When Monisha Sharma looked into swim lessons for her daughter, she decided to take an unconventional route to save costs.

Rather than enrolling in a formal program, the Toronto woman joined together with a group of neighbours who pooled funds to hire a private instructor at a recreation centre.

Sharma figured swimming and soccer, which her four-year-old also recently picked up, would be “the two cheap programs” compared with other youth sports options like hockey. She has quickly learned how expensive any program can be.

As Canadians cope with rising costs in all corners of their lives, experts say kids’ athletic programs are no exception, making it more difficult for families to keep their children active at an affordable price.

“When you look at the rising costs, all these things add up very quickly — ‘Oh, it’s only $50 for this or $100 for this.’ And then you’re looking at thousands, which is shocking to me; thousands of dollars on an annual basis,” Sharma said.

She estimated a final price tag ranging from $700 to $1,000 to keep a young child in soccer for a full year, including annual expenses for equipment such as new shoes.

But costs at the beginner level pale in comparison to what awaits parents as their kids get older, especially if they want to play at more advanced levels of a particular sport.

Chris Scheele, an Edmonton-based financial planner at Align Wealth, said fees can quickly snowball to amounts “that families are not prepared for.”

“I think a lot of people are feeling like it’s harder and harder to afford,” said Scheele, who has spent much of his career advising parents on how to budget for their kids’ high-level sports journeys.

“They really want their kids to have that experience, but the cost is one thing that’s preventing it in some cases.”

More competitive leagues may entail travel tournaments with hotel stays, more ice or field rental fees, and even higher quality equipment. That’s on top of the greater time commitment, with practices and games not necessarily confined to the weekend or evenings.

“I think the often-underestimated piece is the cost escalation over the years,” Scheele said.

“If you decide to go to a competitive strain of soccer, the cost difference for a 14-year-old versus an eight-year-old is probably pretty extreme. The further you progress into it, the older you are, the more time commitment, so the more costs for coaching fees or facility bookings or team travel.”

If it seems a child has the potential to pursue their favourite sport at a competitive level over the long term, Scheele recommends families start preparing early for the financial burden. Just like planning for retirement, he said it’s important to have a plan in place that accounts for both known and unknown costs associated with their child’s athletic path.

He also noted there are many assistance programs in Canada that aim to provide financial support for families in need with kids in sport.

One of those, KidSport Canada, helped more than 40,200 kids participate in athletic programs last year by paying a portion of their registration fees — an amount that usually falls between $300 and $400 per child, said its CEO Greg Ingalls.

“We’re seeing that the cost of sport is rising as is the cost of living, and with that, obviously, there’s going to be a larger percentage of families that can’t afford to get their kids into sport or are choosing to spend their dollars in other places,” Ingalls said.

Sharma, a personal finance expert who is chief revenue officer of Fig Financial, said parents are increasingly facing difficult decisions about prioritizing and limiting after-school activities in order to make ends meet.

Compounding the problem is the expectation that children start early in a given sport — both to confirm they are actually interested in continuing, as well as to avoid falling behind their peers if they pick it up late.

“You can’t wait until they’re 12, 13 to enroll them in some of these programs because by then it’s too late,” she said.

“So there is a tremendous amount of parental guilt attached with this. Every parent wants to do their best by their kids.”

She said one of the major consequences to the rising cost of athletic programs is that “it pushes out kids that are not superstars.”

“If you’re a superstar and you’re in a sport, you feel like the investment is ‘worth it,’ there’s a (return on investment) there. But when you’re so young, the biggest part of being in a sporting activity is to have fun. It is to grow,” she said.

“It really is creating a divide between the haves and have-nots, because people are being forced to make these decisions.”

For families that can afford to play, or qualify for assistance, Ingalls said there are few substitutes for the value that a child’s sporting experience can give them for years to come.

“Sport teaches the life skills that they’ll carry with them the rest of their life, how to be a good teammate, how to work hard toward things, rules and consequences for breaking rules,” he said.

“And while we see the cost of sport increasing, it’s still an excellent investment in children’s future.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.

Sammy Hudes, The Canadian Press

Subscribe now

A Fredericton woman whom the Crown agreed to release twice last month despite a history of failures to attend court was once again absent when a judge called her case Thursday.

Joe-Anna Marcella Hachey, 31, of no fixed address, was scheduled to appear in Fredericton provincial court Thursday to answer to numerous charges listed in seven different files.

However, when Judge Mélanie Poirier LeBlanc called her case Thursday morning, Hachey was nowhere to be seen.

Read more

Darin King and Jonathan Rowe have announced plans to run for the federal Conservative nomination for the Terra Nova-The Peninsulas riding.

BOSTON (AP) — Lawyers for Karen Read have filed an appeal with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court over a judge’s refusal to dismiss two of the three criminal charges against her.

Read, 44, is accused of ramming into her Boston police officer boyfriend John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead during a January 2022 snowstorm. Her two-month trial ended in July when jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations.

Last month, Judge Beverly Cannone rejected a defense motion to dismiss several charges, and prosecutors scheduled a new trial for January 2025. But Read’s attorneys appealed that ruling to the state’s highest court on Wednesday, arguing that trying her again on two of the charges would amount to unconstitutional double jeopardy.

Prosecutors said Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, and O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police, had been drinking heavily before she dropped him off at a party at the home of Brian Albert, a fellow Boston officer. They said she hit him with her SUV before driving away. An autopsy found O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.

The defense portrayed Read as the victim, saying O’Keefe was actually killed inside Albert’s home and then dragged outside. They argued that investigators focused on Read because she was a “convenient outsider” who saved them from having to consider law enforcement officers as suspects.

After the mistrial, Read’s lawyers presented evidence that four jurors had said they were actually deadlocked only on a third count of manslaughter, and that inside the jury room, they had unanimously agreed that Read was innocent of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly accident. One juror told them that “no one thought she hit him on purpose,” her lawyers argued.

But the judge said the jurors didn’t tell the court during their deliberations that they had reached a verdict on any of the counts.

“Where there was no verdict announced in open court here, retrial of the defendant does not violate the principle of double jeopardy,” Cannone said in her ruling.

The Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s government on Thursday summoned the envoys of Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands over their accusations that Tehran supplied short-range ballistic missiles to Russia to use against Ukraine.

State-run IRNA news agency reported that the country’s foreign ministry summoned the envoys separately on Thursday to strongly condemn the accusations.

IRNA said the ministry also condemned Britain, France, and Germany for issuing a joint statement against Iran and called it an “unconventional and non-constructive statement.”

The joint statement, issued Tuesday, condemned the alleged transfer of missiles, calling it “an escalation by both Iran and Russia” and “a direct threat to European security.”

