It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
The historic WWII submarine USS Silversides has arrived at Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding for a much-needed drydocking. The sub's last yard period happened during the Cold War, and she needs preservation in order to continue in service as a museum ship. For the first time in 50 years, this decorated icon of the Pacific Theater will come out of the water for steel renewal, sandblasting and painting.
Silversides is a Gato-class diesel-electric attack submarine commissioned on December 15, 1941. The boat entered service eight days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and swiftly deployed to join the war in the Pacific. Over the course of 14 patrols, Silversides attacked and sank 23 Japanese ships and damaged many more. Credited with destroying more than 90,000 tons of Japanese shipping, Silversides ranks in the top-five most successful U.S. Navy submarines of the war. She received 12 battle stars for her wartime service, along with a Presidential Unit Citation, the military's highest honor.
After the war, Silversides retired to a berth in Chicago and became a stationary training vessel. After finishing her service to the Navy, she was taken over by a volunteer-led historic preservation association in 1973, and was gradually restored to habitable condition. She relocated to Muskegon, Michigan, home of the Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum, and has been welcoming visitors there ever since.
Silversides got under way for a long-awaited drydocking on July 13, under tow on a 20-hour voyage to Sturgeon Bay. (Her propellers were removed long ago, but her Fairbanks-Morse diesel engines still run.) Having arrived at Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding, she will undergo a $3.5 million preservation project led by Valkor Energy Services. The National Parks Service is contributing $750,000 to the cost of the work, but private donations make up most of the budget. The museum is still raising funds to close a small gap, but has achieved most of its fundraising goals; donations may be made at https://silversidesmuseum.org/dry-dock-uss-silversides/
Friday, July 10, 2026
Meta bets $13 billion on Alberta with first Canadian data centre
Nate Glubish, Alberta’s minister of technology and innovation (left), and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speak to press following the announcement on July 8, 2026. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Meta is building its first Canadian data centre in Alberta, a campus worth more than $13 billion that the province calls one of the largest private investments in Canadian history and Meta’s biggest anywhere outside the United States.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced the project at a news conference in Calgary on Wednesday, midway through the Stampede, alongside two ministers, the mayor of Sturgeon County and Meta’s data centre chief.
The 2.9-million-square-foot facility will sit on 1,750 acres in Sturgeon County, inside Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. It will be powered in part by the Greenlight Electricity Centre, the $4.6-billion natural gas plant that Pembina Pipeline, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor announced last week.
The province says the campus will create more than 3,000 construction jobs and 300 permanent ones, and return about $250 million a year to Albertans through royalties, taxes, levies and fees. Meta is putting roughly $60 million into local roads and water infrastructure.
Alberta Minister of Technology and Innovation Nate Glubish, speaks at The Princeton in Calgary on July 8, 2026. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Alberta courted Meta for two years and closed the deal without incentives
The first phase draws 970 megawatts of electricity, enough to power a mid-sized city. The campus is designed to grow to 1,800 megawatts, more than the city of Edmonton uses at peak.
The co-located Greenlight plant is what lets the site reach that ceiling without drawing more from the public grid. Under Alberta’s rules, Meta pays for the new power generation and the grid upgrades its own connection requires, rather than passing those costs to other customers.
The province says that arrangement will lower bills for everyone else.
“In this case, in this project, Albertans could see a reduction of up to 6% on the transmission portion of their utility bill,” said RJ Sigurdson, Alberta’s minister of affordability and utilities.
RJ Sigurdson, Alberta minister of affordability and utilities. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Every Albertan who uses electricity pays a share of the cost of building and maintaining the province’s high-voltage grid, the network of transmission lines that moves power across long distances. On a power bill, that cost is the transmission charge and the total is roughly fixed, so it gets divided among everyone connected to the system.
Sigurdson said that when a customer as large as Meta joins the grid and takes on a big portion of that cost, the amount left for households and businesses to cover shrinks, which is where the 6% reduction comes from.
“Without this grid connected pathway, Alberta may not have landed this massive new tenant,” he said.
Meta’s Gary Demasi speaks to press in Calgary. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Nate Glubish, minister of technology and innovation, said he first met Meta’s data centre team two years ago at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters, where Alberta was not yet on its list of places to build.
The province’s answer was a system it calls the concierge, a single provincial contact that walks a company through the electricity regulator, the grid operator, the utilities commission and the municipality at once instead of leaving it to file with each separately. Glubish said that team is now working with about 60 more projects, several of them at the gigawatt scale of the Meta campus.
