Nova Scotia’s police watchdog says it will not lay charges against a Halifax Regional Police officer after a man was injured during an arrest in Dartmouth last year.

The Serious Incident Response Team, or SiRT, was called in to investigate the case from December 11.

SiRT says officers were called to Wyse Road in Dartmouth after a man was seen there who was wanted on offences including flight from police and theft. Police also believed the man “may have been involved in a stabbing” according to SiRT.

The watchdog says the suspect ran from police and squared up to fight the officer who managed to catch up with him.

“The officer brought the male to the ground and a struggle took place as he continued to resist arrest,” reads the release from SiRT. “The officer delivered strikes to the male’s face to gain control. Other officers then arrived to assist in the arrest and take the male into custody.”

The suspect was diagnosed with a broken collarbone.

SiRT says it found no reasonable grounds that the officer acted with excessive force.

Nunavut Sen. Nancy Karetak-Lindell has joined the Independent Senators Group, a move she says aligns with her approach to parliamentary work and representation for the North.

Formed in 2016, it’s the largest group in the Senate and operates independently of political parties. Karetak-Lindell’s joining brings the total number of group members to 42.

In total, there are 105 representatives in the Senate.

“I feel this is the group that has the same philosophy as mine,” Karetak-Lindell said Tuesday in a news release issued by the senators’ group. “Being the only senator for a given northern territory, you count on colleagues to support you in having your voice heard.”

Karetak-Lindell, who is from Arviat, was appointed to the Senate on Dec. 19, succeeding former senator Dennis Patterson who retired in December 2023.  She previously made history in 1997 as a Liberal MP — the first female MP for the Eastern Arctic, and the first representative for the new Nunavut riding.

Due to the prorogation of Parliament in January and its subsequent dissolution for the April 28 federal election, Karetak-Lindell has yet to be officially sworn into office.

Additional charges have been laid by RCMP NL’s Major Crime Unit (MCU) against 66-year-old Wayne Harold Hynes of Port au Port West.

Hynes was charged with attempted murder on March 17 in relation to an incident that occurred in Port au Port on February 21. A snowmobiler was shot while traveling across Gravel’s Pond and was left with life-threatening injuries.

In continuing with the investigation, yesterday, police laid the following additional criminal charges against Hynes:

• Using a firearm in the commission of a criminal offence
• Careless use of a firearm
• Pointing a firearm
• Discharging a firearm with intent to endanger the life of an individual
• Assault with a weapon
• Aggravated assault

Hynes remains in custody at this time. His next court appearance is March 31.

The investigation is continuing.

Environment Canada says an Alberta clipper will make highway driving treacherous.

The leader of the province’s NDP is chiming in on a recent VOCM Question of the Day which shows an overwhelming majority of respondents support the removal of the HST from light and power bills.

Newfoundland Power customers were shocked last month when power bills came in considerably higher than expected.

The bills appeared to be so out of whack that the PUB asked the utility to review its billing processes and report back. Newfoundland Power defended the higher than usual bills, saying they were the result of colder temperatures, increased billing days and high winds.

Yesterday’s VOCM Question of the Day asked whether government should consider removing the HST from light and power bills. The tax adds another 15 per cent to each and every power bill. Ninety-six percent of those who responded said yes.

NDP Leader Jim Dinn told VOCM Open Line with Paddy Daly that government rejected a private member’s motion brought forward by the NDP asking that the provincial portion of the HST from all forms of home heating.

“Unfortunately” says Dinn, “the only people who voted in favour of our motion happened to be Jordon (Brown) and me.” He says at the time, government indicated that it wasn’t possible because the HST is a federal matter and the province is tied to it. “Yet we saw a three-month HST holiday…in the early part of time year, so I believe anything is possible.”

The federal election is underway and voters in Newfoundland will have noticed that some ridings have changed boundaries and names.

St. John’s South-Mount Pearl is now known as Cape Spear, the Coast of Bays-Central-Notre Dame is now simply Central Newfoundland, and Bonavista-Burin-Trinity is now Terra Nova-The Peninsulas.

Every ten years electoral boundaries are reviewed, and some boundaries have also shifted this year, as the result of changes made by the Electoral Boundaries Commission.

The number of ridings in the province remains the same at seven.

Francoise Enguehard says voters will be able to check to see in which riding they will be casting their ballot by going online.

She says voters can check at www.elections.ca by entering their postal code. Otherwise election cards outlining your riding and where you need to go to cast your ballot will be distributed through Canada Post in the coming days.

A 29-year-old male inmate from the Saskatoon Correctional Centre died in hospital on March 23  after being found unresponsive in his unit on March 18.

Corrections staff performed life-saving measures before EMS transported him to the hospital.

The wait was finally over for students at Sherwood Elementary in Charlottetown as they stepped into their brand-new school — the first fully electric, net-zero-ready school in Prince Edward Island.

A young St. John’s performer will be featured on American Idol this weekend.