The three countries also announced new sanctions against Iran, including the cancellation of air services agreements with Iran, which will restrict Iran Air’s ability to fly to the U.K. and Europe.

IRNA said that Iran’s foreign ministry told the envoys that their insistence on taking such positions is seen as part of the West’s ongoing hostile policy against the Iranian people. The actions will “be met with an appropriate response from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week that Iran had ignored warnings that the transfer of such weapons would be a profound escalation of the conflict.

He told reporters during a trip to London that dozens of Russian military personnel had been trained in Iran to use the Fath-360 close-range ballistic missile system, which has a maximum range of 75 miles (120 kilometers).

The Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The key eastern Ukraine city of Pokrovsk is without a drinking water supply or natural gas for cooking and heating, authorities said Thursday, as the Russian army’s attritional slog across the Donetsk region lays waste to public infrastructure and forces civilians to flee their homes.

A water filtration station in Pokrovsk was damaged in recent fighting, and more than 300 hastily drilled water wells are the city’s last source of drinking water, Donetsk regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin said.

The previous day, Russians destroyed a natural gas distribution station near Pokrovsk, Filashkin said. Some 18,000 people remain in the city, including 522 children, he said. More than 20,000 people have left in the past six weeks as Russian forces creep closer to residential areas, Filashkin said.

“Evacuation is the only … choice for civilians,” he added.

Pokrovsk is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region, which lies on part of the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line. Its capture would compromise Ukraine’s defensive abilities and supply routes and would bring Russia closer to its stated goal of capturing the entire Donetsk region, which it partially occupies.

Russian troops backed by artillery and powerful glide bombs have turned Donetsk cities and towns such as Bakhmut and Avdiivka into bombed-out shells, though the push has cost Russia heavily in troops and armor.

Ukrainian forces have held out as long as possible, even when strongholds such as Chasiv Yar appeared to be in danger of imminent collapse. Ukraine has also launched a daring incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, partly in the hope that Russia will divert its troops there from Donetsk.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that Moscow’s forces recaptured 10 settlements in Kursk and listed their names. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces have “started counter-offensive actions” in the region but insisted that Ukrainian troops had anticipated such a response.

Russia has fired missile and drone barrages at Ukraine just about every day since the war began in February 2022, aiming especially at the power grid and potentially dooming Ukrainians to a bitterly cold winter this year.

The United States and Britain pledged nearly $1.5 billion in additional aid to Ukraine on Wednesday during a visit to Kyiv by their top diplomats. Much of that will go to restoring the electricity supply.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “we’re again seeing Putin dust off his winter playbook, targeting Ukrainian energy and electricity systems to weaponize the cold against the Ukrainian people.”

An overnight drone attack on Konotop, a town in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, largely knocked out the electricity supply, regional officials said.

The blasts also blew out an “incredibly high number” of windows in the city and damaged many of the town’s tram tracks, Mayor Artem Semenikhin said.

Russia launched a total of 64 Shahed drones and five missiles over eastern, central, and northern regions of Ukraine, Ukraine’s air force said in its Thursday morning report.

Ukraine has expressed frustration that its Western partners won’t let it use sophisticated modern weapons they supply to hit places inside Russia where the missiles and drones are launched from. Some Western leaders fear that would trigger an escalation of the war.

But after Iran recently supplied ballistic missiles to Russia, according to the U.S., those rules of engagement could be set to change in coming days as heavier Russian bombardments could swamp Ukraine’s meager air defenses.

In other developments, Ukrainian Military Intelligence claimed to have shot down a Russian Su-30SM jet over the Black Sea.

A post on the agency’s social media Thursday said the warplane was hit with a portable surface-to-air missile.

Also, Zelenkskyy posted photos of a ship loaded with grain that he said was struck by a Russian missile Thursday shortly after leaving Ukrainian territorial waters.

The merchant ship was taking wheat to Egypt, Zelenskyy wrote on his Telegram page, adding that nobody was injured in the strike.

Ukraine last year managed to break through Russia’s Black Sea blockade and ship millions of tons of grain using a route that hugs Ukraine’s southern coast.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Illia Novikov, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jim Duggan uses ChatGPT almost daily to draft marketing emails for his carbon removal credit business in Huntsville, Alabama. But he’d never trust an artificial intelligence chatbot with any questions about the upcoming presidential election.

“I just don’t think AI produces truth,” the 68-year-old political conservative said in an interview. “Grammar and words, that’s something that’s concrete. Political thought, judgment, opinions aren’t.”

Duggan is part of the majority of Americans who do not trust artificial intelligence-powered chatbots or search results to give them accurate answers, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts. About two-thirds of U.S. adults say they are not very or not at all confident that these tools provide reliable and factual information, the poll shows.

The findings reveal that even as Americans have started using generative AI-fueled chatbots and search engines in their personal and work lives, most have remained skeptical of these rapidly advancing technologies. That’s particularly true when it comes to information about high-stakes events such as elections.

Earlier this year, a gathering of election officials and AI researchers found that AI tools did poorly when asked relatively basic questions, such as where to find the nearest polling place. Last month, several secretaries of state warned that the AI chatbot developed for the social media platform X was spreading bogus election information, prompting X to tweak the tool so it would first direct users to a federal government website for reliable information.

Large AI models that can generate text, images, videos or audio clips at the click of a button are poorly understood and minimally regulated. Their ability to predict the most plausible next word in a sentence based on vast pools of data allows them to provide sophisticated responses on almost any topic — but it also makes them vulnerable to errors.

Americans are split on whether they think the use of AI will make it more difficult to find accurate information about the 2024 election. About 4 in 10 Americans say the use of AI will make it “much more difficult” or “somewhat more difficult” to find factual information, while another 4 in 10 aren’t sure — saying it won’t make it easier or more challenging, according to the poll. A distinct minority, 16%, say AI will make it easier to find accurate information about the election.

Griffin Ryan, a 21-year-old college student at Tulane University in New Orleans, said he doesn’t know anyone on his campus who uses AI chatbots to find information about candidates or voting. He doesn’t use them either, since he’s noticed that it’s possible to “basically just bully AI tools into giving you the answers that you want.”

The Democrat from Texas said he gets most of his news from mainstream outlets such as CNN, the BBC, NPR, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. When it comes to misinformation in the upcoming election, he’s more worried that AI-generated deepfakes and AI-fueled bot accounts on social media will sway voter opinions.

“I’ve seen videos of people doing AI deepfakes of politicians and stuff, and these have all been obvious jokes,” Ryan said. “But it does worry me when I see those that maybe someone’s going to make something serious and actually disseminate it.”

