For the first time this century, a rocket built and launched in Canada has reached for outer space – an attempt made not by a private company or government agency, but by a group of engineering students at Concordia University in Montreal who spent seven years turning their homegrown dreams of spaceflight into reality.

The rocket, dubbed Starsailor, lifted off on Friday at 5:34 a.m. E.T. from an isolated launch site in the Mistissini region of northern Quebec.

Good morning. If you had to describe a dance to someone who couldn’t see it, what would you say? That idea is the jumping-off point of a new ballet production that explores vision loss, offering a different perspective on performance. More on that below, plus Air Canada interruptions and detained Canadian questions. But first:

Today’s headlines

• In a rare move, a Manitoba judge will hold a special hearing for the family of a serial-killer victim, Ashlee Shingoose, to speak about the impact of the crimes
• The province of Ontario orders public servants back to the office five days a week starting in 2026
• Russian President Vladimir Putin praised U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine, as the two leaders prepared for the U.S.–Russia summit in Alaska

© Melissa Tait

Canada Post and the union representing 55,000 postal workers are set to head back to the bargaining table today.

It’s been two weeks since members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers rejected the employers’ latest offers in a majority vote.

When a serial killer was convicted last year of murdering four First Nations women in Winnipeg, the family of one of his victims, Ashlee Shingoose, never got the chance to speak about the impact of his crimes because her identity wasn’t known then.

A Manitoba judge is giving them that opportunity Friday in a special hearing, where members of Ms. Shingoose’s family and community will provide statements for the first time in court.

The 300 or so year-round residents of Bamfield, B.C., are no strangers to power outages, often forced to go a day or so in the winter without electricity in their craggy hamlet on southwestern Vancouver Island.

But, on Thursday, many locals were on edge during their third day without power, as they sought out gas for generators to keep upward of a thousand tourists comfortable and hundreds of kilograms of salmon they had just caught from rotting.

A Canadian-led patrol of the North Pacific earlier this year uncovered dozens of alleged fisheries violations, including illegal shark finning and killing of dolphins.

Sean Wheeler, international enforcement chief for the Fisheries Department, said the two-month surveillance mission was the first to include crews from other countries, including the United States, Japan and South Korea, on a single vessel.

The growing number of Canadian citizens detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is disturbing and raises questions about whether Ottawa is doing enough to ensure the well-being of Canadians in custody, experts say, after revelations that Canadian children as young as two years old have been held for weeks in immigration detention this year.

The Globe and Mail on Thursday published extensive analysis of American enforcement data revealing that 149 Canadian citizens have been held at some point in ICE custody since January, when President Donald Trump took office and ordered an expansive immigration crackdown.

An evacuation order in the West Dalhousie area of Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley was expanded late Thursday after a lightning strike ignited nearby woodlands the night before and triggered an intense, out-of-control wildfire.

The County of Annapolis expanded the area covered by an evacuation order that was first issued on Thursday morning and covered about 40 homes.

A judicial review of a proposed Alberta referendum question will go ahead after a judge ruled against an application to quash the review. The group behind the question says they aren't surprised by the ruling but think their question will survive scrutiny.

Playing golf in Canada never gets old for Mike Weir.

The Canadian Golf Hall of Famer will tee it up once again in Calgary in the Rogers Charity Classic at Canyon Meadows Golf and Country Club. It’s the fifth straight year that the 55-year-old golfer from Brights Grove, Ont., will play in front of enthusiastic fans from his home country at the three-day PGA Tour Champions event, which runs from Friday to Sunday.

The U.S. State Department is taking aim at Canada’s Online News Act in a human rights report that criticizes press freedom in Canada – which experts characterized Thursday as Orwellian.

The Online News Act, which requires Meta and Google to compensate news publishers for the use of their content, is cited in a section of the report covering freedom of the press.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has set his sights on Canada’s electric vehicle mandate, pledging Thursday that his party will embark on a national campaign to push the Liberal government to scrap the policy he’s dubbed the “Carney tax.”