Glubish said the province used no grants, tax credits or incentives to attract Meta, and that Alberta instead wrote a levy so data centres pay a share back to the public. He said Meta spent two years and hundreds of millions of dollars on engineering, permitting and consultation before the announcement.
Nate Glubish is Alberta’s minister of technology and innovation. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
“Meta is the customer, they are the user, they are the engineer, they are the designer, they are the builder, they are the operator,” Glubish said. “Whereas the proposed project in Olds is a developer who has an idea and believes that if they build it, someone will come and buy it.”
Smith repeated the pitch Alberta has been making for more than a year: affordable electricity, flexible power generation, a cool climate that eases the job of cooling servers, a skilled workforce and homegrown AI expertise.
“Artificial intelligence is transforming the global economy, and Alberta is making sure we lead rather than follow,” said Premier Danielle Smith. “We created the right conditions to attract world-leading investments while protecting the interests of Albertans.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks at The Princeton in Calgary on July 8, 2026. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Meta’s pledges, and its record elsewhere
Water has been a flashpoint in Alberta’s data centre fights. The servers that fill these buildings run hot, and many centres cool them by evaporating large volumes of water, pulling from the same supply households and farms rely on.
Meta led with water for that reason.
The company said its Sturgeon campus, which does not have a completion date yet, will use a closed-loop liquid cooling system with dry cooling, which recirculates a fixed volume of liquid instead of constantly drawing new water, and needs no operational water for cooling. On-site water is limited to washrooms, fire protection and equipment maintenance.
“The water that’s used by this data centre, it’s less than a typical golf course in Alberta over the course of a year,” said Gary Demasi, vice-president of data centre strategy and development at Meta.
Gary Demasi is the vice-president of data centre strategy and development at Meta. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Meta committed to being water positive by 2030, meaning the company will fund restoration and conservation work that returns more water to local watersheds than the site consumes. Its first step in Alberta is a partnership with the conservation group ALUS and local farmers to protect 200 acres of grassland, trees and wetland in the North Saskatchewan River watershed, land that stores and filters water for the basin.
“We look forward to putting down roots in this community and building a strong and positive partnership for many years to come,” he said.
Meta has made versions of that promise where it has built before, and the record is mixed.
In Richland Parish, Louisiana, the site of Meta’s Hyperion campus, the company secured the land through a shell company and pushed state tax legislation forward under non-disclosure agreements before the public knew it was involved, according to a Bloomberg investigation. After regulators approved the gas plants built to power the campus, consumer and environmental groups asked the state to investigate whether ratepayers would be left exposed if Meta walked away.
In Alberta, the rules came first.
The province set its data centre requirements before opening the door to investment, making projects bring their own power and pay for their own infrastructure, and the county zoned and reviewed the Sturgeon site before the announcement, so Meta is funding its own power and grid work rather than leaving costs to other ratepayers.
The site also sits inside a zone set aside for heavy industry decades ago, with buffer zones between the plants and homes and no farmland or housing on the land itself. Sturgeon County Mayor, Alanna Hnatiw, said the county held the project to its controls on power, water and land use.
Meta said it will offset the campus’s electricity use by paying for an equal amount of clean power to be added to the grid elsewhere, a common industry practice, though the electricity that actually runs the site comes largely from natural gas.
Alanna Hnatiw, Mayor of Sturgeon County. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
The country’s biggest AI campus
Smith said the facility will power Meta’s own technologies, including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and its AI products.
Last week Meta said it may start selling excess computing capacity to outside customers, a business it is still weighing. But no one at the announcement said whether Canadian companies would be able to buy time on the Sturgeon campus.
Data sovereignty is the deeper question, as putting the hardware on Alberta soil does not put it under Canadian control.
The U.S. Cloud Act lets American authorities compel a U.S. company like Meta to hand over data it controls no matter where that data physically sits, so a data centre in Sturgeon County does not by itself keep what runs inside it under Canadian law.
The Government of Canada’s own cloud policy states that as long as a provider operating in Canada is subject to the laws of a foreign country, Canada will not have full sovereignty over its data. Storing data in Canada gives residency but sovereignty depends on who controls the data and which laws bind the company that holds it.
At the press conference today, Glubish said Meta is the first of many projects the province expects, and it now has a reference customer to point to as it courts the rest.
Alberta puts $50 million behind Amii’s AI research
Cam Linke, Amii CEO, speaks at the funding announcement at Platform Calgary. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Today, the province of Alberta announced a $50 million investment over five years for the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), home to two decades of reinforcement learning research.
Aimed at accelerating AI adoption across public services and industry, part of the plan includes leveraging the newly-established Alberta Intellectual Property Office to ensure IP is owned, protected, and commercialized in the province.