Twenty-four-year-old Will Carter has been playing music since he was able to walk.

Carter applied to compete on the show and after a series of Zoom calls, he got the invitation to travel to New York to show off for judges on the American Idol stage including well-known stars like Lionel Ritchie and Carrie Underwood.

He admitted on VOCM Open Line with Paddy Daly to some nerves during the experience.

“Going into that room is definitely nerve-wrecking” says Carter, “you’ve got some big, heavy hitters in the industry listening to you sing which…definitely took a lot of courage to do.”

Carter calls it a great opportunity that he hopes will open some doors and was a great experience in playing under pressure.

The show airs this Sunday at 9:30 Newfoundland time on ABC.

A Calgary man is facing charges after a collision on Glenmore Trail in December led to the death of an 18-year-old passenger, police said Wednesday.

A Belleville, Ont. man has been charged with assault after he stabbed a security officer and himself in the emergency department at Belleville General Hospital on Tuesday, according to Belleville Police.

The RNC is searching for missing person, Romaine Keefe, reported missing from St. John’s.

The 40-year-old female is described as being approximately 5’4” tall, and 225 lbs, with brown hair and brown eyes. Keefe was last seen on March 22 at 1 p.m. in the area of Cochrane Street. There is no clothing description available.

Anyone with information pertaining to the whereabouts of Keefe is asked to contact the RNC at 709-729-8000. To remain anonymous, contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

They say churches are more than just bricks and mortar, and one minister has taken that to a whole new level.

Reverend James Spencer of St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Clarenville created a Lego replica of the churches, a labour of love that took him a little over a year.

Spencer says he’s always had an interest in Lego and decided to give the church a try.

He says some of the Lego blocks were hard to find, and many of them had to be shipped in from away.

“The whole reason why I built this was, basically, the church is, it’s a beautiful building, and I love being able to work in it,” he said.

“The main inspiration for building this was as a thank you to the wonderful people of my parish. They are a fantastic group, since I’ve been here, I’ve been here a year and a half now, and I did this basically for them.”

Reverend Spencer also completed a similar Lego model of his church in Burgoyne’s Cove, and each set is on display in their corresponding churches.

The NWT government confirmed the means it will use to end the territory's customized carbon tax and set out the consequences residents can expect.

The McGill Community for Lifelong Learning has been around for 35 years. It offers in-person and online lectures on various subjects.

Liberal Leader Mark Carney says the blunders he made during the third day of campaigning were a case of expressing himself poorly in French – and not a lack of knowledge of Quebec.

During a speech in Nova Scotia on Tuesday afternoon, Carney described Liberal candidate Nathalie Provost as a survivor of the Concordia University massacre rather than Polytechnique Montréal, where 14 women were shot dead in 1989.

The Liberal leader also called Provost by the wrong name, adding a syllable to her family name — calling her “Pronovost” instead.

Carney defended himself Wednesday when pressed by reporters.

“First of all, I regret it greatly,” he said. “It’s clear that I expressed myself poorly. And my respect and gratitude to Nathalie Provost for joining our team and working with her. I love Quebec. I’m not from Quebec, that’s obvious. I just warned, it’s obvious that my French is far from perfect. I love Quebec, the language, the culture, the history, the initiative, the businesses of Quebec. I’m very involved in Quebec and Quebec issues.

“And I spent more days in Quebec during the (leadership) campaign than any other province, for example.”

The 1989 mass shooting is impressed on the psyches of Quebecers, with solemn tributes every year in the lead-up to Dec. 6. Knowing about the shooting is important to those in the province, with even Quebec’s biggest stars not immune from backlash.

“The horrors of December 6, the massacre at Polytechnique, are very much with us, and the lessons are still being learned,” Carney said Wednesday.

The Liberal leader also said he surrounds himself with Quebecers, listing out six ministers from La Belle Province on his cabinet, and a series of advisers on the campaign trail.

“We have a team of over 150 people now, a large team, and a strong team from Quebec,” Carney said.

“I have very strong ties to Quebec society. Of course, I’m not from Quebec, not all of them are from Quebec. I’m from Alberta, I was born in the north, and my French is good, but it’s not perfect.”

More coming

The post Mark Carney on back foot after getting Polytechnique school, massacre survivor names wrong appeared first on CityNews Winnipeg.

It is great to have The Courier back.

The Saint Croix Courier was a central part of my life in my childhood years and early adulthood. Since then, it was something that I happily took for granted in the 40-plus years since I left my childhood home in St. George – until it dwindled and then wasn’t around anymore.

As I child, I have vivid memories of my maternal grandmother Della Maxwell lovingly rolling and packaging past issues of the then-once-weekly paper to mail to her daughters who lived with their husbands and families in Ontario. I also have vivid memories of what made The Courier so vital and real.

It was the one place to get breakdowns of local news – the local perspective on provincial and national issues and the vibrant local communities of a couple of generations ago when few travelled from town to go to work and most spent the majority of their hours living, shopping, playing, learning, and being together in the same place. 