Poilievre led the charge as the Conservatives relentlessly attacked the consumer carbon price over the last two years, with the Liberals admitting the Tory tactics swayed public opinion and forced them to end the so-called carbon tax earlier this year.

The wildfire that has triggered evacuation orders and alerts on south-central Vancouver Island measured more than 34 square kilometres on Thursday, about 58 per cent larger than what it was the day before.

The Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District’s emergency operations centre confirmed the growth of the fire, saying it was “in line with expectations.”

Wildfire officials in Saskatchewan have lifted a provincial fire ban because the weather has improved, while thousands from displaced communities in Manitoba have begun to return home.

The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency says the ban was lifted late Wednesday for all Crown lands north of the provincial forest boundary up to the Churchill River.

German soccer star Thomas Muller says he's far from retirement and remains focused on chasing titles as he joins the Vancouver Whitecaps. The 35-year-old attacking midfielder is the biggest signing in the Major League Soccer club's history. (Aug. 14, 2025)

More than two decades ago, when Lydia Bugden was a rising young lawyer in a Halifax legal firm, an older colleague offered a suggestion: It was time for her to meet Sir Graham Day.

Ms. Bugden was initially puzzled by this proposal. Inside her law firm, Stewart McKelvey, Sir Graham was this towering figure with a huge reputation – legendary corporate director, trusted adviser to Atlantic Canada’s business dynasties, and most famously, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite fixer, who in the 1980s engineered the privatization of British industrial megaliths in the shipbuilding and auto industries.

Health officials in Montreal are still working to tally the total number of people who died from heat-related causes since Sunday, when sweltering temperatures took over the city.

The city’s public health department has so far confirmed three reports of heat-related deaths since then, up from one earlier this week. The agency says it has also received reports of at least two cases of heat stroke.

After swimming with his family at Sandy Beach in the Ontario town of Buckhorn on the weekend, Patrick Porzuczek was driving north when the sky overhead began to rumble.

A plane was targeting a wildfire, named HAL019, near Burnt River in Kawartha Lakes, about two hours north of Toronto in Ontario’s cottage country.

Two of the late actor Joseph Ziegler’s biggest fans were the eminent theatre critic Robert Cushman and his wife, Arlene Gould. Mr. Cushman deemed Mr. Ziegler the kind of actor with so much depth and skill that he could elevate even a less-than-fabulous production. In a tribute, published on his website, Cushman Collected, Mr. Cushman writes of the time when he and Ms. Gould were watching just such a show – a “dismal” revival of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. When Mr. Ziegler exited the stage after his first brief scene, Mr. Cushman overheard his wife murmuring, “please come back.”

That was a sentiment shared by many theatregoers. Mr. Ziegler, who died on July 28 at the age of 71, was an endlessly watchable actor, whose deep reserves of humanity made him captivating in whatever role he played. They ran the gamut from the monumental part of Willy Loman, the tragically deluded anti-hero of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, to that of the blind, wheelchair-confined Hamm in Samuel Beckett’s bleak masterpiece Endgame. Mr. Ziegler could have you roaring with laughter at his gum-chewing prowess in the William Saroyan comedy The Time of Your Life, or quietly squeeze your heart as an all-too-real and pitiable miser in his inimitable take on Charles Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge.

Ontario public servants will be required to return to the office full time, with employees going in-person five days a week by January, 2026. Premier Doug Ford says he believes employees are more productive when they work in-person.

A Quebec court judge has overturned the majority of the sanctions against two Montreal police officers who were suspended for lying about their interactions with an inmate who died in custody in 2017.

Judge Alexandre Henri ruled that police watchdog investigators had not informed the officers of their right to remain silent when questioning them on the circumstances surrounding the death of David Tshiteya Kalubi.

A new survey from the Bank of Canada shows Canadians are keeping more cash in their wallets in an increasingly digital world.

The central bank says its 2024 survey on payment methods show Canadians kept an average of $156 in cash on hand, $16 more than in 2023.