Amii is one of Canada’s three national AI institutes, alongside Mila in Quebec and the Vector Institute in Ontario, operating under the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy. Established in 2002, it has a focus on reinforcement learning, a field in which the province is recognized as a world leader.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced $50 million in funding for Amii. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Five ministries, one investment
When a government funds something like this, it’s often one ministry writing the cheque.
This time it’s five.
The ministries of Technology and Innovation and Advanced Education are co-leads, investing $15 million each, with Assisted Living and Social Services at $10 million. Primary and Preventative Health Services and Education and Childcare are each contributing $5 million.
“Alberta has been a leader in the AI space for decades, and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute… has played a major role in keeping Alberta on top,” said Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, announcing the funding at Platform Calgary. “They have worked closely with the government over the years to see how AI can be implemented into our everyday lives.”
She explained how the funding is the work of five ministries together, “because we know the significant impact that this could have on making the lives of Albertans better.”
Nate Glubish, Alberta’s minister of technology and innovation, credited Myles McDougall, Minister of Advanced Education as an equal partner on the file.
Nate Glubish, Alberta’s Minister of Technology and Innovation, speaks at the Amii funding announcement at Platform Calgary. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
“I couldn’t have done it alone. I found some of the money in my budget, but my good friend and colleague [McDougall] here is an equal partner with me in that through his budget,” Glubish said.
Glubish also pointed to the province’s history with Amii. “Alberta began investing in AI research more than two decades ago. That early bet paid off,” he said, noting how Amii’s chief scientific advisor, Dr. Richard Sutton, was a co-recipient of the 2024 A.M. Turing Award, frequently dubbed ‘the Nobel Prize of computing.’
“This $50-million investment is a vote of confidence in that team,” Glubish added. “It will put AI to work for the people of this province: better healthcare, faster public services, and more Alberta companies solving real problems.”
McDougall said that this technology is helping modernize systems for skilled tradespeople.
“We apply AI to apprenticeship delivery, streamlining the path to graduation, cutting the paperwork for employers, and getting Alberta’s skilled trade system ready for the workforce demand that’s coming.”
He also gave credit to Alberta’s post-secondary system.
“Our universities, colleges, and polytechnics are training the next generation, the engineers, the entrepreneurs, researchers, and skilled professionals who will lead in an AI-driven economy,” he added. “This investment backs them and strengthens an ecosystem where students can learn, researchers can lead, companies can scale right here in Alberta.”
Myles McDougall, Alberta’s Minister of Advanced Education, speaks at the Amii funding announcement at Platform Calgary. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Bigger than a funding announcement
Evan Solomon, Canada’s Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, was in attendance at the funding announcement, using the stage to put Alberta’s investment in a national context.
“We have classically, as a country, been great at research, and we’ve sucked at commercialization,” he said. “Alberta has led the way to show how we have to do that better.”
Solomon cited a commercialization gap, where companies often end up relocating outside of the country, taking their talent and patents with them.
“We are losing our best IP and brains, so we are stopping that,” he added, later tying that loss to a broader argument about sovereignty.
“If we don’t build the infrastructure here, we’re going to have to rent it from someone else,” he said. “If we don’t build the innovation here, we’re going to have to buy it from someone else. And if we don’t make the rules here, we have to follow someone else’s.”
Evan Solomon, Canada’s Minister of AI and Digital Innovation, speaks at the Amii funding announcement at Platform Calgary. — Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Finally, Solomon revealed a $1.8 billion talent attraction strategy to attract 1000 of the top researchers and their labs to Canada.
“We need the talent to come to Canada,” he said. “It’s the best place to be, it’s the best place to build, and it’s the best place to start a company.”
Building on two decades of research
According to the province, Alberta’s government has invested about $100 million in Amii since 2002. Through its work under the province’s first Technology and Innovation Strategy, Amii has worked with 786 companies to adopt or advance AI, supported 318 startups, and reached 1.2 million people through its literacy programs.
The institute currently has more than 500 active researchers and 71 Amii Fellows/Canada CIFAR AI Chairs.
“We and our strategy have promised to do a free AI literacy course for every Canadian, because we believe everybody should have access to literacy, and we’re going to give an AI tool and agent to every post-secondary student in Canada for five years, free and available, because they need tools to build,” said Solomon, giving kudos to Amii CEO Cam Linke on his work with training and education.
“What’s happened here in Alberta at Amii is the model for the nation.”
