Scottish Water workers could go on strike after talks fail
Sarah Ward, PA Scotland
Mon, 23 October 2023
Workers at Scottish Water could go on strike after pay talks failed.
The publicly-owned utilities company has had the same pay structure for 21 years and has been designing a new one, but unions GMB, Unite and Unison have voted to strike after lodging objections.
After two days of talks with Acas failed, Scottish Water is now looking at minimising disruption if strikes go ahead.
Unison regional organiser Emma Phillips said bosses were “behaving like Victorian Mill owners”, after the results of a ballot.
Conciliation talks with unions ended without agreement over enhanced proposals on an annual pay award and a modernised pay and grading structure, to deliver an in-year wage rise of at least 8% for employees.
The proposals included a transformed grading structure which would offer clearer routes to future pay progression for the 4,000 employees.
The unions accused the utility firm of acting like a “rogue employer” after combining an annual pay offer with a restructuring of salaries and grades, which, they say, will limit the wages of many lower-paid workers in the years ahead.
A contingency planning management team at Scottish Water is looking at service requirements for any periods of industrial action.
Scottish Water’s chief operating officer, Peter Farrer, said: “We are bitterly disappointed at this outcome.
“We put what would by any measure, especially in a public sector context, be an exceptional proposal on the table, which had been improved during the course of negotiations.
“We have always wanted to do the right thing for our employees.
“We are also surprised this proposal isn’t being taken to union members which was something we requested happen.
“We now need to plan for a period of industrial action to ensure we can maintain services for our customers and do the right thing for them too.
“Planning for that scenario now is the responsible course of action.
“We are closely examining every aspect of our service which could be impacted.
“We will do so whilst remaining 100% committed to seeking agreement and a way forward which avoids industrial action.
“It is something we would always want to avoid.
“The door remains open to discussion and agreement despite the Acas process coming to an end.
“We do not want customers to experience any disruption to their supplies or services and will do all we can to minimise that risk.
“Maintaining public health and protecting the environment are key factors for us.
“We are working to do all that we can so we can make sure clean water supplies and effective waste water treatment services run to the high standard people in Scotland expect should we see any days of industrial action activity.”
Monday, October 23, 2023
Jagmeet Singh calls for more food, housing support from federal gov't during Iqaluit visit
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says the Liberal government isn't doing enough to address cost of living challenges in Nunavut.
He made the comments on Friday in Iqaluit after meeting with Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok and other MLAs.
He will also be attending current NDP MP Lori Idlout's expected re-nomination ceremony Saturday evening.
The NDP are calling for immediate transfer of $500 million to support the Nunavut 3000 strategy, which aims to build 3,000 housing units by 2030.
They are also looking for the Liberal government to provide more funding for community housing providers.
In the latest budget, the government committed $4 billion over seven years to implement an urban, rural and northern Indigenous housing strategy. Northern Affairs Minister Dan Vandal has said that a "carve out" of that funding would be dedicated to the territories.
Kyle Allen, spokesperson for Northern Affairs Minister Dan Vandal, said the federal government has made "record investments" toward closing the housing and infrastructure gap in the territory.
Nutrition North reform
Along with housing, Singh was focused on addressing the high cost of food in the North.
He wants to see an excess profit tax on big grocery stores and reforms made to the Nutrition North program.
"We shouldn't put the savings in the pockets of the already highly profitable grocery stores," he said. "The savings should go to the families, the people who need it."
Nunavut's food insecurity rate is 57 per cent, compared to 12.7 per cent nationally, according to Food Banks Canada.
"We've bolstered the Nutrition North program and increased the number of Northern and remote communities eligible for the rebate that helps bring the price of groceries and other basic necessities down," said Allen.
He added the federal government also helped develop the Harvesters Support Grant to incentivize residents to practice traditional harvesting
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says the Liberal government isn't doing enough to address cost of living challenges in Nunavut.
He made the comments on Friday in Iqaluit after meeting with Nunavut Premier P.J. Akeeagok and other MLAs.
He will also be attending current NDP MP Lori Idlout's expected re-nomination ceremony Saturday evening.
The NDP are calling for immediate transfer of $500 million to support the Nunavut 3000 strategy, which aims to build 3,000 housing units by 2030.
They are also looking for the Liberal government to provide more funding for community housing providers.
In the latest budget, the government committed $4 billion over seven years to implement an urban, rural and northern Indigenous housing strategy. Northern Affairs Minister Dan Vandal has said that a "carve out" of that funding would be dedicated to the territories.
Kyle Allen, spokesperson for Northern Affairs Minister Dan Vandal, said the federal government has made "record investments" toward closing the housing and infrastructure gap in the territory.
Nutrition North reform
Along with housing, Singh was focused on addressing the high cost of food in the North.
He wants to see an excess profit tax on big grocery stores and reforms made to the Nutrition North program.
"We shouldn't put the savings in the pockets of the already highly profitable grocery stores," he said. "The savings should go to the families, the people who need it."
Nunavut's food insecurity rate is 57 per cent, compared to 12.7 per cent nationally, according to Food Banks Canada.
"We've bolstered the Nutrition North program and increased the number of Northern and remote communities eligible for the rebate that helps bring the price of groceries and other basic necessities down," said Allen.
He added the federal government also helped develop the Harvesters Support Grant to incentivize residents to practice traditional harvesting
Why is the English language packed with nautical slang?
CBC
Updated Sun, October 22, 2023
Britain’s Royal Navy boasted almost 800 ships at the peak of the Napoleonic Wars and employed hundreds of thousands of sailors. Painting by Nicolas Cammillier, 1809. (Pegli Maritime Museum)
Britain’s Royal Navy boasted almost 800 ships at the peak of the Napoleonic Wars and employed hundreds of thousands of sailors. Painting by Nicolas Cammillier, 1809. (Pegli Maritime Museum)
By and large, I'm pretty even keeled, but I sometimes go a bit overboard when in hot pursuit of a linguistic loose end — in this case, how so much nautical jargon has managed to work its way into our everyday speech.
The English language is chock-a-block with words and idioms deriving from life at sea. Don't believe me? I've italicized every phrase in this article that originated among sailors.
Take my first sentence above. A versatile captain can navigate either by the wind or large of the wind. A vessel on an even keel (the centreline of its hull) sails steadily, without listing to either side. A rope whose end is left loose instead of being securely tied can foul up a ship's rigging or sails.
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians may be more likely than most to fathom the maritime origins of expressions like these thanks to our long local history of seafaring. Many of us still have at least a passing familiarity with the jibs, bows and sterns that feature in sayings like the cut of your jib, a shot across the bow and from stem to stern.
Seafaring idioms aren't restricted to seafaring cultures, though. They're in wide use everywhere English is spoken, from the American Midwest to the Australian Outback. So how did they become such a mainstay of our vocabulary?
In the 18th and 19th centuries, port cities were bustling centres of activity where sailors mingled freely with landsmen. Illustration by Thomas Rowlandson, 1811. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
Britannia rules the waves
English is an island language.
Nowhere in Britain is farther than a two-day horseback ride from the sea, and, while the ocean may once have isolated Britons from their neighbours on the European continent, it eventually became the artery connecting them to the rest of the world.
By the height of the Age of Sail in the early 1800s, the number of sailors in the Royal Navy was equivalent to about two per cent of the British male population.
Many men signed on voluntarily, drawn by the promise of three square meals a day and a share of their ship's prize money. Others were pressed into service, kidnapped off the streets of port cities by press gangs and forced to enlist.
King William IV served in the Royal Navy from the ages of 13 to 25, earning him the nickname the Sailor King. He was noted for his salty language. Portrait by Sir Martin Archer Shee, ca. 1800. (National Portrait Gallery)
Naval service cut across the social hierarchy, bringing men from a wide range of classes into close quarters with one another. Seamen generally hailed from the working classes and officers from the professional and upper classes. Aboard ship, all had to learn a new way of speaking.
"Sailors' talk," wrote merchant seaman and nautical novelist W. Clark Russell in 1883, "is a dialect as distinct from ordinary English as Hindustani is, or Chinese."
At sea even familiar words took on new meanings, making the speech of sailors almost incomprehensible to landsmen.
Here, the devil was the longest seam in the hull, and when you were assigned to caulk it you had the devil to pay. The cat o' nine tails, the infamous instrument of punishment, was wielded only in the open air because below decks there wasn't enough room to swing a cat.
Besides navy men, merchant sailors and fishers, longshoremen and dock workers, coast dwellers, sailors' families, and anyone who travelled by sea would have been exposed to this Jackspeak — the lingo of British Jack Tars.
Sailors in popular culture
The large number of Britons in contact with sailors must have gone some way to popularizing seafaring jargon, but a second factor gave Jackspeak an even bigger boost.
The navy sent gangs of toughs into port cities to capture men and force them to enlist. The perfect mark was someone with previous sailing experience on merchant ships or fishing vessels. Etching by John Barlow after Samuel Collings, 1790. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
The heyday of sailing happened to coincide with a boom in English literature. Over the course of the 18th century, newspaper and magazine publishing flourished, and the novel came into its own as a literary genre.
The romance and perils of life at sea provided rich source material for authors, and tales like Robinson Crusoe (1719), The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) were met with a groundswell of popular interest.
Authors peppered their prose with nautical terms to add realism to their work. For readers, the strangeness of the language seems to have been part of the appeal.
Jackspeak was like a riddle to be solved. It could hide thrilling racy undertones or dangerous criticism of authority. It could also be used to comedic effect, as it was in satirical cartoons of the day.
Cartoon sailors applied Jackspeak to anything and everything. Here, the man on the left is saying: 'Hollo, you Swab, lay to a bit, can’t you? I’ve lost part of my upper rigging, and the vessel’s firing signal guns of distress.' Etching by Piercy Roberts after George Murgatroyd Woodward, ca. 1775-1815. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
Cartoon sailors applied Jackspeak to anything and everything. Here, the man on the left is saying: 'Hollo, you Swab, lay to a bit, can’t you? I’ve lost part of my upper rigging, and the vessel’s firing signal guns of distress.' Etching by Piercy Roberts after George Murgatroyd Woodward, ca. 1775-1815. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
As nautical language became more recognizable ashore, it lent itself to metaphor. Landlubbers couldn't use the terms in their original context and so applied them to new situations.
A lifeline, originally a rope for sailors to hang onto in rough seas, became any type of help received at a critical moment. Leeway, the extent a ship drifted away from the wind, became any degree of freedom in time, space or action. A kink, or twist in a rope, became an eccentricity and, later, an unconventional sexual preference.
Today our language is laden with maritime imagery, a legacy of English's island origins and the appeal of a footloose life at sea.
CBC
Updated Sun, October 22, 2023
Britain’s Royal Navy boasted almost 800 ships at the peak of the Napoleonic Wars and employed hundreds of thousands of sailors. Painting by Nicolas Cammillier, 1809. (Pegli Maritime Museum)
Britain’s Royal Navy boasted almost 800 ships at the peak of the Napoleonic Wars and employed hundreds of thousands of sailors. Painting by Nicolas Cammillier, 1809. (Pegli Maritime Museum)
By and large, I'm pretty even keeled, but I sometimes go a bit overboard when in hot pursuit of a linguistic loose end — in this case, how so much nautical jargon has managed to work its way into our everyday speech.
The English language is chock-a-block with words and idioms deriving from life at sea. Don't believe me? I've italicized every phrase in this article that originated among sailors.
Take my first sentence above. A versatile captain can navigate either by the wind or large of the wind. A vessel on an even keel (the centreline of its hull) sails steadily, without listing to either side. A rope whose end is left loose instead of being securely tied can foul up a ship's rigging or sails.
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians may be more likely than most to fathom the maritime origins of expressions like these thanks to our long local history of seafaring. Many of us still have at least a passing familiarity with the jibs, bows and sterns that feature in sayings like the cut of your jib, a shot across the bow and from stem to stern.
Seafaring idioms aren't restricted to seafaring cultures, though. They're in wide use everywhere English is spoken, from the American Midwest to the Australian Outback. So how did they become such a mainstay of our vocabulary?
In the 18th and 19th centuries, port cities were bustling centres of activity where sailors mingled freely with landsmen. Illustration by Thomas Rowlandson, 1811. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
Britannia rules the waves
English is an island language.
Nowhere in Britain is farther than a two-day horseback ride from the sea, and, while the ocean may once have isolated Britons from their neighbours on the European continent, it eventually became the artery connecting them to the rest of the world.
By the height of the Age of Sail in the early 1800s, the number of sailors in the Royal Navy was equivalent to about two per cent of the British male population.
Many men signed on voluntarily, drawn by the promise of three square meals a day and a share of their ship's prize money. Others were pressed into service, kidnapped off the streets of port cities by press gangs and forced to enlist.
King William IV served in the Royal Navy from the ages of 13 to 25, earning him the nickname the Sailor King. He was noted for his salty language. Portrait by Sir Martin Archer Shee, ca. 1800. (National Portrait Gallery)
Naval service cut across the social hierarchy, bringing men from a wide range of classes into close quarters with one another. Seamen generally hailed from the working classes and officers from the professional and upper classes. Aboard ship, all had to learn a new way of speaking.
"Sailors' talk," wrote merchant seaman and nautical novelist W. Clark Russell in 1883, "is a dialect as distinct from ordinary English as Hindustani is, or Chinese."
At sea even familiar words took on new meanings, making the speech of sailors almost incomprehensible to landsmen.
Here, the devil was the longest seam in the hull, and when you were assigned to caulk it you had the devil to pay. The cat o' nine tails, the infamous instrument of punishment, was wielded only in the open air because below decks there wasn't enough room to swing a cat.