A relatively small portion of Americans — 8% — think results produced by AI chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude are always or often based on factual information, according to the poll. They have a similar level of trust in AI-assisted search engines such as Bing or Google, with 12% believing their results are always or often based on facts.

There already have been attempts to influence U.S. voter opinions through AI deepfakes, including AI-generated robocalls that imitated President Joe Biden’s voice to convince voters in New Hampshire’s January primary to stay home from the polls.

More commonly, AI tools have been used to create fake images of prominent candidates that aim to reinforce particular negative narratives — from Vice President Kamala Harris in a communist uniform to former President Donald Trump in handcuffs.

Ryan, the Tulane student, said his family is fairly media literate, but he has some older relatives who heeded false information about COVID-19 vaccines on Facebook during the pandemic. He said that makes him concerned that they might be susceptible to false or misleading information during the election cycle.

Bevellie Harris, a 71-year-old Democrat from Bakersfield, California, said she prefers getting election information from official government sources, such as the voter pamphlet she receives in the mail ahead of every election.

“I believe it to be more informative,” she said, adding that she also likes to look up candidate ads to hear their positions in their own words.

___

The poll of 1,019 adults was conducted July 29-Aug. 8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.

___

Swenson reported from New York.

___

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Ali Swenson And Linley Sanders, The Associated Press

Winnipeg Goldeyes’ infielder Ramon Bramasco at Blue Cross Park on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (WINNIPEG GOLDEYES / FACEBOOK)

The Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks (3-2) tied the West Division Championship Series with a 5-3 win over the Winnipeg Goldeyes on Wednesday at Blue Cross Park.

Down 3-2 in the eighth inning, the RedHawks took the lead when Kona Quiggle and Juan Fernandez delivered key RBI singles. They added an insurance run in the ninth with Michael Hallquist‘s RBI single.

Winnipeg initially led 3-0 in the third inning, highlighted by Max Murphy’s two-run single. Fargo-Moorhead began their comeback in the fifth with Ismael Alcantara’s RBI double and Peter Brookshaw‘s solo homer in the sixth.

Parker Harm (1-0) earned the win with four scoreless innings, while Thomas Ponticelli (0-1) took the loss for Winnipeg.

The series finale is tonight at 6:30 p.m. at Blue Cross Park, with Mitchell Lambson starting for Winnipeg against Nile Ball for Fargo-Moorhead. Tickets are available at Goldeyes.com/tickets.

© 2024. This article RedHawks Rally Past Winnipeg Goldeyes 5-3 to Even Series appeared first on ChrisD.ca - Winnipeg News.

Approximately 30,000 to 40,000 litres of arsenic-impacted mine water that spilled on Sept. 3 at Giant Mine just north of Yellowknife is being investigated according to a recent spill report.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The World Health Organization issued a stark warning on Thursday about a potential health crisis in Ukraine as the country faces its third winter of war since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Ongoing Russian airstrikes have severely damaged the nation’s energy and health care infrastructure, leaving millions vulnerable as temperatures drop, officials from the United Nations agency said.

“Ukraine is approaching its third winter amid a full-scale war — likely its most challenging yet. The renewed focus on health is more critical than ever,” Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, told reporters in Kyiv.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the U.N. agency has recorded nearly 2,000 attacks on Ukraine’s health care infrastructure, which it said is having a severe impact on the largely public health system.

“Targeted attacks have damaged Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Frequent power outages are already taking a toll with danger signs for the winter,” Kluge said after a visit to front-line regions in eastern Ukraine.

“This could jeopardize the storage and distribution of vaccines, leading to a rise in vaccine-preventable diseases,” he said. Other concerns, he said, included possible contamination of the water system due to frequent power outages and growing signs of antimicrobial resistance because of a misuse of antibiotics.

“We have stories of wounds that simply will not heal due to resistance to antibiotics,” Kluge said. “This could have consequences far beyond Ukraine if drugs become ineffective.”

WHO plans to install 15 heating units at hospitals at risk of further attack as well as a network of treatment clinics in areas where health care access is difficult, as part of initiatives by local Ukrainian authorities and Western governments. The agency is also racing to provide generators and other backup power options, and also help implement state-planned health system reforms.

Early work on those projects, Kluge said, focused on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city in the east, which has come under frequent Russian attack. Earlier this week, the agency also announced that it had organized the donation of 23 ambulances to assist medical services in mostly front-line areas.

Three people died and two were wounded after Russia struck Red Cross humanitarian vehicles on Thursday in Donetsk region, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

“The world must react firmly and fundamentally,” he wrote in an online post. “Countries and international organizations must not remain indifferent. Only together can the world force Russia to stop this terror and force Moscow to seek peace.”

___ Associated Press writers Derek Gatopoulos and Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report. ___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Alex Babenko, The Associated Press

It’s a big weekend with the Sommo Festival being held in Cavendish.  The RCMP is advising that road congestion should be expected in Cavendish as thousands will be coming and going on foot and in vehicles.  RCMP ask that you drive carefully and watch out for pedestrians attending the festival 

At the end of each night, Route 6 will be closed for two-way traffic in front of the festival for about two hours. Those parked in the east can only travel east, and those parked in the west can only travel west.  

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s a practice that’s about as American as apple pie — accusing immigrant and minority communities of engaging in bizarre or disgusting behaviors when it comes to what and how they eat and drink, a kind of shorthand for saying they don’t belong.

The latest iteration came at Tuesday’s presidential debate, when former President Donald Trump spotlighted a false online tempest around the Haitian immigrant community of Springfield, Ohio. He repeated the groundless claim previously spread by his running mate, JD Vance, that the immigrants were stealing dogs and cats, the precious pets belonging to their American neighbors, and eating them. The furor got enough attention that officials had to step in to refute it, saying there was no credible evidence of any such thing.

But while it might be enough to turn your stomach, such food-based accusations are not new. Far from it.

Food-related scorn and insults were hurled at immigrant Chinese communities on the West Coast in the late 1800s as they started coming to the United States in larger numbers, and in later decades spread to other Asian and Pacific Islander communities like Thai or Vietnamese. As recently as last year, a Thai restaurant in California was hit with the stereotype, which caused such an outpouring of undeserved vitriol that the owner had to close and move to another location.

Behind it is the idea that “you’re engaging in something that is not just a matter of taste, but a violation of what it is to be human,” says Paul Freedman, a professor of history at Yale University. By tarring Chinese immigrants as those who would eat things Americans would refuse to, it made them the “other.”