The new Amii funding is meant to work against the ‘brain drain” pattern Solomon described. With the Alberta Intellectual Property Office, patents developed with public funds are kept in the province, framing the investment as a way to grow new jobs, attract private investment, and keep ideas developed in Alberta from moving elsewhere.
Photo by Jennifer Friesen, Digital Journal
Linke said the investment builds on that foundation.
“This investment enables Amii to strengthen the foundations of Alberta’s AI ecosystem by supporting startups, accelerating AI adoption across industry and the public sector, and building the AI literacy needed to prepare the workforce of the future,” he said.
“Together, we are ensuring Alberta remains a destination for AI talent, innovation and investment while creating lasting economic and societal benefits for Albertans.”
Healthcare is a priority
Justin Wright, minister of primary and preventative health services, said the investment is meant to support faster, better-targeted care.
“Alberta’s primary and preventative health system depends on getting the right information to the right provider at the right time,” he said.
“By investing in Amii, we are supporting made-in-Alberta AI solutions that can help improve screening, earlier detection, system navigation and front-line decision-making. Used responsibly, this technology can reduce administrative burden, strengthen prevention-focused care and help Albertans access timely, high-quality services closer to home.”
Linke closed the announcement by tying the funding to Amii’s origins.
“When you look at the history of Amii, it was an ambitious thing back in 2002 for the province to invest in AI,” he said. “We’re excited for what we can do with the province, and what we’re going to do with this announcement, not just to be the place that powers AI globally, but also the place that produces the researchers, the talent, and the startups that are going to solve the world’s biggest problems right here.”
Thursday, July 09, 2026
Meta plans biggest AI data centre outside US in Canada with $9.1bn investment
Copyright Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Meta will pour more than $9.1bn (€8.4bn) into a new artificial intelligence data centre in Alberta, Canada — its largest outside the United States — powered by a dedicated natural gas plant.
Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta said Wednesday it will invest more than $9.1 billion (€8.4bn) to build its first artificial intelligence data centre in Canada and its largest outside the United States.
The facility will be built in Sturgeon County, Alberta, and powered by a natural gas-fired plant being developed by a consortium that includes Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Ltd.
Technology and Innovation Minister Nate Glubish called the project "a big deal for Alberta," saying the province had created a regulatory framework to attract data centre investment.
Alberta has been courting hyperscale data centres as demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure surges.
But the rapid growth of AI has fuelled concerns about the vast amounts of electricity and water such facilities require, as well as their strain on power grids and nearby communities.
Because Alberta's electricity grid cannot support multiple large AI data centres, the province is prioritising projects that build or secure their own power generation, as Meta plans to do.
Meta said the data centre will use a closed-loop cooling system that will not draw water from surrounding sources. The company also plans to invest $42 million (€37m) in local infrastructure, including roads and water systems.
Last week, Pembina Pipeline, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor Asset Management announced they would proceed with the Greenlight Electricity Centre in Sturgeon County.
Meta was identified Wednesday as the customer. The 932-megawatt power plant is expected to begin operating in the second half of 2030.
Thursday, July 02, 2026
ALBERTA
Green light for Greenlight: Pembina, partners go ahead with gas plant for data centre
Pembina NGL pipeline warning signs outside the Inter Pipeline Heartland Petrochemical Complex under construction in Strathcona County, Alberta, Canada, on Wednesday, June 2, 2021.
CALGARY — Pembina Pipeline Corp. and two partners have given the go-ahead to the Greenlight Electricity Centre, a natural gas plant serving a data centre customer.
Pembina, Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor Asset Management expect the cost of the project to come in at $4.6 billion.
The 932-megawatt plant would be built in Sturgeon County, part of Alberta’s Industrial Heartland region north of Edmonton, with startup targeted for the second half of 2030.
Data centres house the computer hardware required to power various tech applications, and their scale has ballooned with the boom in artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
Alberta has been actively trying to court so-called hyperscale developers, like Meta and Google, to set up shop in the province, but its electricity grid currently does not have enough capacity to accommodate several such projects.
So Alberta is prioritizing projects that build their own power generation, like what the Greenlight partners are providing.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 2, 2026.
Monday, May 25, 2026
Chamber of Shipping of America Honors Crews for Maritime Safety Performance
The Chamber of Shipping of America recognized 48 Crowley-owned or -managed vessels with 2026 Jones F. Devlin Safety Awards for operating at least two consecutive years without a lost-time injury.
The Chamber of Shipping of America has recognized 48 Crowley-owned or -managed vessels with 2026 Jones F. Devlin Safety Awards for achieving a combined 427 years of service without a lost-time injury.