As a child, a visit to “the city” (Saint John), “the capitol”, or “the states” (Calais) was not routine. We learned about community events from The Courier. It was also the place where you got all the local “news” of social activities in columns like the Woodland News (penned by the legendary Grace Ober). 

The column that was most directly linked to my childhood experience was the St. George Shorts. That column was written by Helen Rubin, an energetic septuagenarian who stopped at nothing to get the news. She even brought a pad of paper to the Communion rail at St. Mark’s Anglican Church to get a scoop from members of the choir as she entered the chancel before arriving at the Communion rail. (I do not make this up.) As teenagers who witnessed all of this, a group of us silently dubbed her “Scoop” and some witty adults renamed the column Helen’s Dirty Shorts.

Here is an entry from the late 1960s:

Wilfred Langmaid of Canal entertained 10 of his school friends recently, the occasion being his seventh birthday. The children were accompanied by Wilfred’s father. Following the movie, the children gathered at the Langmaid home for a birthday supper.

From a couple of years later:

Mr. & Mrs. W.R. Langmaid and son Wilfred, accompanied by Mrs. Leroy Maxwell of Canal, have returned home after a motor trip through the Cabot Trail and the Annapolis Valley. While on their trip they also visited Mr. Langmaid’s aunt, Miss Corona Nelson of Truro, NS, as well as the Alexander Graham Bell Museum at Beddeck and Fort Beausejour National Historic Park at Aulac.

My personal involvement with The Courier team began in 1976, when high school English teachers and sports coaches encouraged me to try my hand at writing local sports news for Eastern Charlotte Regional High, which morphed in to the then brand-spanking new

Fundy High School in 1977. I also covered other local sports events, as well as one sad scoop – assigned to me by the editor Phil Johnson since full-time staff members were living in St. Stephen and St. Andrews – a news story on the fire that destroyed the original St. George Legion Hall in the late 1970s. The pay was scant — $25.00 per month in total – but I had an open canvas as I gave back to the school while researching and writing reports to give a public eye to local student athletes. 

When I left St. George to attend UNB, the junior high basketball coach Bruce Eagles wrote a very kind letter to the editor which included these words:

(Wilfred’s) reporting has been a great benefit to all the sports programs, especially at the school age level. He has provided the athletes of these programs a chance to be recognized by their family, friends, and communities. On numerous occasions, I have seen athletes run out on Wednesday to buy a Courier so they could be placed on the bulletin board.

The tabula rasa I always enjoyed at The Courier with Phil Johnson and his successor Julian Walker led to the beginning of a music review column in 1978 (called On The Record) and an opinion page op-ed column in 1979 (dubbed Impressions). In hindsight, neither were that great at the time, but I now had a venue for writing, a reason to hone my skills, and eventually the moxie to bring some tear sheets of record reviews with me to the Fredericton daily paper.

My time at The Saint Croix Courier led to a 37-year run as a freelancer for The Daily Gleaner in Fredericton, writing music columns for all of these years and penning an opinion page column for over a decade. I became, dare I say, a very effective music journalist with a unique voice, and an opinion page columnist who had a blog before there were blogs.

Meanwhile, I always read The Courier over the years, whether it was home visiting my parents in St. George, as a graduate student in Toronto visiting my paternal aunt, a faithful subscriber who had moved to Toronto in the late 1940s, or having a break at The Harriet Irving

Library at UNB over these past two decades. I am thrilled as can be that The Courier is back.

Why? The reason is simple. There is a real place for home-town journalism exploring local interests – in fact, a huge void – and there are people still hungry for a touch of home – even if it comes in the form of dirty shorts.

Long may you run, The Saint Croix Courier.

Wilfred Langmaid is Student Advocate in Student Affairs and Services at the University of New Brunswick and Lecturer in Biology at St. Thomas University. He was a freelance journalist for The Daily Gleaner for 37 years and for The Courier for 11 years.

Louise Bridge

The Louise Bridge is set to close on Friday, March 28 for a one-day repair to the structure’s bearings.

The City of Winnipeg says the bridge will close to traffic in both directions from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Pedestrian access on the bridge will be maintained to the west sidewalk during the closure.

The bridge will remain open for the morning and afternoon rush periods. Motorists should use either the Provencher Bridge or Disraeli Bridges to cross the river during the closure period.

The RNC is warning the public of the presence of a synthetic opioid, Protonitazine, which is being distributed on the illicit market. Through a toxicology report connected to a recent sudden death on the Northeast Avalon, the RNC has confirmed the presence of the synthetic opioid that is three times more potent than fentanyl, which is known to have fatal effects in minute doses.

This investigation has determined that Protonitazine was obtained on the illicit market, sold as Dilaudid. The pill form of Protonitazine appears almost identical to a Dilaudid pill.

The RNC is advising drug users to use extreme caution when using illicit drugs given there are no controls in place to confirm the validity of the content of  the substances.