In the US, foods can be flashpoints

Other communities, while not being accused of eating pets, have been criticized for the perceived strangeness of what they were cooking when they were new arrivals, such as Italians using too much garlic or Indians too much curry powder. Minority groups with a longer presence in the country were and are still not exempt from racist stereotypes — think derogatory references to Mexicans and beans or insulting African Americans with remarks about fried chicken and watermelon.

“There’s a slur for every almost every ethnicity based on some kind of food that they eat,” says Amy Bentley, professor of nutrition and food Studies at New York University. “And so that’s a very good way of disparaging people.”

That’s because food isn’t just sustenance. Embedded in human eating habits are some of the very building blocks of culture — things that make different peoples distinct and can be commandeered as fodder for ethnic hatred or political polemics.

“We need it to survive, but it’s also highly ritualized and highly symbolic. So the birthday cake, the anniversary, the things are commemorated and celebrated with food and drink,” Bentley says. “It’s just so highly integrated in all parts of our lives.”

And because “there’s specific variations of how humans do those rituals, how they eat, how they have shaped their cuisines, how they eat their food,” she adds, “It can be as a theme of commonality … or it can be a form of distinct division.”

It’s not just the what. Insults can come from the how as well — eating with hands or chopsticks instead of forks and knives, for example. It can be seen in class-based bias against poorer people who didn’t have the same access to elaborate table settings or couldn’t afford to eat the same way the rich did — and used different, perhaps unfamiliar ingredients out of necessity.

Such disparagement can extend directly into current events. During the Second Gulf War, for example, Americans angry at France’s opposition of the U.S. invasion of Iraq started calling french fries “freedom fries.” And a much-used insulting term in the United States for Germans during the first two world wars was “krauts” — a slam on a culture where sauerkraut was a traditional food.

“Just what was wrong with the way urban immigrants ate?” Donna R. Gabaccia wrote in her 1998 book, “We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans.” In reviewing attitudes of the early 20th century and its demands for “100% Americanism,” she noted that “sauerkraut became ‘victory cabbage’” and one account complained of an Italian family “still eating spaghetti, not yet assimilated.”

The expanding food culture provides continuing fodder

Such stereotypes have persisted despite the fact that the American palate has significantly expanded in recent decades, thanks in part to the influx of those immigrant communities, with grocery stories carrying a wealth of ingredients that would baffle previous generations. The rise of restaurant culture has introduced many diners to authentic examples of cuisines they might have needed a passport to access in other eras.

After all, Bentley says, “when immigrants migrate to a different country, they bring their foodways with them and maintain them as they can. … It’s so reminiscent of family, community, home. They’re just really material, multisensory manifestations of who we are.”

Haitian food is just one example of that. Communities like those found in New York City and south Florida have added to the culinary landscape, using ingredients like goat, plantains and cassava.

So when Trump said that immigrants in Springfield — whom he called “the people that came in” — were eating dogs and cats and “the pets of the people that live there,” the echoes of his remarks played into not just food but culture itself.

And even though the American palate has broadened in recent decades, the persistence of food stereotypes — and outright insults, whether based in fact or completely made up — shows that just because Americans eat more broadly, it doesn’t mean that carries over into tolerance or nuance about other groups.

“It’s a fallacy to think that,” Freedman says. “It’s like the tourism fallacy that travel makes us more understanding of diversity. The best example right now is Mexican food. Lots and lots of people like Mexican food AND think that immigration needs to be stopped. There’s no link between enjoyment of a foreigner’s cuisine and that openness.”

Deepti Hajela, The Associated Press

The byelection for the councillor position in Ward 5 in Summerside is coming up on October 7th.  The nomination period opened on Wednesday and ends at 2pm on September 20th.  The byelection is being held as a result of Barb Gallant being removed from council after missing three consecutive council meetings.   

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are making a beeline for swing states that they hope to flip in their favor this year, both of them trying to expand their narrow paths to victory in a closely fought presidential campaign.

Harris has her sights set on North Carolina, where she has scheduled rallies in Charlotte and Greensboro on Thursday, her first political events after she buoyed supporters with her performance in Tuesday’s debate. Her team is working to turn key moments from the debate into new television and digital advertising, and promising more travel in battleground states.

Trump is heading west to Tucson, Arizona, as he looks to stabilize his campaign, which continues to struggle to recalibrate nearly two months after Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. Although Harris’ team said she’s willing to do another debate, the Republican candidate has waffled.

“Are we going to do a rematch?” Trump said Wednesday. “I just don’t know.”

The candidates are barnstorming one day after they marked the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a somber occasion that provided little respite from partisan politics in a high-speed campaign season.

At a fire station in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, close to where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after passengers fought back against their hijackers, Trump posed for photos with children who wore campaign shirts. One of the shirts proclaimed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Biden and Harris were “dumb and dumber and dumbest.”

Biden and Harris visited the same fire station earlier in the day. Someone there offered Biden a red-white-and-blue baseball hat that said “Trump 2024,” and suggested the president put it on to demonstrate his commitment to bipartisan unity. Biden briefly put it on and flashed a wide grin.

Only a handful of battleground states will decide the outcome of the election.

Democrats haven’t won North Carolina’s electoral votes since 2008, when President Barack Obama was elected for the first time. However, Trump’s 2020 margin of victory of 1.3 percentage points was his narrowest win of any state that year, and Democrats hope that North Carolina’s growing and diversifying population will give them an edge this time.

Harris’s campaign said Thursday’s trip will be her ninth to the state this year, and recent polls show a tight race. More than two dozen combined campaign offices — supporting Harris and the rest of the party’s candidates — have been opened, and popular Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is one of her top surrogates.

Republicans have been confident about Trump’s chances in the state, and the former president held rallies there in August.

Registered independents — known in North Carolina as unaffiliated — are the state’s largest voting bloc and are usually key to determining outcomes in statewide elections. A state Supreme Court ruling this week affirming that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must be removed from North Carolina ballots could bring additional votes Trump’s way given Kennedy’s endorsement.

The state’s Republican Party has dismissed concerns that a poor showing by its gubernatorial nominee, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, could harm the electoral chances of other party candidates, including Trump.

Democratic nominee Josh Stein and his allies have hammered Robinson for months on the airwaves and social media for his past harsh comments on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Stein, the state attorney general, had a lead over Robinson in several recent polls of North Carolina voters.

Arizona is another state where the presidential race could be shaped, at least in part, by down-ballot races. Kari Lake, a prominent Republican election denier who lost her campaign for governor in 2020, is running for the U.S. Senate seat that’s being vacated by Kyrsten Sinema.

Lake exemplifies the rightward shift of the state party in the Trump era. She’s opposed by Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, who was leading in several recent polls, although the race was close in another.