Besides navy men, merchant sailors and fishers, longshoremen and dock workers, coast dwellers, sailors' families, and anyone who travelled by sea would have been exposed to this Jackspeak — the lingo of British Jack Tars.
Sailors in popular culture
The large number of Britons in contact with sailors must have gone some way to popularizing seafaring jargon, but a second factor gave Jackspeak an even bigger boost.
The navy sent gangs of toughs into port cities to capture men and force them to enlist. The perfect mark was someone with previous sailing experience on merchant ships or fishing vessels. Etching by John Barlow after Samuel Collings, 1790. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
The heyday of sailing happened to coincide with a boom in English literature. Over the course of the 18th century, newspaper and magazine publishing flourished, and the novel came into its own as a literary genre.
The romance and perils of life at sea provided rich source material for authors, and tales like Robinson Crusoe (1719), The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) were met with a groundswell of popular interest.
Authors peppered their prose with nautical terms to add realism to their work. For readers, the strangeness of the language seems to have been part of the appeal.
Jackspeak was like a riddle to be solved. It could hide thrilling racy undertones or dangerous criticism of authority. It could also be used to comedic effect, as it was in satirical cartoons of the day.
Cartoon sailors applied Jackspeak to anything and everything. Here, the man on the left is saying: 'Hollo, you Swab, lay to a bit, can’t you? I’ve lost part of my upper rigging, and the vessel’s firing signal guns of distress.' Etching by Piercy Roberts after George Murgatroyd Woodward, ca. 1775-1815. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
Cartoon sailors applied Jackspeak to anything and everything. Here, the man on the left is saying: 'Hollo, you Swab, lay to a bit, can’t you? I’ve lost part of my upper rigging, and the vessel’s firing signal guns of distress.' Etching by Piercy Roberts after George Murgatroyd Woodward, ca. 1775-1815. (Royal Museums Greenwich)
As nautical language became more recognizable ashore, it lent itself to metaphor. Landlubbers couldn't use the terms in their original context and so applied them to new situations.
A lifeline, originally a rope for sailors to hang onto in rough seas, became any type of help received at a critical moment. Leeway, the extent a ship drifted away from the wind, became any degree of freedom in time, space or action. A kink, or twist in a rope, became an eccentricity and, later, an unconventional sexual preference.
Today our language is laden with maritime imagery, a legacy of English's island origins and the appeal of a footloose life at sea.
From cheers at the Brier to songs for the Raptors, this MUN researcher is studying the sounds of sports
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
Bouncing balls, blowing whistles and roaring crowds are all sounds you may hear at a sporting event.
For Jordan Zalis, a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Memorial University, it's music to his researching ears.
Along with being a music lover, he's also a huge fan of sports. What we hear while watching sports says a lot about who we are as a society, he says.
"One of the the really interesting ideas has to do with sports ability to reproduce ideas from romantic nationalism," told CBC News.
"You have a team you're a fan of. You wear the same colours. You have your turf, you have away games, but you celebrate."
Brad Gushue won the 2017 Brier in St. John's. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
For Zalis, it's not just sport — he sees it as theatre.
"What sport teaches us is that it's totally normal and totally acceptable to get along with perfect strangers and wear the same colours and cheer for people we don't know in a simulated battle at Centre Court."
When the crowd is cheering, Zalis said, there can be a visceral sense of oneness in a room uniting complete strangers. It's something he says is almost like a religion, as in the French sociologist Émile Durkheim's theory of collective effervescence.
"People being together in close proximity, believing the same thought, participating in the same actions. And it gets you to this point of almost ecstasy," said Zalis.
His interest in the sound of sports started in high school, when his school in Winnipeg got a new pep band for football and basketball games. From there, he says, he started looking into the history of marching bands and the military, and was fascinated by the group solidarity that music created.
Zalis is currently writing about the Toronto Raptors for his thesis. (Submitted by Jordan Zalis)
He sees stadium anthems like We Are the Champions as having those same effects.
In 2017, he and fellow researcher Diego Pani studied the sounds of the Tim Hortons Brier in St. John's. Zalis remembers the moment when he, along with thousands of people in the crowd, were yelling at the final rock being thrown by curler Brad Gushue.
"Isn't this one of the only times in our lives where this completely irrational behavior [is justified]? I'm screaming at an inanimate object to do something. But I really, really believe it will help," said Zalis. "The Brier was an incredible experience and study object."
These days, he's researching the sounds of one of the biggest sports teams in North America — the Toronto Raptors. The lead question for his latest work is, "What does basketball sound like?"
While the answer can be different for everyone, Zalis says, ultimately the sound of the Raptors is a choreographed theatrical experience.
The scoreboard at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto encourages fans to 'get loud.' (Submitted by Jordan Zalis)
"If you look at everything that goes into this carefully curated spectacle with brilliant media and communications, people and artists and brand managers, graphic designers, sound designers — there really is a coherent branding and a coherent experience." said Zalis.
"The moment you set foot in the arena, it's like Disney World," said Zalis "From the sounds, to the sights, to the smells of everything that you're going to experience the moment you engage in this massive world of pro sports."
And Zalis says it's not just the pro leagues that play into this sensory experience either.
"If you go to a a kids' basketball game, you're going to hear music in the arena now, or in the community centre too."
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
Bouncing balls, blowing whistles and roaring crowds are all sounds you may hear at a sporting event.
For Jordan Zalis, a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Memorial University, it's music to his researching ears.
Along with being a music lover, he's also a huge fan of sports. What we hear while watching sports says a lot about who we are as a society, he says.
"One of the the really interesting ideas has to do with sports ability to reproduce ideas from romantic nationalism," told CBC News.
"You have a team you're a fan of. You wear the same colours. You have your turf, you have away games, but you celebrate."
Brad Gushue won the 2017 Brier in St. John's. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
For Zalis, it's not just sport — he sees it as theatre.
"What sport teaches us is that it's totally normal and totally acceptable to get along with perfect strangers and wear the same colours and cheer for people we don't know in a simulated battle at Centre Court."
When the crowd is cheering, Zalis said, there can be a visceral sense of oneness in a room uniting complete strangers. It's something he says is almost like a religion, as in the French sociologist Émile Durkheim's theory of collective effervescence.
"People being together in close proximity, believing the same thought, participating in the same actions. And it gets you to this point of almost ecstasy," said Zalis.
His interest in the sound of sports started in high school, when his school in Winnipeg got a new pep band for football and basketball games. From there, he says, he started looking into the history of marching bands and the military, and was fascinated by the group solidarity that music created.
Zalis is currently writing about the Toronto Raptors for his thesis. (Submitted by Jordan Zalis)
He sees stadium anthems like We Are the Champions as having those same effects.
In 2017, he and fellow researcher Diego Pani studied the sounds of the Tim Hortons Brier in St. John's. Zalis remembers the moment when he, along with thousands of people in the crowd, were yelling at the final rock being thrown by curler Brad Gushue.
"Isn't this one of the only times in our lives where this completely irrational behavior [is justified]? I'm screaming at an inanimate object to do something. But I really, really believe it will help," said Zalis. "The Brier was an incredible experience and study object."
These days, he's researching the sounds of one of the biggest sports teams in North America — the Toronto Raptors. The lead question for his latest work is, "What does basketball sound like?"
While the answer can be different for everyone, Zalis says, ultimately the sound of the Raptors is a choreographed theatrical experience.
The scoreboard at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto encourages fans to 'get loud.' (Submitted by Jordan Zalis)
"If you look at everything that goes into this carefully curated spectacle with brilliant media and communications, people and artists and brand managers, graphic designers, sound designers — there really is a coherent branding and a coherent experience." said Zalis.
"The moment you set foot in the arena, it's like Disney World," said Zalis "From the sounds, to the sights, to the smells of everything that you're going to experience the moment you engage in this massive world of pro sports."
And Zalis says it's not just the pro leagues that play into this sensory experience either.
"If you go to a a kids' basketball game, you're going to hear music in the arena now, or in the community centre too."
U.S. FDA advises against consuming oysters imported from P.E.I. due to potential contamination
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
The United States Food and Drug Administration is advising consumers not to eat some oysters from Prince Edward Island due to the possible presence of salmonella and E. coli.
An advisory issued on Friday instructs restaurants and retailers not to serve or sell oysters from Future Seafoods, Inc. of Bedeque, P.E.I., harvested from area PE9B and shipped on Oct. 10.
The oysters were exported to Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
"Contaminated oysters can cause illness if eaten raw, particularly in people with compromised immune systems," the advisory reads.
"Food contaminated with Salmonella and E. coli may look, smell, and taste normal. Consumers of these products who are experiencing symptoms of salmonellosis or E. coli should contact their healthcare provider and report their symptoms to their local Health Department."
Future Seafoods, Inc. has not initiated a recall.
The FDA is awaiting further information on distribution of the oysters harvested, according to the advisory, and will continue to monitor the investigation and provide assistance to state authorities as needed.
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
The United States Food and Drug Administration is advising consumers not to eat some oysters from Prince Edward Island due to the possible presence of salmonella and E. coli.
An advisory issued on Friday instructs restaurants and retailers not to serve or sell oysters from Future Seafoods, Inc. of Bedeque, P.E.I., harvested from area PE9B and shipped on Oct. 10.
The oysters were exported to Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
"Contaminated oysters can cause illness if eaten raw, particularly in people with compromised immune systems," the advisory reads.
"Food contaminated with Salmonella and E. coli may look, smell, and taste normal. Consumers of these products who are experiencing symptoms of salmonellosis or E. coli should contact their healthcare provider and report their symptoms to their local Health Department."
Future Seafoods, Inc. has not initiated a recall.
The FDA is awaiting further information on distribution of the oysters harvested, according to the advisory, and will continue to monitor the investigation and provide assistance to state authorities as needed.
Atlantic hurricanes rapidly churning into intense storms over warming water, study finds
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
The list of destructive post-tropical storms and hurricanes which have tracked through Atlantic Canada over the past few decades is an increasingly lengthy list.
From Juan in 2003, Igor in 2010, Dorian in 2019 and Fiona in 2022, plus the many other damaging storms that have moved through, this region is certainly in a period of high tropical-storm activity.
In the cases of Igor, Dorian and Fiona, these are storms that "rapidly intensified" from Category 1 hurricanes into major Category 3 or 4 hurricanes as they tracked through the Atlantic Ocean.
This rapid intensification of hurricanes and how it relates to climate change and our warming oceans has been a topic of much discussion over the past few years. Now, new research shows that swift acceleration in the power of storms is indeed on the rise in the Atlantic Ocean.
The study published this week in the journal Scientific Reports shows that tropical storms or Category 1 hurricanes are now more than twice as likely to rapidly intensify to major hurricanes within a 24-hour period.
The study's author, Andra Garner, a climate scientist at Rowan University in New Jersey, looked at 830 tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean dating back to 1971.
Garner found that from 2001 to 2020, there was an eight per cent chance of storms strengthening from a Category 1 to a Category 3 or higher within just 24 hours.
By comparison, from 1971 to 1990 there was only a three per cent chance storms would rapidly strengthen within that time frame.
This rapid intensification is most problematic when the storms are near land. Even a few days from landfall, however, it can make forecasting more difficult for meteorologists and make planning more challenging for emergency management officials.
Garner's study also found that hurricanes are now more likely to strengthen rapidly off the east coast of the U.S., the Caribbean Sea and tropical eastern Atlantic, compared to the historical 1971-1990 timeframe.
A chart of monthly sea surface temperatures (SST) in the North Atlantic. Normal temperatures are indicated by the 0 line. Red lines mark above-average temperatures. (University of Maine)
The study notes that warm sea surface temperatures are "a vital energy source for intensifying tropical cyclones."
This suggests that human-caused warming is already leading to storms that strengthen much faster than earlier, it conclude
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
The list of destructive post-tropical storms and hurricanes which have tracked through Atlantic Canada over the past few decades is an increasingly lengthy list.
From Juan in 2003, Igor in 2010, Dorian in 2019 and Fiona in 2022, plus the many other damaging storms that have moved through, this region is certainly in a period of high tropical-storm activity.
In the cases of Igor, Dorian and Fiona, these are storms that "rapidly intensified" from Category 1 hurricanes into major Category 3 or 4 hurricanes as they tracked through the Atlantic Ocean.
This rapid intensification of hurricanes and how it relates to climate change and our warming oceans has been a topic of much discussion over the past few years. Now, new research shows that swift acceleration in the power of storms is indeed on the rise in the Atlantic Ocean.
The study published this week in the journal Scientific Reports shows that tropical storms or Category 1 hurricanes are now more than twice as likely to rapidly intensify to major hurricanes within a 24-hour period.
The study's author, Andra Garner, a climate scientist at Rowan University in New Jersey, looked at 830 tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean dating back to 1971.
Garner found that from 2001 to 2020, there was an eight per cent chance of storms strengthening from a Category 1 to a Category 3 or higher within just 24 hours.
By comparison, from 1971 to 1990 there was only a three per cent chance storms would rapidly strengthen within that time frame.
This rapid intensification is most problematic when the storms are near land. Even a few days from landfall, however, it can make forecasting more difficult for meteorologists and make planning more challenging for emergency management officials.
Garner's study also found that hurricanes are now more likely to strengthen rapidly off the east coast of the U.S., the Caribbean Sea and tropical eastern Atlantic, compared to the historical 1971-1990 timeframe.
A chart of monthly sea surface temperatures (SST) in the North Atlantic. Normal temperatures are indicated by the 0 line. Red lines mark above-average temperatures. (University of Maine)
The study notes that warm sea surface temperatures are "a vital energy source for intensifying tropical cyclones."