The Jones F. Devlin Safety Award recognizes merchant vessels that operate for at least two consecutive years without a crew member experiencing a lost-time injury. The awarded Crowley vessels include tugs, barges, commercial container ships and tank vessels operating globally.
The Chamber also honored the crews of El Coquà and Stena Immaculate with Ship Safety Achievement Awards for lifesaving and emergency response actions during separate incidents at sea in 2025.
The crew of El CoquÃ, Crowley’s U.S.-flagged combination container/roll-on/roll-off ship serving Puerto Rico and the mainland, was recognized for helping rescue four sailors from the SV Mariposa after the sailboat struck a submerged reef and sank near Silver Bank north of the Dominican Republic. After receiving a U.S. Coast Guard distress alert, El CoquÃ’s crew altered course, navigated challenging conditions and worked with the Coast Guard and a nearby vessel to bring the sailors to safety.
The U.S. crew of Stena Immaculate, a tanker previously managed by Crowley through its joint venture with Stena Bulk USA, was honored for its emergency response after their anchored vessel was struck by another ship in the North Sea. Despite a ruptured cargo tank and fire, the crew acted quickly to protect the safety of all 23 mariners, contain the fire to help mitigate further damage, and evacuate.
“We thank the Chamber of Shipping of America for recognizing Crowley vessels and crews for their commitment to safety,” said Meaghan Atkinson, vice president of safety and environmental assurance at Crowley. “These awards reflect the dedication to safety our mariners demonstrate every day and the skill they bring to every operation, from routine work to emergency response. Congratulations to our mariners and shoreside teams for this well-deserved recognition.”
The annual awards were presented during the Chamber of Shipping of America’s Ship Safety Award Luncheon in May. The event recognizes vessels and crews across the maritime industry for outstanding safety performance.
The products and services herein described in this press release are not endorsed by The Maritime Executive.
Fincantieri's US Shipyards Recognized by Shipbuilders Council of America
Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding, Fincantieri ACE Marine, and Fincantieri Marine Repair honored for significant safety achievement, accident prevention, and continuous improvement
Fincantieri reaffirmed its leadership position in advanced shipbuilding and maritime innovation, announcing that three of its U.S. shipyards — Fincantieri ACE Marine (Green Bay, Wisconsin), Fincantieri Marine Repair (Jacksonville, Florida), and Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding (Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin) — have received national safety awards from the Shipbuilders Council of America (SCA) for 2025.
The awards received reflect a structured and continuous approach to safety, regarded as a core pillar of the Group’s industrial culture and a key enabler of operational excellence across its U.S. operations.
Fincantieri ACE Marine and Fincantieri Marine Repair were awarded the “Excellence in Safety” recognition, granted to shipyards that achieve a Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR), one of the industry’s key indicators for measuring workplace safety performance, below the industry average established by the Shipbuilders Council of America. The result confirms the robustness of the Group’s safety management systems and its consistent focus on the highest operational standards.
In parallel, Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding and Fincantieri Marine Repair received the “Improvement in Safety” award, reserved for shipyards achieving a TRIR reduction of at least 10 percent compared to the previous year. The recognition highlights the effectiveness of the continuous improvement processes implemented and the active role played by teams in reinforcing responsible and shared behaviors on a daily basis. In this context, the award represents a particularly significant milestone for Fincantieri Marine Repair, which receives a national safety recognition for the first time.
Fincantieri ACE Marine was also honored with the “Significant Safety Achievement” award, standing out as one of only three U.S. shipyards to have maintained a TRIR below 1.0 in 2025. This exceptional result attests to the systemic integration of safety within production processes and day?to?day operational management.
Taken together, these recognitions reflect the Group’s strategic focus on fostering an industrial culture in which safety is a foundational value, cutting across all functions and embedded in every phase of shipbuilding and ship repair activities. Within this framework, Fincantieri’s U.S. shipyards contribute to setting reference standards for the industry, underpinned by a shared commitment to responsibility, trust and respect for people.
The recognitions also reflect Fincantieri’s broader commitment to continuously strengthening its safety culture through innovation, workforce engagement and increasingly proactive prevention models across the Group’s industrial operations. This approach supports the progressive evolution of safety management from a reactive to a more predictive model, leveraging continuous improvement, data analysis and advanced technologies to reinforce prevention across all activities.
The Shipbuilders Council of America is the national trade association representing the U.S. shipbuilding, maintenance and repair industry. Its annual safety awards program is based on rigorous criteria, including TRIR performance, and underscores the importance of workforce protection and operational discipline as pillars of the entire industrial sector.
The products and services herein described in this press release are not endorsed by The Maritime Executive.