Republicans have won Arizona in nearly every presidential election since World War II, but Biden eked out a narrow victory in 2020.

The rise of Arizona Democrats has been driven by the arrival of transplants from blue states and a political realignment that has seen suburban voters — particularly college-educated women — shift away from Republicans.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, held a rally in the state on Tuesday ahead of the debate, and the Democratic ticket campaigned together there last month.

Republicans still outnumber Democrats in Arizona, but one-third of voters are independent. Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, appeared last week in a heavily Republican area of metro Phoenix with Charlie Kirk, the founder of an influential conservative youth group.

Trump was last in Arizona two weeks ago for a news conference along the U.S.-Mexico border, where he drove one of his most effective attacks on Harris over the number of people crossing the border to seek asylum, followed by a rally at a former hockey arena in the Phoenix area.

___

Cooper reported from Phoenix and Robertson from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Chris Megerian, Jonathan J. Cooper And Gary D. Robertson, The Associated Press

A man accused in a 2020 homicide in St. John's walked out of court a free man Thursday after being granted a stay of proceedings due to court delays.

MADRID (AP) — Venezuela’s opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González met with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Thursday, four days after fleeing to the European country in a negotiated deal with Nicolás Maduro’s government.

González’s flight to exile — after weeks of seeking refuge in the embassies of the Netherlands and Spain in Caracas — had dealt a major blow to millions who placed their hopes in his opposition campaign.

His supporters in Venezuela and beyond, along with the United States government, consider him the legitimate winner of the July 28 presidential election.

Sánchez, who was on a trip to China when González arrived, posted a video of their meeting Thursday on the social media platform X. The two are seen strolling together in the Moncloa Palace gardens in Madrid.

Spain has welcomed González as a sign of its “humanitarian commitment and solidarity with Venezuelans,” Sánchez said in his post.

González also posted on X, thanking Sánchez for his work “for the recovery of democracy and respect for human rights” in Venezuela, and promised he will “continue the struggle to enforce the sovereign will of the Venezuelan people”.

On Wednesday, the Spanish Parliament approved a proposal from the conservative Popular Party urging Sánchez’s left-wing coalition government to recognize the opposition leader as the elected president of Venezuela. The motion is non-binding.

Spain’s government supports the European Union position of demanding that Maduro make public the raw polling results before the bloc recognizes a winner.

The European Parliament will debate the outcome of the Venezuelan elections on Tuesday in Strasbourg, France.

González’s arrival has further strained relations between Madrid and Caracas. On Wednesday, Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, asked for “the immediate rupture of all diplomatic relations, of all commercial relations”.

“Let all the representatives of the Spanish government delegation leave, and let us bring our own,” Rodríguez said in the Assembly and also called for “the immediate closure of all commercial activities of Spanish companies.”

González, who was Venezuela’s former ambassador in Argentina during the presidency of late Hugo Chávez, landed Sunday at a military airport near Madrid. He traveled aboard a Spanish military plane.

Following the election, González and the Venezuelan opposition’s de facto leader, María Corina Machado, went into hiding as security forces rounded up more than 2,000 people — many of them young Venezuelans — who spontaneously took to the streets to protest Maduro’s alleged theft of the election.

With his flight into exile, González joined the swelling ranks of opposition stalwarts who once fought Maduro before seeking asylum abroad in the face of a brutal crackdown. In Spain, he joins at least four former presidential hopefuls who were imprisoned or faced arrest for defying Maduro’s rule.

Teresa Medrano, The Associated Press

Police are investigating a man's death after a reported altercation Thursday morning in the area of Lake Shore Boulevard W. and Islington Avenue.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Young women are more liberal than they have been in decades, according to a Gallup analysis of more than 20 years of polling data.

Over the past few years, about 4 in 10 young women between the ages of 18 and 29 have described their political views as liberal, compared with two decades ago when about 3 in 10 identified that way.

For many young women, their liberal identity is not just a new label. The share of young women who hold liberal views on the environment, abortion, race relations and gun laws has also jumped by double digits, Gallup found.

Young women “aren’t just identifying as liberal because they like the term or they’re more comfortable with the term, or someone they respect uses the term,” said Lydia Saad, the director of U.S. social research at Gallup. “They have actually become much more liberal in their actual viewpoints.”

Becoming a more cohesive political gtoup with distinctly liberal views could turn young women into a potent political force, according to Saad. While it is hard to pinpoint what is making young women more liberal, they now are overwhelmingly aligned on many issues, which could make it easier for campaigns to motivate them.

Young women are already a constituency that has leaned Democratic — AP VoteCast data shows that 65% of female voters under 30 voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 — but they are sometimes less reliable when it comes to turnout.

Young women began to diverge ideologically from other groups, including men between 18 and 29, women over 30 and men over 30, during Democrat Barack Obama’s presidency. That trend appears to have accelerated more recently, around the election of Republican Donald Trump, the #MeToo movement and increasingly successful efforts by the anti-abortion movement to erode abortion access. At the same time, more women, mostly Democrats, were elected to Congress, as governor and to state legislatures, giving young women new representation and role models in politics.

The change in young women’s political identification is happening across the board, Gallup found, rather than being propelled by a specific subgroup.

Taylor Swift’s endorsement Tuesday of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, after her debate against Trump, illustrated one of the issues where young women have moved to the left. In Swift’s Instagram announcing the endorsement praised Harris and running mate Tim Walz for championing reproductive rights.

The Gallup analysis found that since the Obama era, young women have become nearly 20 percentage points more likely to support broad abortion rights. There was a roughly similar increase in the share of young women who said protection of the environment should be prioritized over economic growth and in the share of young women who say gun laws should be stricter.

Now, Saad said, solid majorities of young women hold liberal views on issues such as abortion, the environment, and gun laws.

Young women are “very unified on these issues … and not only do they hold these views, but they are dissatisfied with the country in these areas, and they are worried about them,” she said. That, she added, could help drive turnout.

“You’ve got supermajorities of women holding these views,” she said, and they are “primed to be activated to vote on these issues.”

___

Associated Press writer Laurie Kellman in London contributed to this report.

Linley Sanders And Amelia Thomson-deveaux, The Associated Press

Rankin Inlet’s hamlet council chose a new councillor out of two applicants on Monday.

They selected Marvin Dion in a secret-ballot vote. He had applied to the position, along with Troy Rauhala.

Both candidates were eligible and qualified to seek the position, said an announcement from the hamlet with news of council’s decision.

Dion was scheduled to be sworn in on Sept. 11, 2024, and will serve the balance of that term, which ends with the next municipal election, scheduled for Oct. 26, 2027.