This suggests that human-caused warming is already leading to storms that strengthen much faster than earlier, it conclude
New tools to save Nova Scotia's hemlocks come into use as species continues to decline
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
Parks Canada is starting to use new tools in its fight to save Kejimkujik's hemlock trees, which are under threat of being wiped out by an invasive insect.
Park ecologist Matthew Smith said park staff have been undergoing training to use insecticides that can be sprayed on the bark of the iconic trees to inoculate them against the hemlock woolly adelgid.
Previously, the only insecticide they could use was injected into tree trunks. That application takes significantly longer per tree than the sprays.
Smith said it's good news because more trees can be treated, including ones that are already badly infected. One of the new sprays, he said, is much faster-acting than other treatments.
"It goes into the tree and can almost right away help control adelgid, so it's good for trees that are really declining and you need to hit them quickly."
Park ecologist Matthew Smith says Eastern hemlocks provide habitat for old-growth species, and cool streams and rivers because of the shade they provide. (Steve Berry/CBC)
The adelgid has been wreaking havoc on hemlocks in eastern North America for many years, and was first seen in Nova Scotia in 2017.
The tiny bugs kill hemlock trees by attaching to the base of needles and feeding on sugars, starving the tree of nutrients. They leave behind a white substance that looks like wool, giving them their name.
The pest was found in Kejimkujik in 2018.
"Pretty much every stand now has it in the park and we're starting to see some decline," said Smith."There's some stands that the trees are very thin, some trees have started to die. But we're lucky that we found it earlier than other places."
The provincial Department of Natural Resources is also using the spray pesticides on high-priority hemlock stands found on Crown lands marked for conservation.
Most hemlocks will die
Smith said the park, the province and the Canadian Forest Service have been working together closely on hemlock conservation. He said those efforts have gone well, but Nova Scotians should still expect about 90 per cent of hemlock trees to die over the next 10 to 15 years.
The hemlock woolly adelgid feeds on sugars in hemlock trees' needles and leave behind a fluffy white substance that looks like wool. (The Canadian Press/Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry)
"In the future, it will be a rare tree on the landscape, which is hard to think of because it is … common in quite a few areas."
That's especially true of Kejimkujik, where one in 10 forest stands have hemlock trees.
In 2019, park ecologists established a five-year plan for hemlock management. With that plan facing its conclusion next March, Smith said he and colleagues are now creating a long-term management plan that includes treating trees with pesticide every five to 10 years.
Biological pest control on the horizon
They're also preparing for the introduction of a beetle that preys on the adelgid — a form of biological pest control.
Lucas Roscoe, a research specialist with the Canadian Forest Service, said a major factor in the spread of hemlock woolly adelgid in Nova Scotia is the lack predators.
"Because of this, HWA (hemlock woolly adelgid) populations can essentially grow out of control," Roscoe said in an email.
"In places where HWA is from originally, such as British Columbia, HWA is rarely a problem. This is due to a number of highly specialized predators in the environment which can only survive off of HWA."
Some hemlocks in Nova Scotia are hundreds of years old. (Jeorge Sadi/CBC)
Roscoe said the Atlantic Forestry Centre is looking at how to apply bio control in Nova Scotia, with an eye on a beetle species called Laricobius nigrinus.
That beetle, Roscoe said, has been extensively studied and used for bio control in the United States for two decades.
"This species only targets HWA, and no other species. Based on the significant amount of research undertaken on this insect, we feel that it is a good candidate for this program," he said.
Details of the plan for bio control are still being finalized. Roscoe said more information will be shared with the public later this month.
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
Parks Canada is starting to use new tools in its fight to save Kejimkujik's hemlock trees, which are under threat of being wiped out by an invasive insect.
Park ecologist Matthew Smith said park staff have been undergoing training to use insecticides that can be sprayed on the bark of the iconic trees to inoculate them against the hemlock woolly adelgid.
Previously, the only insecticide they could use was injected into tree trunks. That application takes significantly longer per tree than the sprays.
Smith said it's good news because more trees can be treated, including ones that are already badly infected. One of the new sprays, he said, is much faster-acting than other treatments.
"It goes into the tree and can almost right away help control adelgid, so it's good for trees that are really declining and you need to hit them quickly."
Park ecologist Matthew Smith says Eastern hemlocks provide habitat for old-growth species, and cool streams and rivers because of the shade they provide. (Steve Berry/CBC)
The adelgid has been wreaking havoc on hemlocks in eastern North America for many years, and was first seen in Nova Scotia in 2017.
The tiny bugs kill hemlock trees by attaching to the base of needles and feeding on sugars, starving the tree of nutrients. They leave behind a white substance that looks like wool, giving them their name.
The pest was found in Kejimkujik in 2018.
"Pretty much every stand now has it in the park and we're starting to see some decline," said Smith."There's some stands that the trees are very thin, some trees have started to die. But we're lucky that we found it earlier than other places."
The provincial Department of Natural Resources is also using the spray pesticides on high-priority hemlock stands found on Crown lands marked for conservation.
Most hemlocks will die
Smith said the park, the province and the Canadian Forest Service have been working together closely on hemlock conservation. He said those efforts have gone well, but Nova Scotians should still expect about 90 per cent of hemlock trees to die over the next 10 to 15 years.
The hemlock woolly adelgid feeds on sugars in hemlock trees' needles and leave behind a fluffy white substance that looks like wool. (The Canadian Press/Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry)
"In the future, it will be a rare tree on the landscape, which is hard to think of because it is … common in quite a few areas."
That's especially true of Kejimkujik, where one in 10 forest stands have hemlock trees.
In 2019, park ecologists established a five-year plan for hemlock management. With that plan facing its conclusion next March, Smith said he and colleagues are now creating a long-term management plan that includes treating trees with pesticide every five to 10 years.
Biological pest control on the horizon
They're also preparing for the introduction of a beetle that preys on the adelgid — a form of biological pest control.
Lucas Roscoe, a research specialist with the Canadian Forest Service, said a major factor in the spread of hemlock woolly adelgid in Nova Scotia is the lack predators.
"Because of this, HWA (hemlock woolly adelgid) populations can essentially grow out of control," Roscoe said in an email.
"In places where HWA is from originally, such as British Columbia, HWA is rarely a problem. This is due to a number of highly specialized predators in the environment which can only survive off of HWA."
Some hemlocks in Nova Scotia are hundreds of years old. (Jeorge Sadi/CBC)
Roscoe said the Atlantic Forestry Centre is looking at how to apply bio control in Nova Scotia, with an eye on a beetle species called Laricobius nigrinus.
That beetle, Roscoe said, has been extensively studied and used for bio control in the United States for two decades.
"This species only targets HWA, and no other species. Based on the significant amount of research undertaken on this insect, we feel that it is a good candidate for this program," he said.
Details of the plan for bio control are still being finalized. Roscoe said more information will be shared with the public later this month.
ICYMI
'Dramatic decline': Calgary researcher says sea ice in Antarctica lowest since 1986
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
A Calgary researcher, who has spent the last eight months in Antarctica studying sea ice, says he has seen first-hand how big an effect climate change has had in the region.
Vishnu Nandan, a post-doctoral associate with the University of Calgary, along with Robbie Mallett, from the University of Manitoba, have been studying ways to improve how radar satellites measure the thickness of Antarctic sea ice and snow.
The research is part of a British-based project called DEFIANT — Drivers and Effects of Fluctuations in sea Ice in the ANTarctic — which aims to deploy a state-of-the-art ground-based radar system that mimics the satellites in space.
"We actually came knowing we wouldn't have a lot of sea ice, because it's been really warm," Nandan said in a phone interview from Rothera Research Station on Adelaide Island, nearly 1,900 kilometres south of the Falkland Islands.
"We came in where we had the lowest sea ice on record over the past many decades, so we didn't have sea ice much and we had really thin ice in the winter."
Accurate readings difficult
Nandan said the issue is that the area gets so much snow, sometimes up to a metre, that it's difficult to get accurate satellite readings of snow and sea ice thickness.
They've been collecting data from the ground-based radar system to account for errors and correct satellite algorithms to produce accurate measurements critical for climate change projections.
Nandan did similar research a few years ago in the central Arctic Ocean, when he was on an icebreaker for a year in an extended examination of global warming from a vantage point close to the North Pole.
"Arctic sea ice has declined substantially — about 70 per cent over the past 30 to 40 years. When compared to that, the Antarctic has been stable, but over the past few years, since about 2016, we have seen a dramatic decline in sea ice in many regions across the Antarctic," Nandan said.
"Right now it's serious. It's really bad. If you look at the overall area of the sea ice, the area is almost one million square kilometres less than the previous lowest, which was in 1986."
Although there has still been lots of snow, there were several days of rain, which is unusual, said Nandan. He added that the warm wind is preventing the ocean ice from freezing solidly.
Loss of ice makes oceans warmer
He said his research, which is also supported by the University of Manitoba, is important considering what can happen with declining sea ice.
"Sea ice is white in colour and reflects most of the sunlight that is hitting it," he said. "If you don't have enough sea ice, that means there's a lot of open ocean, which is actually absorbing most of the sunlight."
In turn, Nandan said that makes the polar oceans warmer, which can affect both the ecosystem and the weather.
"You get more climate disasters like tornadoes, cyclones, extreme weather events like cloudbursts," he said.
"It affects the ecosystem, from polar bears, phytoplanktons, to animals like seals who need sea ice for their habitat."
Nandan has completed his stint in the Antarctic and will be returning to Calgary next month.
'Dramatic decline': Calgary researcher says sea ice in Antarctica lowest since 1986
CBC
Sat, October 21, 2023
A Calgary researcher, who has spent the last eight months in Antarctica studying sea ice, says he has seen first-hand how big an effect climate change has had in the region.
Vishnu Nandan, a post-doctoral associate with the University of Calgary, along with Robbie Mallett, from the University of Manitoba, have been studying ways to improve how radar satellites measure the thickness of Antarctic sea ice and snow.
The research is part of a British-based project called DEFIANT — Drivers and Effects of Fluctuations in sea Ice in the ANTarctic — which aims to deploy a state-of-the-art ground-based radar system that mimics the satellites in space.
"We actually came knowing we wouldn't have a lot of sea ice, because it's been really warm," Nandan said in a phone interview from Rothera Research Station on Adelaide Island, nearly 1,900 kilometres south of the Falkland Islands.
"We came in where we had the lowest sea ice on record over the past many decades, so we didn't have sea ice much and we had really thin ice in the winter."
Accurate readings difficult
Nandan said the issue is that the area gets so much snow, sometimes up to a metre, that it's difficult to get accurate satellite readings of snow and sea ice thickness.
They've been collecting data from the ground-based radar system to account for errors and correct satellite algorithms to produce accurate measurements critical for climate change projections.
Nandan did similar research a few years ago in the central Arctic Ocean, when he was on an icebreaker for a year in an extended examination of global warming from a vantage point close to the North Pole.
"Arctic sea ice has declined substantially — about 70 per cent over the past 30 to 40 years. When compared to that, the Antarctic has been stable, but over the past few years, since about 2016, we have seen a dramatic decline in sea ice in many regions across the Antarctic," Nandan said.
"Right now it's serious. It's really bad. If you look at the overall area of the sea ice, the area is almost one million square kilometres less than the previous lowest, which was in 1986."
Although there has still been lots of snow, there were several days of rain, which is unusual, said Nandan. He added that the warm wind is preventing the ocean ice from freezing solidly.
Loss of ice makes oceans warmer
He said his research, which is also supported by the University of Manitoba, is important considering what can happen with declining sea ice.
"Sea ice is white in colour and reflects most of the sunlight that is hitting it," he said. "If you don't have enough sea ice, that means there's a lot of open ocean, which is actually absorbing most of the sunlight."
In turn, Nandan said that makes the polar oceans warmer, which can affect both the ecosystem and the weather.
"You get more climate disasters like tornadoes, cyclones, extreme weather events like cloudbursts," he said.
"It affects the ecosystem, from polar bears, phytoplanktons, to animals like seals who need sea ice for their habitat."
Nandan has completed his stint in the Antarctic and will be returning to Calgary next month.
Humans may have lost control of West Antarctic Ice Shelf melting, study finds
Danny Halpin, PA Environment Correspondent
Mon, 23 October 2023
Humans “may have lost control” of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet – with inevitable melting from heating caused by greenhouse gas emissions set to raise sea levels throughout the following decades, a study has found.
Even if emissions are controlled to achieve the best possible scenario, melting of the ice sheet will continue to accelerate this century, at a speed three times faster than during the 20th century.
Warming oceans, that are absorbing excess heat from the atmosphere, erode the ice sheet from underneath and this effect is most pronounced on the western side of the continent.
Scientists are unsure how much this is likely to contribute towards global sea level rise but if the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet melted it would contribute around five metres, though this scenario is seen as unlikely to happen.
East Antarctica, which contains around 95% of the continent’s ice, remains stable as far as scientists can see, with a recent study finding the amount of ice has been increasing there over the past 30 years, though it is rapidly melting in the west with a net loss of around 7.5 trillion tonnes of ice.
How much this melting will contribute to rising oceans is not as well understood as other polar regions such as the Greenland glaciers.
Dr Kaitlin Naughten of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and lead author of the study said other research beyond her own points to it contributing to around one metre of sea level rise by 2100.
Describing her findings, she said: “It appears we may have lost control of the West Antarctic Ice Shelf melting over the 21st century.
“Our actions today likely will make a difference further down the line in the 22nd century and beyond, but that’s a timescale that probably none of us here will be around to see.”
