russians in War” since TIFF has said it will still screen the doc at some point. A demonstration in downtown Toronto was set to get underway Friday afternoon.
“Russians at War” is scheduled to screen at the Windsor International Film Festival, running from Oct. 24 to Nov. 3. The festival announced Friday that the documentary is among 10 nominees for its WIFF Prize in Canadian Film, worth $25,000.
— With files from Queen’s Park correspondent Allison Jones in Toronto.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