The new representative will fill a vacancy that opened after former councillor Art Sateana resigned from his council seat in July for personal reasons.

Sateana was acclaimed to hamlet council in October 2023 at the age of 27, along with six other members.

Construction machines are humming on 16th Avenue N.W. in Montgomery, but the local business community says the quiet inside their shops and restaurants is taking a toll. 

REGINA – A pilot project is coming in to allow pharmacists to expand the care they provide for patients in the province.

It was announced in Regina Wednesday that the province will be expanding the scope of practice for pharmacists to be able to test for strep throat and ear infections. 

Health Minister Everett Hindley said this expansion “will resonate with many people across the province, and particularly I would think with parents of young children, and anyone who is perhaps faced before the early evening hours with a sick kid, for example.”

New training will be offered to pharmacists that will allow them to be able to do rapid testing for strep throat, where they can collect a lab sample and test it on site, with results of the testing available 10 minutes. They will also be able to do physical assessments for ear infections. The pharmacist would then have the ability to prescribe and provide the medication to treat these conditions. 

“This is brand new training for the pharmacists,” said Danielle Larocque, Director of USask Continuing Pharmacy Education at the University of Saskatchewan. She said it will include some online training  “and then it’ll be some hands-on physical assessment where they learn how to use an otoscope for assessing ear infections as well as learn how to do the strep test for strep throat.” 

In addition to the training, the government is investing $700,000 in launching a pilot project this fall to support the testing and assessment.

Ten pharmacies will be selected to conduct the on site testing for strep throat and assessments for ear infections, while 50 sites will be chosen to offer ear infection assessments.

The province will work with the Pharmacy Association of Saskatchewan to identify which pharmacies will be interested, and there will be criteria used in selection. More details on the pilot project will come out once the pharmacies are chosen.

Hindley said this will particularly benefit rural and remote communities where the pharmacy might be the only place in the area where residents can access healthcare. “So by expanding the scope of practice, that really optimizes their skills, builds additional capacity in our healthcare system, it brings care of closer to home and allows allows patients to have greater access to healthcare services. You may have heard me say before, we are really interested about increasing that scope of practice and making sure we provide more avenues for patients where we have the right patient in front of the right healthcare professional provider at the right time.”

The province had first announced scope of practice expansion to health care professionals including pharmacists back in June 2023. Pharmacists have had the authority to prescribe for minor ailments since 2012.

“This is all about access to healthcare,” Pharmacy Association of Saskatchewan CEO Michael Fougere, saying expanded scope of practice for pharmacists is something they had been calling for for some time.

“Every professional in healthcare wants to practice at their full scope of practice,” Fougere said. “And that would be I think a much better access to healthcare for everyone around the province. In the case of pharmacists, particularly in rural and small town Saskatchewan, they’re the only healthcare professional in the area so we do want to see more services provided to the public, because it’s better access to healthcare and access is a primary issue.”

By: Peter Menzies

Taleeb Noormohamed did a bad thing the other day and everyone who cares about an independent free press should be glad of it.

The Liberal MP for Vancouver Granville — Jody Wilson-Raybould’s old riding — is clearly an intelligent man with much to offer. His resume boasts degrees from Princeton, Harvard and Oxford and, prior to his election in 2021, he had worked within government, for the 2010 Olympics, and in senior roles for a number of tech companies. He was also apparently pretty good at buying and selling property.

But if the polls don’t turn around in the next year and a bit, he's very much at risk of being unemployed and unqualified for a pension or, perhaps worse, a nobody wasting the most productive career years of his life as an Opposition MP.

Share

So, there’s a good chance he was frustrated when he read an X-post by Terry Newman, National Post’s new senior editor of its Comment section, promoting a column she had written outlining the incredible damage “a party and a minister can do to a country in nine years.”

Noormohamed responded bitterly, reminding Newman to whom her employer owes its existence:

“Your paper wouldn’t be in business were it not for the subsidies that the government that you hate put in place — the same subsidies your Trump-adjacent foreign hedge fund owners gladly take to pay your salary,” he wrote.

Unable to resist such low hanging fruit, I then suggested Noormohamed was reminding Newman “who her daddy is.” He responded to me that all he had done was state facts, the “US hedgies” would quickly shut down the Post “without those subsidies” and “tell me I’m wrong.”

I could not.

Nothing Noormohamed said was untrue. He and I are in perfect alignment in the view that were it not for the patronage of the Justin Trudeau government, Postmedia (and likely the Toronto Star) would by now have ceased to exist. Some of its titles may have sold for parts, but most of its zombie products would have been dispatched long ago with a bankruptcy bullet to the brain, allowing new media to spring forth from decay.

About that, he was not wrong, even though what he did was very inappropriate, even more so because Noormohamed is not just some schmuck MP making up the numbers in a minority Parliament. He’s Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Heritage, Pascal St-Onge, in whose office most of the decisions regarding the plethora of funding arrangements for Canadian news media are made.

For the record, those include the $100 million Google fund via the Online News Act, the $20 million Local News Initiative, the $75 million Canada Periodical fund, its additional $13  million “special measures” portion and the Journalism Labour tax credit — announced as $119 million annually for five years only in 2019 but now doubled in size and extended, probably until forever. St-Onge and Noormohamed’s ministry also oversees the panel that decides what news organizations qualify for loot; further, the Canadian /Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which will provide about $60 million through its Independent Local News Fund, reports to Parliament through them. It has also just opened a process for additional local news funding and next year will be holding the Mother Of All Hearings into the state of the nation’s journalism and what sort of additional funding mechanism it can cook up through that.

In other words, Noormohamed holds the media’s ass in his hands. Add up the above, and we’re looking at about half a billion bucks a year.

That’s why, as inappropriate and blatantly intimidating as it was for him to write what he wrote, those who care about maintaining a media industry free from government influence should be glad he said the quiet part out loud. This is what his colleagues must be thinking, and will be reminding journalists of in the year ahead.

We are no longer talking here about nip and tuck federal funding to cover The Hockey News’s postal costs, or to ensure service to francophones in Saskatchewan. The amount of government support for Canadian news organizations has grown over the past five years to the point where for most it is now of existential value. Without it, as Noormohamed discerned, Newman, her colleagues and a great many other journalists could be out on the street, the mortgage unpaid, the kids unfed.

Coincidentally, Noormohamed, most of his colleagues, and all the political staff at Heritage and other ministries are no doubt wondering why they are paying Newman et al. to ruin their lives.

Newman put on a brave face and sarcastically posted in response: “OK, you win. You pay my salary. I’ll stop criticizing your government now. Please don’t fire me.”