The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, has been described by scientists as “sobering” as it points to an inevitable rising of sea levels that will likely devastate many coastal communities if they do not adapt.
The ocean temperature around West Antarctica will continue warming even under the best case scenario (Kaitlin Naughten et al/Nature Climate Change/PA)
Already in the UK the Welsh village of Fairbourne is scheduled for abandonment in the 2050s by Gwynedd Council after it announced it will no longer keep up sea defences.
Millions of people around the world live by the coast and will either have to “build around” the threat or “be abandoned”, Dr Naughten said, who added that controlling emissions would result in slower sea level rise which would give people more time to adapt.
For the current study, Dr Naughten’s BAS team simulated four scenarios for the current century against a historic baseline of the previous one, imagining that emissions are either controlled to rein in the global temperature rise to 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels or that emissions continue at a medium or high level.
Every scenario showed there would be widespread warming of the Amundsen sea, which borders West Antarctica, resulting in faster melting of the ice sheets.
The various emissions pathways did not show much difference until around 2045, when the high-emissions simulation began to increase the rate of melting faster than the other scenarios.
Other scientists cautioned against viewing the results of the study as being absolutely conclusive as they are based on a single model, but that it is in line with other similar studies.
Professor Alberto Naveira Garabato, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton, said: “This is a sobering piece of research.
“It illustrates how our past choices have likely committed us to substantial melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its consequent sea level rise – to which we will inevitably have to adapt as a society over coming decades and centuries.
“However, it should also serve as a wake up call. We can still save the rest of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, containing about 10 times as many metres of sea level rise, if we learn from our past inaction and start reducing greenhouse gas emissions now.”
Danny Halpin, PA Environment Correspondent
Mon, 23 October 2023
Humans “may have lost control” of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet – with inevitable melting from heating caused by greenhouse gas emissions set to raise sea levels throughout the following decades, a study has found.
Even if emissions are controlled to achieve the best possible scenario, melting of the ice sheet will continue to accelerate this century, at a speed three times faster than during the 20th century.
Warming oceans, that are absorbing excess heat from the atmosphere, erode the ice sheet from underneath and this effect is most pronounced on the western side of the continent.
Scientists are unsure how much this is likely to contribute towards global sea level rise but if the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet melted it would contribute around five metres, though this scenario is seen as unlikely to happen.
East Antarctica, which contains around 95% of the continent’s ice, remains stable as far as scientists can see, with a recent study finding the amount of ice has been increasing there over the past 30 years, though it is rapidly melting in the west with a net loss of around 7.5 trillion tonnes of ice.
How much this melting will contribute to rising oceans is not as well understood as other polar regions such as the Greenland glaciers.
Dr Kaitlin Naughten of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and lead author of the study said other research beyond her own points to it contributing to around one metre of sea level rise by 2100.
Describing her findings, she said: “It appears we may have lost control of the West Antarctic Ice Shelf melting over the 21st century.
“Our actions today likely will make a difference further down the line in the 22nd century and beyond, but that’s a timescale that probably none of us here will be around to see.”
The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, has been described by scientists as “sobering” as it points to an inevitable rising of sea levels that will likely devastate many coastal communities if they do not adapt.
The ocean temperature around West Antarctica will continue warming even under the best case scenario (Kaitlin Naughten et al/Nature Climate Change/PA)
Already in the UK the Welsh village of Fairbourne is scheduled for abandonment in the 2050s by Gwynedd Council after it announced it will no longer keep up sea defences.
Millions of people around the world live by the coast and will either have to “build around” the threat or “be abandoned”, Dr Naughten said, who added that controlling emissions would result in slower sea level rise which would give people more time to adapt.
For the current study, Dr Naughten’s BAS team simulated four scenarios for the current century against a historic baseline of the previous one, imagining that emissions are either controlled to rein in the global temperature rise to 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels or that emissions continue at a medium or high level.
Every scenario showed there would be widespread warming of the Amundsen sea, which borders West Antarctica, resulting in faster melting of the ice sheets.
The various emissions pathways did not show much difference until around 2045, when the high-emissions simulation began to increase the rate of melting faster than the other scenarios.
Other scientists cautioned against viewing the results of the study as being absolutely conclusive as they are based on a single model, but that it is in line with other similar studies.
Professor Alberto Naveira Garabato, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton, said: “This is a sobering piece of research.
“It illustrates how our past choices have likely committed us to substantial melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its consequent sea level rise – to which we will inevitably have to adapt as a society over coming decades and centuries.
“However, it should also serve as a wake up call. We can still save the rest of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, containing about 10 times as many metres of sea level rise, if we learn from our past inaction and start reducing greenhouse gas emissions now.”
B.C. author celebrates 25 years of Silverwing series with graphic novel edition
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
B.C.-born author Kenneth Oppel debuted a new graphic novel based on his Silverwing children's book series on its 25th anniversary, which he's celebrating with a book tour in Vancouver and Victoria.
The series follows the adventures of a young bat named Shade who embarks on a journey to return home after becoming separated from his colony during a dangerous winter migration. It has sold over a million copies worldwide since it was published in 1997, and spawned three sequels.
It has also been adapted into an animated TV series and a stage play.
Oppel, who was raised in Vancouver Island and now lives in Toronto, is celebrating the series' anniversary and the graphic novel's release with classroom visits in Vancouver and Victoria next week.
"Shade came from that well-loved tradition of the underdog, the runt," said Oppel, describing the main character as obnoxious at times, but with lots of zeal and determination.
Silverwing: The Graphic Novel is illustrated by Christopher Steininger, depicted in the illustration on the right, and written by Kenneth Oppel. (Christopher Steininger)
Oppel says he is excited to re-create his book in a more visual format. The graphic novel, published a month ago in September, was done in collaboration with Saskatchewan-based illustrator Christopher Steininger.
The graphic novel mirrors the first book in the Silverwing series.
"That was a real appeal to me, just to see how this bat world, this nocturnal world, could be rendered in full technicolour," said Oppel.
He looks forward to sharing Shade's adventures with a new generation of children.
"Kids are the most enthusiastic of any audience you could hope for," said Oppel.
"You will never have an experience with books as intense as the one you had with those beloved books of your youth."
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
B.C.-born author Kenneth Oppel debuted a new graphic novel based on his Silverwing children's book series on its 25th anniversary, which he's celebrating with a book tour in Vancouver and Victoria.
The series follows the adventures of a young bat named Shade who embarks on a journey to return home after becoming separated from his colony during a dangerous winter migration. It has sold over a million copies worldwide since it was published in 1997, and spawned three sequels.
It has also been adapted into an animated TV series and a stage play.
Oppel, who was raised in Vancouver Island and now lives in Toronto, is celebrating the series' anniversary and the graphic novel's release with classroom visits in Vancouver and Victoria next week.
"Shade came from that well-loved tradition of the underdog, the runt," said Oppel, describing the main character as obnoxious at times, but with lots of zeal and determination.
Silverwing: The Graphic Novel is illustrated by Christopher Steininger, depicted in the illustration on the right, and written by Kenneth Oppel. (Christopher Steininger)
Oppel says he is excited to re-create his book in a more visual format. The graphic novel, published a month ago in September, was done in collaboration with Saskatchewan-based illustrator Christopher Steininger.
The graphic novel mirrors the first book in the Silverwing series.
"That was a real appeal to me, just to see how this bat world, this nocturnal world, could be rendered in full technicolour," said Oppel.
He looks forward to sharing Shade's adventures with a new generation of children.
"Kids are the most enthusiastic of any audience you could hope for," said Oppel.
"You will never have an experience with books as intense as the one you had with those beloved books of your youth."
Missing snapper a cautionary tale about keeping wild turtles as pets, animal experts say
CBC
Mon, October 23, 2023
An eastern Ontario woman says she's devastated by the disappearance of her family's longtime snapping turtle — while wildlife experts say it's a good reminder that keeping wild turtles as pets is illegal and harmful to the overall population.
Maureen Fennelly of Brockville, Ont., has been caring for Razor the turtle for several years, after her son Joshua first came across the quarter-sized baby snapper in 2009 while it was crossing a local road with an injured tail.
"[I] called the SPCA," he said via text. "But they [said] they would just put the turtle down as they do not handle turtle rehabilitation."
Joshua Fennelly named the snapper Razor, after the mutant villain Rahzar from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.
He brought it home and kept it for eight years, until he got kittens and the turtle moved in with his mother.
"We put him in the bathtub with rocks and then I would feed him with a pair of tweezers," Maureen Fennelly said. "I'd say, 'Good morning, Razor, my baby!' I could actually take my hands and just scratch his neck.
"He never knew how to bite or to snap in any manner because he was so spoon-fed."
Razor had the run of the place, could climb stairs, was taken outside for walks and was shown off to kids during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.
"If I lay on the couch, he'd actually come over and stick his head up and he wouldn't stop staring at me until I picked him up and I lay him on my chest and he'd actually have a nap with me."
But Razor went missing in early September, she said, while in the care of her ex-partner.
Fennelly said she's since spent day and night searching for him, even wading into one creek until she got a foot infection.
"He meant everything to me," she said. "This has been so devastating."
Fennelly has searched a creek and local golf club for Razor, and even developed a foot infection while wading through the water. (Maureen Fennelly/Facebook)
'As close to her as any pet would be'
Joshua Fennelly figures he's spent over $400 on laminated "missing" posters.
"My godkids are devastated as well, because they have seen him their whole life," Joshua said. "They even planned and wanted to take care of him if he outlived me."
Scot Birnie was golfing the 16th hole at the Brockville Country Club on Sept. 13 when he spotted a large turtle on the green and snapped a photo.
He then saw one of the family's posters and contacted the Fennellys to report he'd seen what he believed was Razor.
"It's not every day you see somebody looking for a pet turtle," Birnie said. "But when I called Maureen, you could tell that this turtle is as close to her as any pet would be close to anybody."
The golf club lent her a cart and let her search the grounds, but Razor remained missing.
'We would have him in the bathtub when he was little," Fennelly said. (Submitted by Joshua Fennelly)
Close call
Last week, Maureen Fennelly saw a report on social media about an injured turtle in the Brockville area and, based on photos, feared the animal — which ultimately died on Saturday — was Razor.
That didn't turn out to be the case: she visited the Rideau Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in North Gower and concluded the injured turtle was too big and didn't have the right shell.
If Razor is found, Maureen said she's prepared to surrender him.
She said she didn't realize Razor was a snapping turtle until he grew horns at age eight, and she had recently planned to take Razor to a science and education museum in Brockville if they could accommodate him.
"She didn't know that it wasn't legal to keep native wildlife in Ontario as pets, so she didn't deliberately do anything wrong and she wants the best care for him," said Sue Carstairs, the executive and medical director of the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre in Peterborough, Ont.
Fennelly's son Joshua says he's spent over $400 on posters trying to find Razor. (Submitted by Joshua Fennelly)
'Do your research'
Razor's story is a good opportunity to spotlight issues facing turtles, including the importance of even just one turtle to the overall ecosystem, Carstairs said.
"Not many of them make it in the wild. Not many make it to adulthood and to the age that Razor is. So every adult can be very important," she said.
Even if Razor has been in captivity for 14 years, he could, if in good health, be released back into the wild, Carstairs said — although turtles "need to be released where they came from."
They also need an intact habitat, said Leora Berman, the executive director of Turtle Guardians, an Ontario conservation group.
Turtles begin imprinting their spatial memories at a young age, Berman said, and can't just be released anywhere.
"It's like asking them to learn an entirely new language, and it often results in their demise," Berman said. "They don't know where they are, they don't know where to hibernate, they wander around lost."
So is there a lesson to be learned from Razor's story?
"When you're caring for another life," Berman said, "first of all, do your research."
'If I don't find him, then I'm actually going to go into mourning over this turtle,' Maureen Fennelly said. (Submitted by Maureen Fennelly)
CBC
Mon, October 23, 2023
An eastern Ontario woman says she's devastated by the disappearance of her family's longtime snapping turtle — while wildlife experts say it's a good reminder that keeping wild turtles as pets is illegal and harmful to the overall population.
Maureen Fennelly of Brockville, Ont., has been caring for Razor the turtle for several years, after her son Joshua first came across the quarter-sized baby snapper in 2009 while it was crossing a local road with an injured tail.
"[I] called the SPCA," he said via text. "But they [said] they would just put the turtle down as they do not handle turtle rehabilitation."
Joshua Fennelly named the snapper Razor, after the mutant villain Rahzar from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.
He brought it home and kept it for eight years, until he got kittens and the turtle moved in with his mother.
"We put him in the bathtub with rocks and then I would feed him with a pair of tweezers," Maureen Fennelly said. "I'd say, 'Good morning, Razor, my baby!' I could actually take my hands and just scratch his neck.
"He never knew how to bite or to snap in any manner because he was so spoon-fed."
Razor had the run of the place, could climb stairs, was taken outside for walks and was shown off to kids during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.
"If I lay on the couch, he'd actually come over and stick his head up and he wouldn't stop staring at me until I picked him up and I lay him on my chest and he'd actually have a nap with me."
But Razor went missing in early September, she said, while in the care of her ex-partner.
Fennelly said she's since spent day and night searching for him, even wading into one creek until she got a foot infection.
"He meant everything to me," she said. "This has been so devastating."
Fennelly has searched a creek and local golf club for Razor, and even developed a foot infection while wading through the water. (Maureen Fennelly/Facebook)
'As close to her as any pet would be'
Joshua Fennelly figures he's spent over $400 on laminated "missing" posters.