Her boss, Carson Jerema, stuck up for her in similar fashion and Richard Warnica, opinions editor at the Toronto Star, expressed his concern, by posting:

“I am a huge advocate for publicly supported journalism, have been for many, many years. I cannot think of anything that would more effectively undermine that idea than a government MP tweeting (what Noormohamed said.)”

Noormohamed did exactly what freedom of the press advocates predicted politicians would do — the very same thing that those self-interested funding recipients denied was possible: put the squeeze on.

Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman weighed in, as did some of the usual suspects on the right — the National Citizens Coalition and Spencer Fernando, for example. But other than a few retired journos and the increasingly rare voices of those in the business who reject government funding and find the idea of being wards of the state abominable, there was nothing to indicate the news industry was either shocked or appalled by the Parliamentary Secretary for Canadian Heritage’s rhetorical thuggery.

It was almost as if his only sin was speaking of that which those involved had agreed should never be spoken, at least not in front of the children.

Noormohamed’s message was sent and his X-post still stands, unrepentant, unredeemed and, I’m guessing, understood.

Subscribe now

Just a reminder: The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded — no federal subsidy for us! Which is why we can, and do publish work like this. We rely enormously on paid subscribers.

If you value our work, have already subscribed, and still worry about what will happen when the conventional media finishes collapsing, please consider making a donation today.

The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Follow us on Twitter @the_lineca. Fight with us on Facebook. Pitch us something:  [email protected]

TORONTO — Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. has signed a deal to buy wealth management business Brooks Macdonald Asset Management (International) Ltd.

Under the deal for the subsidiary of Brooks Macdonald Group plc, Canaccord Genuity will pay 28 million pounds ($49.6 million) in cash.

The company will also pay up to an additional 22.85 million pounds ($40.5 million) on the second anniversary of the deal closing, subject to meeting certain revenue targets.

BMI was started in 2012 and provides investment management, financial planning and fund management services with offices in Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

Canaccord Genuity says the deal represents an important addition to its international operations.

The deal is subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:CF)

The Canadian Press

Taylor Swift's massive popularity, and the intensive fandom she inspires, is about to make her perhaps the ultimate case study as to whether a celebrity can impact a U.S. presidential election.

Winnipeg James Richardson International Airport (WAA.CA)

The Winnipeg Airports Authority (WAA) will conduct a live emergency exercise at James Richardson International Airport on Thursday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

During this time, increased emergency activity is expected on the airfield, including the presence of emergency vehicles, airport equipment, and response personnel. The public is advised not to be alarmed, as this is a planned exercise. The airport will remain fully operational, and passengers will not be affected.

The exercise, which involves multiple agencies including Transport Canada, aims to test emergency protocols, procedures, and communication strategies. Updates will be shared on the airport’s social media channels and throughout the terminal today.

© 2024. This article Winnipeg Richardson International Airport to Conduct Emergency Exercise appeared first on ChrisD.ca - Winnipeg News.

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. (AP) — To Ruth Breeden, who assembles Ram trucks in this Detroit suburb, a simmering dispute between the United Auto Workers and Stellantis isn’t merely about whether her employer will reopen a distant factory in Illinois. To her, the standoff is a danger sign for all UAW workers.

Stellantis had pledged to reopen the factory in Belvidere, Illinois, under a contract it forged last year with the union. But the feopening was delayed given what the company calls unfavorable “market conditions.”

Stellantis says it will eventually reopen the plant. But no date has been given to restart it or open a new battery plant and a parts warehouse, both of which were also promised in the contract that ended the UAW’s strike against Stellantis last year. At stake are over 2,700 jobs.

Breeden and other union members fear that Stellantis will break other commitments, jeopardizing their jobs.

“It’s the whole company,” she said at a union rally last month near her factory. “Who knows which plant is next?”

Union leaders have threatened to strike, a move that could extend beyond Stellantis. Labor experts say its two Detroit-area rivals, Ford and General Motors, are watching as they consider strategies that include whether to move future production out of the U.S.

Detroit automakers have been expanding production in Mexico for years. And after last fall’s strikes shut down a Ford truck plant, its CEO warned the company would rethink where it builds new vehicles.

“There’s plenty of history of the U.S. manufacturing sector moving its operations to low-wage countries,” said Bob Bruno, a labor and employment relations professor at the University of Illinois. “It seems reasonable to me for the UAW to be concerned about not opening here, not investing here.”

In February 2023, the last Jeep Cherokee SUV rolled off the assembly line in Belvidere, about an hour northwest of Chicago, and 1,350 workers were laid off. Stellantis had planned to close the factory.

After six-week strikes against all three Detroit automakers last fall, each company signed a new contract with the UAW. Stellantis agreed to reopen Belvidere Assembly in 2027, with plans to build up to 100,000 electric and gas-powered midsize pickups annually.

It also agreed to open a parts hub in Belvidere this year and an electric-vehicle battery factory with 1,300 workers in 2028. In all, the company pledged $18.9 billion of U.S. investments during the contract, which runs until April 2028.

So promising was the prospect of reopening Belvidere that it drew a celebratory visit from President Joe Biden and a pledge of $335 million in federal dollars to revamp the 5-million-square-foot plant.

A year later, there’s no parts hub and no definitive plan to open the assembly and battery plants, setting off alarms among union members.

On Wednesday, Stellantis said it would spend roughly $400 million to revamp three Michigan factories to build electric vehicles or parts. Breeden’s plant will receive about $235 million of the money, which was included in the contract.

Still, Breeden fears that CEO Carlos Tavares, who talks frequently about cutting costs, wants to move more production to low-wage Mexico, where the company already builds Ram pickups.

“The truth is Stellantis doesn’t want to invest in America,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a recent video.

Tavares has said that one reason Stellantis needs to slash costs is to make electric vehicles — which cost roughly 40% more to build than gas-powered cars do — affordable to typical customers.

Experts say the Belvidere matter could end up in court.

In August, Stellantis announced that it would stop making older Ram pickups at a plant in Warren, Michigan, and it will lay off up to 2,400 workers. It was the latest sign that Stellantis’ U.S. workers face an uncertain future, said Marick Masters, business professor emeritus at Wayne State University.

Stellantis said it stands by its commitment to Belvidere, but said it needs the delay so it can afford to remain competitive and preserve U.S. factory jobs.

“It is critical that the business case for all investments is aligned with market conditions and our ability to accommodate a wide range of consumer demands,” Stellantis said in a statement.

The company noted language in a letter detailing investments that’s part of the contract. It says Stellantis and the UAW agree that investment and jobs in North America are “contingent upon plant performance, changes in market conditions, and consumer demand continuing to generate sustainable and profitable (sales) volumes.”

Maite Tapia, associate professor at Michigan State University’s School of Human Resources and Labor Relations, noted that language in union contracts is often intended to appease both parties.

The UAW counters that its contract authorizes strikes over plant closures and broken investment promises.

Stellantis, which has been slow to shift to increasingly popular lower-cost vehicles, has struggled this year. Its U.S. sales fell nearly 16% in the first half. Profits tumbled 50%.

Still, overall U.S. new-vehicle sales rose 2.4% through June. The union argues that GM and Ford are doing well and that Stellantis would be, too, if not for Tavares’ poor management.

Fueling angst on assembly lines is a February statement by Ford CEO Jim Farley, who said his company would rethink where it builds vehicles. Farley sounded that warning after the 2023 strikes shut down Ford’s largest and most profitable plant, which makes heavy-duty trucks in Louisville, Kentucky. In July, Ford said it would revamp a factory in Ontario to build the same trucks.

Before last year’s strikes, Farley said, Ford kept making pickups in the United States despite higher labor costs and competitors that build them in Mexico.

Fain scoffed at the notion that Detroit automakers will move production out of the U.S. because of a more aggressive union. He complained that over the past 20 years, automakers have closed or sold 65 factories during a period when the UAW was more cooperative.

“That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that cost us,” Fain said.

In the meantime, the standoff with Stellantis over Belvidere has led the UAW to threaten to strike in October.

“We expect them to honor the commitment they made,” Fain said. “If they don’t, we put language in this agreement so that we can hold them accountable. And we’re going to.”

Tom Krisher, The Associated Press

The Ladies’ Lending Library

by Janice Kulyk Keefer

From one of Canada’s most accomplished novelists, a bittersweet tale about mothers, daughters, friends and lovers in 1960s cottage country.

In the summer of 1963, the year of the release of Cleopatra, the most sensational movie ever made, the women of Kalyna Beach prepare for their annual end-of season party.

Sonia Martyn and her four daughters are part of a group of first generation Ukrainian Canadians, newly minted middle-class families claiming their small part of the cottage-country dream.

With their husbands away in the city all week, the women’s days are ruled by the predictable rhythms of children and chores, lightened by the “racy” books they trade amongst themselves and by their Friday afternoon gatherings for gin and gossip, heightened by their obsession with the deliciously scandalous love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Their tightly bound world is straining with its own dramas and secrets.

Sonia, a former fashion model, mourns the death of her mother and fights with her difficult eldest daughter.

Elusive Nadia, the wife of a millionaire, longs for a life she cannot have.

Sharp-tongued, sophisticated Sasha plays a dangerous game in both challenging and shoring-up the traditional Ukrainian community and its defining values.

And for adolescent Laura, her sisters and their friends, the rifts and fissures that appear in the once impregnable “world of the mothers” will unleash a startling series of betrayals and discoveries.

For this is the summer when everything will change for the girls and women of Kalyna Beach, as innocence is exchanged for a new understanding of the possibilities open to them all.

In setting her characters against the backdrop of the turbulent sixties, Janice Kulyk Keefer creates a radiant portrait of women caught between countries, cultures and aspirations.

Richly evocative, beautifully told, The Ladies’Lending Library will resonate with more than women and book club members; it’s a story for anyone who has longed for the sweet and heady days of bygone summers and the risky promises of change.

About the author

Janice Kulyk Keefer’s profile page

To purchase The Ladies’ Lending Library

Indigo – Click here to buy 

The post 49th Shelf: The Ladies’ Lending Library appeared first on Kingsville Times.

The following report was presented to the Erie Shores HealthCare Board of Directors during its open meeting on September 10, 2024.

$1 Million Anonymous Donation

A former patient’s family, who has asked to remain anonymous, has pledged one million dollars to improve the patient experience at our hospital. The money will be used toward the redevelopment of a patient wing. Specific plans for the redevelopment are in the early stages.

ESHC will receive $24,856 for the MOH—Seniors Community Grant Program and $19,800 for the WESPARK Igniting Discovery Grant program to research the creation of a culturally safe nutrition counselling plan for Indigenous older adults with type 2 Diabetes.

The ESHC research team has been invited to present the project at the Canadian Association on Gerontology (CAG) 2024 Conference in Edmonton, Alberta.

Erie Shores 2050 Update

CEO Kristin Kennedy presented an update to the Erie Shores 2050 Plan, which includes the recent submission of the hospital’s master plan to the Ministry of Health and the public open houses planned for this fall.

The Erie Shores 2050 Plan is a cornerstone of Erie Shores HealthCare’s long-term vision to address Essex County’s healthcare needs.

Master Plan Submission

Erie Shores HealthCare explored four different options to address the current site of the hospital:

Option 1: Maximum Re-use of Existing Facilities
Option 2: Hybrid On-site, Phased Redevelopment
Option 3: New Build on the Existing (Expanded) Site
Option 4: New Build on a New Site

Option 3—
New Build on the Existing Site—was chosen as the preferred redevelopment strategy submitted to the Ministry of Health. This option best meets the hospital’s needs by offering modern facilities, improved patient flow, and expanded capacity while minimizing disruptions during construction. The pre-capital submission highlights the need for over 400,000 square feet of new construction. It outlines the operational benefits, including enhanced infection control, better space utilization, and the ability to meet growing demand.

Public Consultation

Public Open Houses are scheduled across the hospital catchment area. These open houses are not just about the future, but also about understanding our community’s current needs. We will introduce our plan to the community as well as collect feedback on current service needs:

Monday, October 21, 2024 – Leamington (Leamington Town Hall) – 4pm to 6pm
Tuesday, October 22, 2024 – Essex (Essex Arena) – 4pm to 6pm
Wednesday, October 23, 2024 – Tecumseh (St. Clair Beach Community Centre) – 6pm to 8pm
Friday, October 25, 2024 – Amherstburg (Libro Centre) – 4pm to 6pm
Wednesday, November 6, 2024 – Kingsville (Kingsville Arena) – 4pm to 6pm
Thursday, November 7, 2024 – Lakeshore (Atlas Tube Centre) – 6pm to 8pm

The Erie Shores 2050 Public Consultation Plan reflects the hospital’s commitment to community involvement and transparency as we progress with this transformative project. Your participation is vital to the success of our efforts to create a healthcare system that meets the needs of Essex County today and into the future.

The latest information regarding Erie Shores 2050 can be found on our website at https://erieshores2050.ca.

The post ESHC Board Meeting: Erie Shores 2050 And Upcoming Public Consultation appeared first on Kingsville Times.