"My godkids are devastated as well, because they have seen him their whole life," Joshua said. "They even planned and wanted to take care of him if he outlived me."
Scot Birnie was golfing the 16th hole at the Brockville Country Club on Sept. 13 when he spotted a large turtle on the green and snapped a photo.
He then saw one of the family's posters and contacted the Fennellys to report he'd seen what he believed was Razor.
"It's not every day you see somebody looking for a pet turtle," Birnie said. "But when I called Maureen, you could tell that this turtle is as close to her as any pet would be close to anybody."
The golf club lent her a cart and let her search the grounds, but Razor remained missing.
'We would have him in the bathtub when he was little," Fennelly said. (Submitted by Joshua Fennelly)
Close call
Last week, Maureen Fennelly saw a report on social media about an injured turtle in the Brockville area and, based on photos, feared the animal — which ultimately died on Saturday — was Razor.
That didn't turn out to be the case: she visited the Rideau Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in North Gower and concluded the injured turtle was too big and didn't have the right shell.
If Razor is found, Maureen said she's prepared to surrender him.
She said she didn't realize Razor was a snapping turtle until he grew horns at age eight, and she had recently planned to take Razor to a science and education museum in Brockville if they could accommodate him.
"She didn't know that it wasn't legal to keep native wildlife in Ontario as pets, so she didn't deliberately do anything wrong and she wants the best care for him," said Sue Carstairs, the executive and medical director of the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre in Peterborough, Ont.
Fennelly's son Joshua says he's spent over $400 on posters trying to find Razor. (Submitted by Joshua Fennelly)
'Do your research'
Razor's story is a good opportunity to spotlight issues facing turtles, including the importance of even just one turtle to the overall ecosystem, Carstairs said.
"Not many of them make it in the wild. Not many make it to adulthood and to the age that Razor is. So every adult can be very important," she said.
Even if Razor has been in captivity for 14 years, he could, if in good health, be released back into the wild, Carstairs said — although turtles "need to be released where they came from."
They also need an intact habitat, said Leora Berman, the executive director of Turtle Guardians, an Ontario conservation group.
Turtles begin imprinting their spatial memories at a young age, Berman said, and can't just be released anywhere.
"It's like asking them to learn an entirely new language, and it often results in their demise," Berman said. "They don't know where they are, they don't know where to hibernate, they wander around lost."
So is there a lesson to be learned from Razor's story?
"When you're caring for another life," Berman said, "first of all, do your research."
'If I don't find him, then I'm actually going to go into mourning over this turtle,' Maureen Fennelly said. (Submitted by Maureen Fennelly)
Fun with fungi: St. John's group demonstrating magic of mushrooms for Fungus Appreciation Day
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
Sisters Andrea and Lisa van Nostrand are celebrating Fungus Appreciation Day by demonstrating how mushrooms can be used as dye. (Heather Barrett/CBC)
Sunday is Fungus Appreciation Day and several events are planned at the Johnson Geo Centre in St. John's to put the spotlight on these organisms.
"They're integral to the environment, they make healthy soils and they allow us to dye wool. Food sustainability. People are growing them themselves," said Andrea van Nostrand, the Geo Centre's lead on interpretation and education.
"They're nutritious. They're easy to grow. Anyone can grow them. You know, this is a topic that you could teach courses on."
Andrea and her sister Lisa van Nostrand will be demonstrating how to dye wool with mycelium, the mushroom's root network.
Lisa says they gather the mushrooms and then dice them up, place them in a mesh bag and let them simmer in a pot for an hour.
"It's a simple process and you get unexpected results because you don't always know the colours that you're going to get," she said.
Lisa van Nostrand said the dyed material has a lot of variation, but they tend to end up what she called muted, neutral colours. (Heather Barrett/CBC)
"From beige, yellow, orange, brown and rust colours. And so they're maybe a little bit of green. So they're quite muted, neutral colours. You know, you're not going to get fuchsia, not with their mushrooms anyway.… You get a really natural looking colours," said Lisa.
Andrea says she isn't sure how common using mushrooms as dye is in the province, but pointed to plenty of resources on the subject including books, articles and websites.
They also won't be eating any mushrooms during the demonstration as they could be poisonous, she said, with Lisa chiming in, "Well, they're not edible, let's put it that way."
The rise of the mushroom
Lisa recalled that growing up in St. John's, the common message was that mushrooms were poisonous, so they didn't eat them. Now she's seen an "explosion" in interest. While she enjoys foraging for mushrooms, Lisa said she doesn't actually like to eat them.
Andrea has also seen a proliferation of local mushrooms-related businesses and even farms that grow mushrooms to sell.
Anita Walsh operates such a farm with her family, the 160 hectare Portugal Cove-St. Philip's-based Windy Heights Farm. On top of growing mushrooms, they also sell mushroom growing kits.
Anita Walsh poses with a range of edible mushrooms, which are all grown indoors at Windy Heights Farm in Portugal Cove. (Submitted by Anita Walsh)
From her perspective, people need to embrace the mushrooms.
"It's so underutilized and so misunderstood, that it's vital that we do not miss out on this opportunity to find out more about this amazing organism," Walsh said.
"Mushrooms are medicinal. They're healthy. They're beautiful. And they're tasty all at once."
Walsh added people can build with it, make clothing out of it, use it as medicine or just as a food. It's also versatile when it comes to growing, as it can be grown in doors or foraged in the wild.
"The more you learn about mushrooms, the more you want to learn about mushrooms," she said.
On Tuesday, she said they'll be leading a workshop at the Johnson Geo Centre on mushroom totem growing.
She explained they will have birch trees cut into disks and spores will be placed in the centre. From there, participants will take them home to keep them somewhere dark and warm in order to grow mushrooms.
Walsh hopes people will develop an interest in growing their own mushrooms too.
"We're all about educating others on how to grow your own food, being more aware of nature and what types of foods we can still harvest in nature."
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
Sisters Andrea and Lisa van Nostrand are celebrating Fungus Appreciation Day by demonstrating how mushrooms can be used as dye. (Heather Barrett/CBC)
Sunday is Fungus Appreciation Day and several events are planned at the Johnson Geo Centre in St. John's to put the spotlight on these organisms.
"They're integral to the environment, they make healthy soils and they allow us to dye wool. Food sustainability. People are growing them themselves," said Andrea van Nostrand, the Geo Centre's lead on interpretation and education.
"They're nutritious. They're easy to grow. Anyone can grow them. You know, this is a topic that you could teach courses on."
Andrea and her sister Lisa van Nostrand will be demonstrating how to dye wool with mycelium, the mushroom's root network.
Lisa says they gather the mushrooms and then dice them up, place them in a mesh bag and let them simmer in a pot for an hour.
"It's a simple process and you get unexpected results because you don't always know the colours that you're going to get," she said.
Lisa van Nostrand said the dyed material has a lot of variation, but they tend to end up what she called muted, neutral colours. (Heather Barrett/CBC)
"From beige, yellow, orange, brown and rust colours. And so they're maybe a little bit of green. So they're quite muted, neutral colours. You know, you're not going to get fuchsia, not with their mushrooms anyway.… You get a really natural looking colours," said Lisa.
Andrea says she isn't sure how common using mushrooms as dye is in the province, but pointed to plenty of resources on the subject including books, articles and websites.
They also won't be eating any mushrooms during the demonstration as they could be poisonous, she said, with Lisa chiming in, "Well, they're not edible, let's put it that way."
The rise of the mushroom
Lisa recalled that growing up in St. John's, the common message was that mushrooms were poisonous, so they didn't eat them. Now she's seen an "explosion" in interest. While she enjoys foraging for mushrooms, Lisa said she doesn't actually like to eat them.
Andrea has also seen a proliferation of local mushrooms-related businesses and even farms that grow mushrooms to sell.
Anita Walsh operates such a farm with her family, the 160 hectare Portugal Cove-St. Philip's-based Windy Heights Farm. On top of growing mushrooms, they also sell mushroom growing kits.
Anita Walsh poses with a range of edible mushrooms, which are all grown indoors at Windy Heights Farm in Portugal Cove. (Submitted by Anita Walsh)
From her perspective, people need to embrace the mushrooms.
"It's so underutilized and so misunderstood, that it's vital that we do not miss out on this opportunity to find out more about this amazing organism," Walsh said.
"Mushrooms are medicinal. They're healthy. They're beautiful. And they're tasty all at once."
Walsh added people can build with it, make clothing out of it, use it as medicine or just as a food. It's also versatile when it comes to growing, as it can be grown in doors or foraged in the wild.
"The more you learn about mushrooms, the more you want to learn about mushrooms," she said.
On Tuesday, she said they'll be leading a workshop at the Johnson Geo Centre on mushroom totem growing.
She explained they will have birch trees cut into disks and spores will be placed in the centre. From there, participants will take them home to keep them somewhere dark and warm in order to grow mushrooms.
Walsh hopes people will develop an interest in growing their own mushrooms too.
"We're all about educating others on how to grow your own food, being more aware of nature and what types of foods we can still harvest in nature."
Eastern Ontario farmer discovers new variety of truffle
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
When Lucille Groulx started her truffle farm in Wendover, Ont., in 2015, she was using truffles she had imported from France.
Only later did she discover an indigenous variety of the rare delicacy was already buried on her land.
The native truffle found on the Domaine du Roi farm is the species Tuber rufum, a type of truffle that exists almost everywhere in the world but includes local indigenous varieties.
Originally, Groulx had opted for Burgundy truffles and made the trip to France to bring some back.
Groulx keeps samples of the native truffle to inoculate her trees. (Chantal Dubuc/Radio-Canada)
Burgundy truffles were ideal, Groulx said, as they were well adapted to Ontario's climate and would help protect her oak and hazel trees against disease.
But as she was digging to harvest the fungi, she was surprised to come across a delicious intruder.
"I planted Burgundy truffles, then I found another truffle," she said in French. "You know, you plant red potatoes, you find white potatoes."
Truffle has unique genetic makeup
Groulx, a former pharmacy technician, rushed to have the truffle analyzed to ensure it was edible.
A laboratory at the University of Florida confirmed last January the truffle was not only safe to eat, but also had a unique genetic makeup.
The truffle's DNA sequence had never been identified before, and its natural chemical compounds give it a unique character — and a smell and taste of its own.
Groulx fell in love with the lifestyle associated with truffle harvesting. (Stéphanie Rhéaume/Radio-Canada)
According to Groulx, the fungus is distinguished by smoky notes, reminiscent of bacon.
Its interior is made up of hazelnut-coloured marbling, while its exterior envelope is pale brown in colour, Groulx said.
Maude Lemire-Comeau, president and CEO of Truffles Québec, said the discovery of a truffle native to the area is exciting.
The organization produces truffle trees for all of North America, and Lemire-Comeau sees commercial potential.
Truffle trees are trees that support the growth of truffles, like oak.
Dog helps find the truffles
Lemire-Comeau said truffle spores must already have been present in the Ontario subsoil when she planted the French imports.
"The biggest competitors for truffles when you set up a truffle farm are other types of truffles," Lemire-Comeau said, adding her native truffles are now supplanting the ones from Burgundy.
She's finding many more with the help of her dog, Minoune, whose ability to track down the truffles is "exceptional," according to Groulx.
It takes a lot of patience to spot the powerfully-scented fungi, and Groulx's four-legged companion prefers to hunt mice or eat grass, rather than looking for precious truffles.
Minoune, 7, is an Australian shepherd and truffle hunter. (Stéphanie Rhéaume/Radio-Canada)
"When she starts scratching, you know it's there," she said in French. "As soon as I find it, I put it under her nose so that she can smell what she has found."
Groulx rewards Minoune for each underground treasure she finds.
A native of Alfred and Plantagenet, Ont., Groulx studied dairy production at the Alfred College of Agricultural and Food Technology in the 1980s. She then dreamed of taking over the family land.
Now, she's harvesting the native truffle and incorporating it into cream cheese she makes — further evidence she's "caught the truffle bug."
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
When Lucille Groulx started her truffle farm in Wendover, Ont., in 2015, she was using truffles she had imported from France.
Only later did she discover an indigenous variety of the rare delicacy was already buried on her land.
The native truffle found on the Domaine du Roi farm is the species Tuber rufum, a type of truffle that exists almost everywhere in the world but includes local indigenous varieties.
Originally, Groulx had opted for Burgundy truffles and made the trip to France to bring some back.
Groulx keeps samples of the native truffle to inoculate her trees. (Chantal Dubuc/Radio-Canada)
Burgundy truffles were ideal, Groulx said, as they were well adapted to Ontario's climate and would help protect her oak and hazel trees against disease.
But as she was digging to harvest the fungi, she was surprised to come across a delicious intruder.
"I planted Burgundy truffles, then I found another truffle," she said in French. "You know, you plant red potatoes, you find white potatoes."
Truffle has unique genetic makeup
Groulx, a former pharmacy technician, rushed to have the truffle analyzed to ensure it was edible.
A laboratory at the University of Florida confirmed last January the truffle was not only safe to eat, but also had a unique genetic makeup.
The truffle's DNA sequence had never been identified before, and its natural chemical compounds give it a unique character — and a smell and taste of its own.
Groulx fell in love with the lifestyle associated with truffle harvesting. (Stéphanie Rhéaume/Radio-Canada)
According to Groulx, the fungus is distinguished by smoky notes, reminiscent of bacon.
Its interior is made up of hazelnut-coloured marbling, while its exterior envelope is pale brown in colour, Groulx said.
Maude Lemire-Comeau, president and CEO of Truffles Québec, said the discovery of a truffle native to the area is exciting.
The organization produces truffle trees for all of North America, and Lemire-Comeau sees commercial potential.
Truffle trees are trees that support the growth of truffles, like oak.
Dog helps find the truffles
Lemire-Comeau said truffle spores must already have been present in the Ontario subsoil when she planted the French imports.
"The biggest competitors for truffles when you set up a truffle farm are other types of truffles," Lemire-Comeau said, adding her native truffles are now supplanting the ones from Burgundy.
She's finding many more with the help of her dog, Minoune, whose ability to track down the truffles is "exceptional," according to Groulx.
It takes a lot of patience to spot the powerfully-scented fungi, and Groulx's four-legged companion prefers to hunt mice or eat grass, rather than looking for precious truffles.
Minoune, 7, is an Australian shepherd and truffle hunter. (Stéphanie Rhéaume/Radio-Canada)
"When she starts scratching, you know it's there," she said in French. "As soon as I find it, I put it under her nose so that she can smell what she has found."
Groulx rewards Minoune for each underground treasure she finds.
A native of Alfred and Plantagenet, Ont., Groulx studied dairy production at the Alfred College of Agricultural and Food Technology in the 1980s. She then dreamed of taking over the family land.
Now, she's harvesting the native truffle and incorporating it into cream cheese she makes — further evidence she's "caught the truffle bug."
Why Cuban-born conductor Cosette Justo Valdés feels right at home with the Vancouver Island Symphony
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
Growing up in a small town in Cuba, Cosette Justo Valdés was a young musician with promise.
At the age of 18, a professor gave her the idea of becoming a conductor. It was an idea, she says, that seemed ambitious.
"For me what that was like to become an astronaut," Valdés told CBC's All Points West.
Years later, Valdés has managed to make that dream come true, having worked as a conductor in Cuba, Europe and Canada.
The latest chapter of her career has her serving as the artistic director of the Vancouver Island Symphony.
Valdés, who is a resident conductor with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, says the first time she visited Vancouver Island in 2020 she instantly felt at home.
"Vancouver Island ... became my paradise and it proved to me that Canada has everything," she said.
"There is even an island [near] Vancouver Island named Valdes," she added, a joking nod to the Gulf Island in southwest B.C. named after Spanish Navy commander Cayetano Valdés y Flores.
The Nanaimo-based symphony is set to kick off its 29th season with a performance entitled Blooming, which includes a Beethoven piano concerto and a symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich.
Valdés says the music of the Soviet-era Russian composer resonates with her.
"It speaks of the dictatorship that he was confronting," she said.
"There is a lot there that I will talk about during the concert about what we know of repression, of dictatorship, and how the world right now is learning a lot about so many countries that suffer from dictatorship."
The performance will also feature the work of Juno-winning Canadian composer Bekah Simms.
Valdés's path to Vancouver Island was a circuitous one. She never travelled outside of Cuba until she was 29 years old. She eventually studied in Germany and worked with numerous orchestral, choral and chamber ensembles in Europe.
"Coming to Canada I feel that I can harvest all of that and incorporate new things, fascinating things," she said.
Blooming will take place Wednesday at the Port Theatre in Nanaimo.
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
Growing up in a small town in Cuba, Cosette Justo Valdés was a young musician with promise.
At the age of 18, a professor gave her the idea of becoming a conductor. It was an idea, she says, that seemed ambitious.
"For me what that was like to become an astronaut," Valdés told CBC's All Points West.
Years later, Valdés has managed to make that dream come true, having worked as a conductor in Cuba, Europe and Canada.
The latest chapter of her career has her serving as the artistic director of the Vancouver Island Symphony.
Valdés, who is a resident conductor with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, says the first time she visited Vancouver Island in 2020 she instantly felt at home.
"Vancouver Island ... became my paradise and it proved to me that Canada has everything," she said.
"There is even an island [near] Vancouver Island named Valdes," she added, a joking nod to the Gulf Island in southwest B.C. named after Spanish Navy commander Cayetano Valdés y Flores.
The Nanaimo-based symphony is set to kick off its 29th season with a performance entitled Blooming, which includes a Beethoven piano concerto and a symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich.
Valdés says the music of the Soviet-era Russian composer resonates with her.
"It speaks of the dictatorship that he was confronting," she said.
"There is a lot there that I will talk about during the concert about what we know of repression, of dictatorship, and how the world right now is learning a lot about so many countries that suffer from dictatorship."
The performance will also feature the work of Juno-winning Canadian composer Bekah Simms.
Valdés's path to Vancouver Island was a circuitous one. She never travelled outside of Cuba until she was 29 years old. She eventually studied in Germany and worked with numerous orchestral, choral and chamber ensembles in Europe.
"Coming to Canada I feel that I can harvest all of that and incorporate new things, fascinating things," she said.
Blooming will take place Wednesday at the Port Theatre in Nanaimo.
IN THEORY
How exactly would carbon capture work offshore? An engineer breaks it down
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
Professor Lesley James works with Memorial University's Department of Process Engineering. She says innovation within the field of carbon capture is critical.
How exactly would carbon capture work offshore? An engineer breaks it down
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
Professor Lesley James works with Memorial University's Department of Process Engineering. She says innovation within the field of carbon capture is critical.
(Government of NL)
Removing carbon from the atmosphere is a growing global concern, with Newfoundland and Labrador throwing its hat in the ring.
Earlier this week, Premier Andrew Furey announced something called the Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage Innovation Challenge.
What does CCUS mean ... and what is the government attempting to do?
The $6-million plan aims to help develop technologies required to help decarbonize offshore oil industries in the province, and open to the door to potentially service carbon markets elsewhere.
"There will be a global demand for carbon storage solutions. Solutions innovated, invented, created right here in Newfoundland and Labrador, will have a global reach," said Furey, adding that there is potential for a gigaton of carbon storage in the offshore.
"That's equivalent to a billion metric tons and represents a significant impact to the global environment, and a huge impact to the economy here in Newfoundland and Labrador," Furey said.
To learn more about how offshore carbon storage would work, St. John's Morning Show's host Krissy Holmes spoke with engineering professor Lesley James.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What exactly is carbon capture and and how do you do it?
A: So carbon capture has been around for decades now. We've used it to purify gas streams that we want to then bottle.
When we have an exhaust coming out of a plant, it will have a mixture of different gases in it, carbon dioxide being one. There'll be some nitrogen that maybe hasn't been combusted, and there could be some sulfur dioxides and other things … there's a whole bunch of constituents in the gas.
Now if we try to put that down, and take the whole gas stream and put it underground. well, it's kind of inefficient because why do we need to put nitrogen down if nitrogen is already 78 per cent or 79 per cent of our atmosphere? So let's just get the CO2, or the bad stuff, remove that from all the other gases, including some oxygen that's going through, and worry about [storing] the bad stuff down underground.
We can do it in a number of different ways, and the way that's been around for decades is essentially absorption where those CO2 molecules would prefer to be in certain liquids as opposed to in the gas phase. So they preferentially like to go, oh, I want to be in that liquid, and kind of move across to that phase and are quite happy there.
So that's how carbon capture works. That's one way — the absorption. There's other ways as well, but that's the long-standing way.
How many options are you exploring at this point?
There are many options being explored.
It's the absorption now, it's how do we make absorption more efficient and how do we scale it so that it's not only economic at these big industrial scales, but that we could potentially put on a small diesel generator that is providing power to one of our small communities on the on the northern coast or in Labrador.
So we want to work on the efficiency and the scale and we can do that by increasing surface area and putting some of those organics, those liquids, inside the surface area of certain molecules. Dr. Michael Katz, in chemistry, is working on that. It's called metal organic frameworks.
Once you've actually got that carbon isolated, what then? Does it need to travel somewhere for processing?
So the other way, by the way, is absorption. So we can actually absorb the carbon onto solid surfaces.
We can think of charcoal, right? So when we use often charcoal as a filter to get rid of noxious smells, that same type of trapping mechanism that happens there, happens with CO2 as well. And Dr. Kelly Hawboldt, who you've spoken to before, works on that — using bio-absorbance that that she generates from waste.
But once we get it, then OK, we either want to keep it stored in the liquid or in the solid, preferably not the liquid because we want to reuse [that].
So then we're going to release it from the liquid, usually using a little bit of temperature, and that will cause the gas to come out of the CO2 and then we need to compress it. So now we want to go from gaseous CO2 to supercritical, or dense phase, CO2 so that we can store much more of it in the same volume.
So then the storage part. How does that work?
Once we get it compressed, we've essentially got CO2 liquid —almost.
Then we want to actually use the same type of wells we use to to produce oil and gas, and we actually want to inject it underground into the pores of the rock.
So you know when you're at the beach and you've got water running through sand? Think of that sand, you know, cement it together a little bit, but it still has all the space in it, like a sponge.
So let's store the CO2 inside the pores of that rock or sponge, and that's what we want to do.
How safe is it? How do you prevent it from emitting further? What do we know about that part?
So that's where the research comes in because I'm not doing anything nearly as cool as coming up with new capture techniques. I'm actually looking at working with a bunch of the earth science folks and chemistry and physics folks to actually make sure that we're comfortable with the risk of injecting CO2. So how do we know that?
Well, one, we want to sample some of the rock that's down there — both the rock that we're going to store it in, and the rock that's going to keep it there, the container, the seal or caprock, we call it.
We want to check that for mineral interactions, and that we're not going to have a bad reaction or anything happening to dissolve certain parts of the rock and create an escape route.
Then we want to make sure that the layers of the geology that we've got — maybe extra layers, or they're thick enough and that we've examined them through seismic and different techniques — to make sure that we don't see any big leakage pathways.
It's really understanding how that CO2 is going to interact with the water in which we're injecting it, because those pores of the rock are already filled with something. And in this case, we're talking about a really saline brine. It's not a fresh water system, it's saltier than sea water.
And the rock — we don't want to have anything happen. We want to make sure it's there, and we do that through lab, and modelling and seismic. A whole bunch of ways.
How significant is this innovation challenge on the world stage at this time?
It's absolutely critical. We need every possible storage site that we can get.
Already from the seismic and the data we know we've got great, great potential here, and now we just need to prove it.
Removing carbon from the atmosphere is a growing global concern, with Newfoundland and Labrador throwing its hat in the ring.
Earlier this week, Premier Andrew Furey announced something called the Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage Innovation Challenge.
What does CCUS mean ... and what is the government attempting to do?
The $6-million plan aims to help develop technologies required to help decarbonize offshore oil industries in the province, and open to the door to potentially service carbon markets elsewhere.
"There will be a global demand for carbon storage solutions. Solutions innovated, invented, created right here in Newfoundland and Labrador, will have a global reach," said Furey, adding that there is potential for a gigaton of carbon storage in the offshore.
"That's equivalent to a billion metric tons and represents a significant impact to the global environment, and a huge impact to the economy here in Newfoundland and Labrador," Furey said.
To learn more about how offshore carbon storage would work, St. John's Morning Show's host Krissy Holmes spoke with engineering professor Lesley James.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What exactly is carbon capture and and how do you do it?
A: So carbon capture has been around for decades now. We've used it to purify gas streams that we want to then bottle.
When we have an exhaust coming out of a plant, it will have a mixture of different gases in it, carbon dioxide being one. There'll be some nitrogen that maybe hasn't been combusted, and there could be some sulfur dioxides and other things … there's a whole bunch of constituents in the gas.
Now if we try to put that down, and take the whole gas stream and put it underground. well, it's kind of inefficient because why do we need to put nitrogen down if nitrogen is already 78 per cent or 79 per cent of our atmosphere? So let's just get the CO2, or the bad stuff, remove that from all the other gases, including some oxygen that's going through, and worry about [storing] the bad stuff down underground.
We can do it in a number of different ways, and the way that's been around for decades is essentially absorption where those CO2 molecules would prefer to be in certain liquids as opposed to in the gas phase. So they preferentially like to go, oh, I want to be in that liquid, and kind of move across to that phase and are quite happy there.
So that's how carbon capture works. That's one way — the absorption. There's other ways as well, but that's the long-standing way.
How many options are you exploring at this point?
There are many options being explored.
It's the absorption now, it's how do we make absorption more efficient and how do we scale it so that it's not only economic at these big industrial scales, but that we could potentially put on a small diesel generator that is providing power to one of our small communities on the on the northern coast or in Labrador.
So we want to work on the efficiency and the scale and we can do that by increasing surface area and putting some of those organics, those liquids, inside the surface area of certain molecules. Dr. Michael Katz, in chemistry, is working on that. It's called metal organic frameworks.
Once you've actually got that carbon isolated, what then? Does it need to travel somewhere for processing?
So the other way, by the way, is absorption. So we can actually absorb the carbon onto solid surfaces.
We can think of charcoal, right? So when we use often charcoal as a filter to get rid of noxious smells, that same type of trapping mechanism that happens there, happens with CO2 as well. And Dr. Kelly Hawboldt, who you've spoken to before, works on that — using bio-absorbance that that she generates from waste.
But once we get it, then OK, we either want to keep it stored in the liquid or in the solid, preferably not the liquid because we want to reuse [that].
So then we're going to release it from the liquid, usually using a little bit of temperature, and that will cause the gas to come out of the CO2 and then we need to compress it. So now we want to go from gaseous CO2 to supercritical, or dense phase, CO2 so that we can store much more of it in the same volume.
So then the storage part. How does that work?
Once we get it compressed, we've essentially got CO2 liquid —almost.
Then we want to actually use the same type of wells we use to to produce oil and gas, and we actually want to inject it underground into the pores of the rock.
So you know when you're at the beach and you've got water running through sand? Think of that sand, you know, cement it together a little bit, but it still has all the space in it, like a sponge.
So let's store the CO2 inside the pores of that rock or sponge, and that's what we want to do.
How safe is it? How do you prevent it from emitting further? What do we know about that part?
So that's where the research comes in because I'm not doing anything nearly as cool as coming up with new capture techniques. I'm actually looking at working with a bunch of the earth science folks and chemistry and physics folks to actually make sure that we're comfortable with the risk of injecting CO2. So how do we know that?
Well, one, we want to sample some of the rock that's down there — both the rock that we're going to store it in, and the rock that's going to keep it there, the container, the seal or caprock, we call it.
We want to check that for mineral interactions, and that we're not going to have a bad reaction or anything happening to dissolve certain parts of the rock and create an escape route.
Then we want to make sure that the layers of the geology that we've got — maybe extra layers, or they're thick enough and that we've examined them through seismic and different techniques — to make sure that we don't see any big leakage pathways.
It's really understanding how that CO2 is going to interact with the water in which we're injecting it, because those pores of the rock are already filled with something. And in this case, we're talking about a really saline brine. It's not a fresh water system, it's saltier than sea water.
And the rock — we don't want to have anything happen. We want to make sure it's there, and we do that through lab, and modelling and seismic. A whole bunch of ways.
How significant is this innovation challenge on the world stage at this time?
It's absolutely critical. We need every possible storage site that we can get.
Already from the seismic and the data we know we've got great, great potential here, and now we just need to prove it.
FOR PROFIT DAYCARE SERVICES
University of Calgary doctor shines light on severe E. coli infections in children
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
A University of Calgary doctor is working to raise awareness about shiga toxin-producing E. coli and delve into the long-term implications for children.
Dr. Stephen Freedman has been studying this type of E. coli for years and was on the front lines treating children in the recent daycare-related outbreak in the city.
When the magnitude of that outbreak became clear, he recognized that while it was tragic, it could help unravel some of the mysteries around this infection, known as STEC.
"We realized this does present an opportunity to learn a lot about the long-term impacts of shiga toxin-producing E. coli," said Freedman, a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine in the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine.
Previous research has focused on children who experience severe complications, including kidney failure, according to Freedman, who hopes to learn more about the implications for kids who experience mild infections
"It'll actually put into perspective the risk associated with this bacteria," he said.
Freedman is one year into a four-year study involving 1,000 children at 26 sites in Canada and the United States looking at the best use of IV fluids to treat STEC in children. He has received additional funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
He hopes to follow 500 kids exposed during the Calgary outbreak (including those who tested positive and those who did not) for over two years.
The children will be monitored — at six months, 12 months and two years post-infection — for health impacts ranging from kidney and intestinal problems to early diabetes and high blood pressure.
"If we find that even children with mild infections are having complications down the road, it actually raises the bar of the severity of this infection for all children and really will allow us to treat all children similarly and also increase the importance of preventing any infections in the first place."
Information for doctors
Freedman is also the lead author of a review article on STEC published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. The project was in the works for over two years.
"It's an uncommon disease, and so many people will go their entire career with never seeing a single case," said Freedman.
Even those who have encountered a case or two may not be aware of all the research, he noted.
"They're not going to know how to interpret the result of a stool test. They won't know how to manage it. They won't be aware of the potential complications," he said.
According to Freedman, roughly 60 per cent of shiga toxin-producing E. coli infections are the type that can cause serious complications.
The article is the first of its kind in 20 years, he said, and it outlines updated information on diagnosis, therapies and monitoring.
"We really tried to review and create a state-of-the-art article that summarized all the key things that … people taking care of these kids need to know, need to consider," said Freedman.
Dr. Sam Wong, president of the pediatrics section of the Alberta Medical Association, said the article will be helpful for physicians on the front lines.
"It nicely summarizes the current data on STEC bacteria, diagnostic testing, treatment options/management and potential pitfalls when caring for these patients," he said in an email.
"It is a good review for [infectious disease] specialists and a good resource for in-hospital clinicians."
According to Alberta Health Services, as of Oct. 13, there were 360 lab-confirmed cases connected to the Calgary daycare outbreak and 45 secondary cases.
University of Calgary doctor shines light on severe E. coli infections in children
CBC
Sun, October 22, 2023
A University of Calgary doctor is working to raise awareness about shiga toxin-producing E. coli and delve into the long-term implications for children.
Dr. Stephen Freedman has been studying this type of E. coli for years and was on the front lines treating children in the recent daycare-related outbreak in the city.
When the magnitude of that outbreak became clear, he recognized that while it was tragic, it could help unravel some of the mysteries around this infection, known as STEC.
"We realized this does present an opportunity to learn a lot about the long-term impacts of shiga toxin-producing E. coli," said Freedman, a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine in the University of Calgary's Cumming School of Medicine.
Previous research has focused on children who experience severe complications, including kidney failure, according to Freedman, who hopes to learn more about the implications for kids who experience mild infections
"It'll actually put into perspective the risk associated with this bacteria," he said.
Freedman is one year into a four-year study involving 1,000 children at 26 sites in Canada and the United States looking at the best use of IV fluids to treat STEC in children. He has received additional funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
He hopes to follow 500 kids exposed during the Calgary outbreak (including those who tested positive and those who did not) for over two years.
The children will be monitored — at six months, 12 months and two years post-infection — for health impacts ranging from kidney and intestinal problems to early diabetes and high blood pressure.
"If we find that even children with mild infections are having complications down the road, it actually raises the bar of the severity of this infection for all children and really will allow us to treat all children similarly and also increase the importance of preventing any infections in the first place."
Information for doctors
Freedman is also the lead author of a review article on STEC published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. The project was in the works for over two years.
"It's an uncommon disease, and so many people will go their entire career with never seeing a single case," said Freedman.
Even those who have encountered a case or two may not be aware of all the research, he noted.
"They're not going to know how to interpret the result of a stool test. They won't know how to manage it. They won't be aware of the potential complications," he said.
According to Freedman, roughly 60 per cent of shiga toxin-producing E. coli infections are the type that can cause serious complications.
The article is the first of its kind in 20 years, he said, and it outlines updated information on diagnosis, therapies and monitoring.
"We really tried to review and create a state-of-the-art article that summarized all the key things that … people taking care of these kids need to know, need to consider," said Freedman.
Dr. Sam Wong, president of the pediatrics section of the Alberta Medical Association, said the article will be helpful for physicians on the front lines.
"It nicely summarizes the current data on STEC bacteria, diagnostic testing, treatment options/management and potential pitfalls when caring for these patients," he said in an email.
"It is a good review for [infectious disease] specialists and a good resource for in-hospital clinicians."
According to Alberta Health Services, as of Oct. 13, there were 360 lab-confirmed cases connected to the Calgary daycare outbreak and 45 secondary cases.
Judge to decide fate of $23B First Nations child welfare compensation
CBC
Mon, October 23, 2023
The Federal Court will be asked this week to approve $23 billion in compensation for First Nations children and families who experienced racial discrimination through Ottawa's chronic underfunding of the on-reserve foster care system and other family services.
If approved, the proposed settlement agreement would be the largest in Canadian history — but it might not end a 16-year legal fight.
The proposed settlement includes a request for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to issue a public apology. Not everyone involved in the compensation case thinks that can happen yet.
Cindy Blackstock, the First Nations children's advocate who started the battle for federal compensation in 2007, said that while the compensation should be approved, the government can't apologize when it's still discriminating against First Nations kids and families.
"We need to avoid performative apologies," said Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society.
"We need to make sure that this time the words have meaning, and that meaning is changed behaviour."
The proposed $23 billion First Nations child welfare settlement agreement includes a request for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make a public apology in the House of Commons. (Patrick Doyle/Canadian Press)
In a letter sent to the prime minister on Oct. 12, the AFN asked Trudeau to ensure the discrimination does not continue.
It also urged Trudeau to immediately make a public apology in the House of Commons to all First Nations children, families and communities harmed by Canada's discriminatory conduct.
"We ask that you, as prime minister, now apologize to our people on behalf of the Government of Canada," Interim National Chief Joanna Bernard wrote in the letter, obtained by CBC News.
The AFN's letter cites a 2016 decision by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) which concluded that the government engaged for decades in discrimination based on race, contrary to the Canadian Human Rights Act, by underfunding First Nations child and family services.
Debate over timing of federal government apology
Manitoba Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse, who led the AFN's compensation negotiations, said the apology would put pressure on Canada to make major changes.
"Our kids have been waiting decades for an apology," Woodhouse said.
"The work has to get done. The asks have to get put forward … We have long-term reform now that we do have to come together on."
Canada's actions led to tens of thousands of unwarranted apprehensions of First Nations children from their homes, families and nations, according to the CHRT, which called the government's conduct wilful and reckless.
The proposed settlement before the Federal Court on Monday follows a 2019 CHRT ruling that ordered Ottawa to pay the maximum human rights penalty for discrimination: $40,000 to each affected First Nations child and family member.
The government fought the order but eventually negotiated an agreement after it faced two class action lawsuits, including one launched by the AFN that was merged with another lawsuit.
Manitoba Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse of the Assembly of First Nations said an apology from the prime minister would encourage Ottawa to deal with long-term reform of the on-reserve child welfare system. (Chris Rands/CBC)
Woodhouse said the court hearing will be a pivotal moment affecting the lives of more than 300,000 First Nations people eligible for compensation.
"The child welfare system has been very hard on our people and we have more kids in care than at the height of residential schools," she said.
"It shows them that they've been wronged."
Work on long-term reform dragging, advocate says
On top of the $23 billion for compensation, the government set aside an additional $20 billion for long-term reform of the on-reserve child welfare system and family services — a change that the government said must be First Nations-led.
"We have a duty to ensure this never happens again," wrote Zeus Eden, press secretary to Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu.
"We remain at the negotiating table and are committed to finding an acceptable resolution, so that every child in this country can have a fair shot at reaching their full potential."
Eden said Ottawa is still working with the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, the AFN and other First Nations partners to reform the on-reserve child welfare system and other family services.
But Blackstock said those talks haven't been productive and barriers to funding remain, especially for First Nations children accessing services under a policy known as Jordan's Principle.
The policy is named after Jordan River Anderson of the Norway House Cree Nation, who died in 2005 at the age of five in the midst of a two-year battle between Manitoba and Ottawa over who would pay for his care.
Jordan's Principle states that when federal and provincial governments disagree over which level of government is responsible for providing health or educational services to First Nations children, they must help the child first and sort out the bills later.
The government is supposed to process Jordan's Principle requests within a 12 to 48 hour timeframe. Blackstock said Ottawa is failing to meet those deadlines.
Provincial offices for Indigenous Services Canada are dealing with backlogs of hundreds of Jordan's Principle requests and, as CBC News has reported, specialists who deliver care to First Nations children frequently are not being paid on time, according to the Caring Society's Oct. 10 submission to the CHRT.
"There's some significant logistical problems that could be quickly remedied by the federal government if it just simply acknowledged that these were problems and fixed them," Blackstock said.
The CHRT is set to hold a case conference on Blackstock's concerns next month.
"We can try to get some measure of justice for those who have already been hurt while we continue to put the pressure on the government to not repeat the behaviour that has cost children their childhoods, sometimes their lives," Blackstock said.
CBC
Mon, October 23, 2023
The Federal Court will be asked this week to approve $23 billion in compensation for First Nations children and families who experienced racial discrimination through Ottawa's chronic underfunding of the on-reserve foster care system and other family services.
If approved, the proposed settlement agreement would be the largest in Canadian history — but it might not end a 16-year legal fight.
The proposed settlement includes a request for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to issue a public apology. Not everyone involved in the compensation case thinks that can happen yet.
Cindy Blackstock, the First Nations children's advocate who started the battle for federal compensation in 2007, said that while the compensation should be approved, the government can't apologize when it's still discriminating against First Nations kids and families.
"We need to avoid performative apologies," said Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society.
"We need to make sure that this time the words have meaning, and that meaning is changed behaviour."
The proposed $23 billion First Nations child welfare settlement agreement includes a request for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make a public apology in the House of Commons. (Patrick Doyle/Canadian Press)
In a letter sent to the prime minister on Oct. 12, the AFN asked Trudeau to ensure the discrimination does not continue.
It also urged Trudeau to immediately make a public apology in the House of Commons to all First Nations children, families and communities harmed by Canada's discriminatory conduct.
"We ask that you, as prime minister, now apologize to our people on behalf of the Government of Canada," Interim National Chief Joanna Bernard wrote in the letter, obtained by CBC News.
The AFN's letter cites a 2016 decision by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) which concluded that the government engaged for decades in discrimination based on race, contrary to the Canadian Human Rights Act, by underfunding First Nations child and family services.
Debate over timing of federal government apology
Manitoba Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse, who led the AFN's compensation negotiations, said the apology would put pressure on Canada to make major changes.
"Our kids have been waiting decades for an apology," Woodhouse said.
"The work has to get done. The asks have to get put forward … We have long-term reform now that we do have to come together on."
Canada's actions led to tens of thousands of unwarranted apprehensions of First Nations children from their homes, families and nations, according to the CHRT, which called the government's conduct wilful and reckless.
The proposed settlement before the Federal Court on Monday follows a 2019 CHRT ruling that ordered Ottawa to pay the maximum human rights penalty for discrimination: $40,000 to each affected First Nations child and family member.
The government fought the order but eventually negotiated an agreement after it faced two class action lawsuits, including one launched by the AFN that was merged with another lawsuit.
Manitoba Regional Chief Cindy Woodhouse of the Assembly of First Nations said an apology from the prime minister would encourage Ottawa to deal with long-term reform of the on-reserve child welfare system. (Chris Rands/CBC)
Woodhouse said the court hearing will be a pivotal moment affecting the lives of more than 300,000 First Nations people eligible for compensation.
"The child welfare system has been very hard on our people and we have more kids in care than at the height of residential schools," she said.
"It shows them that they've been wronged."
Work on long-term reform dragging, advocate says
On top of the $23 billion for compensation, the government set aside an additional $20 billion for long-term reform of the on-reserve child welfare system and family services — a change that the government said must be First Nations-led.
"We have a duty to ensure this never happens again," wrote Zeus Eden, press secretary to Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu.
"We remain at the negotiating table and are committed to finding an acceptable resolution, so that every child in this country can have a fair shot at reaching their full potential."
Eden said Ottawa is still working with the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, the AFN and other First Nations partners to reform the on-reserve child welfare system and other family services.
But Blackstock said those talks haven't been productive and barriers to funding remain, especially for First Nations children accessing services under a policy known as Jordan's Principle.
The policy is named after Jordan River Anderson of the Norway House Cree Nation, who died in 2005 at the age of five in the midst of a two-year battle between Manitoba and Ottawa over who would pay for his care.
Jordan's Principle states that when federal and provincial governments disagree over which level of government is responsible for providing health or educational services to First Nations children, they must help the child first and sort out the bills later.
The government is supposed to process Jordan's Principle requests within a 12 to 48 hour timeframe. Blackstock said Ottawa is failing to meet those deadlines.
Provincial offices for Indigenous Services Canada are dealing with backlogs of hundreds of Jordan's Principle requests and, as CBC News has reported, specialists who deliver care to First Nations children frequently are not being paid on time, according to the Caring Society's Oct. 10 submission to the CHRT.
"There's some significant logistical problems that could be quickly remedied by the federal government if it just simply acknowledged that these were problems and fixed them," Blackstock said.
The CHRT is set to hold a case conference on Blackstock's concerns next month.
"We can try to get some measure of justice for those who have already been hurt while we continue to put the pressure on the government to not repeat the behaviour that has cost children their childhoods, sometimes their lives," Blackstock said.
THE LAW IS THE LAW OF PROPERTY
Judge who ruled for N.B. landlord in rent-reduction case owns apartment building
CBC
Mon, October 23, 2023
New Brunswick Court of King's Bench Justice Kathryn Gregory, who sided with a landlord in a case involving the way provincial tenancy officers have been phasing-in large rent increases for tenants, owns a five-unit apartment building in Fredericton, property records show.
That does not automatically put her in a conflict of interest to have ruled on the case but a number of legal experts say it is a close enough call to suggest the matter might have been better handled by someone else.
"It's often very fact-specific when we think that line is crossed," said Jula Hughes about when a judge is in a conflict of interest.
"But I think it's important to remember that we care about the appearance of impartiality as much as we care about actual impartiality."
Jula Hughes, dean of law at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay says it is important the public see and believe judges to be acting with complete impartiality when deciding cases. (CBC)
Hughes is the dean of Law at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. She's also a former law professor at the University of New Brunswick and an expert in the field of judicial ethics.
Gregory was appointed to the court of King's Bench in November 2020 following a lengthy career as a New Brunswick Crown prosecutor.
Last spring, a case involving two tenants in Saint John landed in her courtroom.
The tenants had received notices from their landlord of a $200-per-month increase in rent to take effect in March, but applied for a review of that amount with the province's Tenant and Landlord Relations Office (formerly the Residential Tenancies Tribunal).
Two tenants in this six-unit apartment building in Saint John won the right from a tenancy officer to have their 2023 rent increases of $200 spread over three years. The landlord appealed and the case ended up in front of Justice Kathryn Gregory. (Robert Jones/CBC)
A new policy introduced by the province for 2023 allows tenants who receive increases above 7.3 per cent to have the amount phased-in over multiple years.
The tenants had been paying $860 and $900 per month, respectively, and although a tenancy officer assigned to the case found the $200 increase justifiable given market rents in the area, the officer concluded the amount should be phased-in gradually, beginning with a rent increase of $67 per month this year.
"Although I find the [rent increase] notice to be reasonable, I order the increase in rent to be spread over three years," the officer wrote in each of the two cases.
Gregory ruled that decision was unfair to the landlord because the awarding of a phased-in rent increase is discretionary, not automatic, according to her interpretation of the legislation that created the policy. She found the landlord was not given the opportunity to oppose the award and have those views weighed in the officer's decision.
"While there is certainly authority to spread a reasonable rent over several years ... the RTT [Residential Tenancies Tribunal] does not provide any explanation for having exercised the discretion to do so," wrote Gregory.
"It is not an issue of sufficiency of reasons, there are no reasons, period."
No one has publicly questioned the substance of Gregory's decision or reasoning but legal experts say her ruling on an issue that her own apartment building could be subject to at some point is problematic.
Trevor Farrow, dean of law at Osgoode Hall in Toronto, said it is important for judges to be viewed by the public as having no personal interest or entanglement in any case they handle.
Like Hughes, Farrow said that applies "not just to actual conflicts, but to perceived conflicts" as well.
"It is certainly the kind of case where the general public could conclude there might be an issue," he said.
Property records show this five-unit apartment building, close to the Fredericton campus of UNB, is owned by Court of King's Bench Justice Kathryn Gregory. Earlier this year, Gregory ruled on the issue of how the province regulates rent increases by landlords. (Robert Jones/CBC)
Property records show Gregory and a former spouse purchased an apartment building close to the University of New Brunswick's Fredericton campus in 2002, with Gregory taking sole ownership in 2013.
A tenant leaving the building last week said it caters to students who can rent single rooms for $600 per month, with access to shared kitchen and washroom facilities. There are five units in the building with multiple rentable rooms available in at least some of the units.
Gregory kept the property following her appointment to the bench, which is itself a grey area.
Rules outlined in a guidebook for judicial conduct published by the Canadian Judicial Council discourages judges from being involved in business enterprises.
"Upon appointment, judges must immediately cease practicing law and should divest themselves and remain divested of their interests in commercial and business activities," states the 58-page publication, Ethical Principles for Judges.
The guidebook does say judges can have what it calls "passive" investments that "do not constitute carrying on a business," but cautions that the investment must be "truly passive with little active management required."
Jill Green, the minister responsible for housing in New Brunswick, has said tenants who receive a rent increase above 7.3 per cent in 2023 are automatically entitled to have it spread over multiple years, if they formally request a review. Earlier this year, Justice Kathryn Gregory ruled there is no such automatic right to be found in legislation. (CBC News/Jacques Poitras)
Philip Bryden is a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta and former dean of the University of New Brunswick's law school.
He said owning a rental property might be allowable for a judge under some circumstances but it would have to be carefully organized.
"I would have thought that if an apartment building were held by the judge as a real estate investment, with management of the building being done by a property management company, it might fall into the category of a passive investment," wrote Bryden in an email to CBC News.
"But if the judge was actively involved in letting the premises and the day-to-day management of the property that might well be considered to be carrying on a business."
Beyond the propriety of owning an apartment building, Bryden, Farrow and Hughes all say it would have been important for Justice Gregory to disclose her status as a landlord to alert parties in the case to a potential conflict.
However, it is not clear if that happened.
Richard Devlin, a professor at Dalhousie's Schulich School of Law, said it is not certain that Justice Gregory acted improperly by hearing and ruling on the issue of how the province regulates rent increases by landlords but it is not clear her conduct was free of trouble, either.
"The question is might this situation undermine public confidence in the impartial administration of justice," said Devlin.
"It's really not for me to openly give an opinion on this because I don't have all the facts, but I do think there's enough here to warrant attention by the media and by others."
Attempts to reach Justice Gregory for comment through the Saint John court were referred to the office of Court of King's Bench Chief Justice Tracey DeWare in Moncton.
Last week, Deware's office said the chief justice had received the requests for information, but had not yet provided a response.
Judge who ruled for N.B. landlord in rent-reduction case owns apartment building
CBC
Mon, October 23, 2023
New Brunswick Court of King's Bench Justice Kathryn Gregory, who sided with a landlord in a case involving the way provincial tenancy officers have been phasing-in large rent increases for tenants, owns a five-unit apartment building in Fredericton, property records show.
That does not automatically put her in a conflict of interest to have ruled on the case but a number of legal experts say it is a close enough call to suggest the matter might have been better handled by someone else.
"It's often very fact-specific when we think that line is crossed," said Jula Hughes about when a judge is in a conflict of interest.
"But I think it's important to remember that we care about the appearance of impartiality as much as we care about actual impartiality."
Jula Hughes, dean of law at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay says it is important the public see and believe judges to be acting with complete impartiality when deciding cases. (CBC)
Hughes is the dean of Law at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. She's also a former law professor at the University of New Brunswick and an expert in the field of judicial ethics.
Gregory was appointed to the court of King's Bench in November 2020 following a lengthy career as a New Brunswick Crown prosecutor.
Last spring, a case involving two tenants in Saint John landed in her courtroom.
The tenants had received notices from their landlord of a $200-per-month increase in rent to take effect in March, but applied for a review of that amount with the province's Tenant and Landlord Relations Office (formerly the Residential Tenancies Tribunal).
Two tenants in this six-unit apartment building in Saint John won the right from a tenancy officer to have their 2023 rent increases of $200 spread over three years. The landlord appealed and the case ended up in front of Justice Kathryn Gregory. (Robert Jones/CBC)
A new policy introduced by the province for 2023 allows tenants who receive increases above 7.3 per cent to have the amount phased-in over multiple years.
The tenants had been paying $860 and $900 per month, respectively, and although a tenancy officer assigned to the case found the $200 increase justifiable given market rents in the area, the officer concluded the amount should be phased-in gradually, beginning with a rent increase of $67 per month this year.
"Although I find the [rent increase] notice to be reasonable, I order the increase in rent to be spread over three years," the officer wrote in each of the two cases.
Gregory ruled that decision was unfair to the landlord because the awarding of a phased-in rent increase is discretionary, not automatic, according to her interpretation of the legislation that created the policy. She found the landlord was not given the opportunity to oppose the award and have those views weighed in the officer's decision.
"While there is certainly authority to spread a reasonable rent over several years ... the RTT [Residential Tenancies Tribunal] does not provide any explanation for having exercised the discretion to do so," wrote Gregory.
"It is not an issue of sufficiency of reasons, there are no reasons, period."
No one has publicly questioned the substance of Gregory's decision or reasoning but legal experts say her ruling on an issue that her own apartment building could be subject to at some point is problematic.
Trevor Farrow, dean of law at Osgoode Hall in Toronto, said it is important for judges to be viewed by the public as having no personal interest or entanglement in any case they handle.
Like Hughes, Farrow said that applies "not just to actual conflicts, but to perceived conflicts" as well.
"It is certainly the kind of case where the general public could conclude there might be an issue," he said.
Property records show this five-unit apartment building, close to the Fredericton campus of UNB, is owned by Court of King's Bench Justice Kathryn Gregory. Earlier this year, Gregory ruled on the issue of how the province regulates rent increases by landlords. (Robert Jones/CBC)
Property records show Gregory and a former spouse purchased an apartment building close to the University of New Brunswick's Fredericton campus in 2002, with Gregory taking sole ownership in 2013.
A tenant leaving the building last week said it caters to students who can rent single rooms for $600 per month, with access to shared kitchen and washroom facilities. There are five units in the building with multiple rentable rooms available in at least some of the units.
Gregory kept the property following her appointment to the bench, which is itself a grey area.
Rules outlined in a guidebook for judicial conduct published by the Canadian Judicial Council discourages judges from being involved in business enterprises.
"Upon appointment, judges must immediately cease practicing law and should divest themselves and remain divested of their interests in commercial and business activities," states the 58-page publication, Ethical Principles for Judges.
The guidebook does say judges can have what it calls "passive" investments that "do not constitute carrying on a business," but cautions that the investment must be "truly passive with little active management required."
Jill Green, the minister responsible for housing in New Brunswick, has said tenants who receive a rent increase above 7.3 per cent in 2023 are automatically entitled to have it spread over multiple years, if they formally request a review. Earlier this year, Justice Kathryn Gregory ruled there is no such automatic right to be found in legislation. (CBC News/Jacques Poitras)
Philip Bryden is a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta and former dean of the University of New Brunswick's law school.
He said owning a rental property might be allowable for a judge under some circumstances but it would have to be carefully organized.
"I would have thought that if an apartment building were held by the judge as a real estate investment, with management of the building being done by a property management company, it might fall into the category of a passive investment," wrote Bryden in an email to CBC News.
"But if the judge was actively involved in letting the premises and the day-to-day management of the property that might well be considered to be carrying on a business."
Beyond the propriety of owning an apartment building, Bryden, Farrow and Hughes all say it would have been important for Justice Gregory to disclose her status as a landlord to alert parties in the case to a potential conflict.
However, it is not clear if that happened.
Richard Devlin, a professor at Dalhousie's Schulich School of Law, said it is not certain that Justice Gregory acted improperly by hearing and ruling on the issue of how the province regulates rent increases by landlords but it is not clear her conduct was free of trouble, either.
"The question is might this situation undermine public confidence in the impartial administration of justice," said Devlin.
"It's really not for me to openly give an opinion on this because I don't have all the facts, but I do think there's enough here to warrant attention by the media and by others."
Attempts to reach Justice Gregory for comment through the Saint John court were referred to the office of Court of King's Bench Chief Justice Tracey DeWare in Moncton.
Last week, Deware's office said the chief justice had received the requests for information, but had not yet provided a response.
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