Frustrated fire officials in Newfoundland and Labrador battling multiple blazes are also having to contend with online misinformation and people angry at government-imposed precautions.

The out-of-control fires, which have threatened the provincial capital this week and forced thousands from their homes, are among 214 wildfires in the province so far this season, a more than 100-per-cent increase over last year.

Simons has opened its first Toronto store at Yorkdale Mall, with a second location coming soon to the Eaton Centre.

Some claimants are now receiving compensation payments through a $23-billion settlement for more than 300,000 First Nations children and their families.

The settlement is meant to compensate children and their families for Canada’s chronic underfunding of on-reserve child welfare services.

A judicial review of a proposed Alberta separation referendum question will go ahead, after an application to quash the proceeding and have the question approved without scrutiny was denied.

Court of King’s Bench Justice Colin Feasby said in his ruling Thursday that a judicial review and full hearing on the constitutionality of the question would benefit democracy.

Simons has opened its first Toronto store at Yorkdale Mall, with a second location coming soon to the Eaton Centre.

A demonstration by more than a dozen members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees prompted Air Canada to end a press conference early as tensions between the two sides continues to mount ahead of a weekend work stoppage.

The sternly worded statements and letters are filled with indignation and outrage: Republican U.S. lawmakers say Canada has done too little to contain wildfires and smoke that have fouled the air in several states this summer.

“Instead of enjoying family vacations at Michigan’s beautiful lakes and campgrounds, for the third summer in a row, Michiganders are forced to breathe hazardous air as a result of Canada’s failure to prevent and control wildfires,” read a statement last week from the state’s GOP congressional delegation, echoing similar missives from Republicans in Iowa, New York, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The Ontario government is ordering public servants back to the office five days a week starting in 2026, one of the most aggressive moves by a public-sector employer in Canada to curb remote work since it became commonplace during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Oct. 20 of this year, workers who had previously attended the office for a minimum of three days a week will be required to attend four days. And starting Jan. 5, 2026, workers will be expected to be in the office full-time.

© Frank Gunn

Mac Bauer has been racing Toronto’s streetcar routes and sharing videos of himself on TikTok.

Rogers Communications Inc. RCI-B-T has signed a deal to sell its portfolio of nine data centres to InfraRed Capital Partners.

Financial terms of the sale were not immediately available.

Officials in Newfoundland and Labrador extended an evacuation alert Thursday evening, asking residents of a small coastal community to be ready to flee a wildfire that may have already destroyed up to 100 homes and structures.

As a precaution, the province asked residents of Job’s Cove, on Newfoundland’s Bay de Verde Peninsula, to be prepared to leave as a wildfire measuring more than 80 square kilometres roared nearby. The fire near Kingston, N.L., is the largest in the province and has forced about 3,000 others in the area out of their homes.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board says it earned a net return of one per cent for its first quarter.

CPP Investments chief executive John Graham says shifting trade dynamics and broader geopolitical uncertainty fuelled renewed volatility in global markets during the quarter.

At least two Canadian toddlers have been held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody this year, including one who was detained for 51 days, more than double the legal detention period for migrant children in the United States, a Globe and Mail analysis of American enforcement data show.

The children, who are under the age of four, were both detained at a remote Texas facility that has been the subject of a legal complaint alleging inadequate access to safe drinking water, medical care and legal assistance. At the time of detention, they appear to have been accompanied by adults who were also apprehended.

© Eric Gay

Hydro One Ltd H-T, says chief executive David Lebeter will take a temporary compassionate care leave, effective Aug. 25, to care for a family member.

The power utility says Lebeter will be available to the company on an advisory basis until his return.

A year ago, Mac Bauer and his wife, Jungmin Chang, boarded a streetcar in Toronto’s Leslieville neighbourhood to visit a friend in High Park.

The journey from east to west took more than an hour and felt sluggish to the two runners.

© Cassidy McMackon

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© Melissa Tait

Former Richmond, B.C., city councillor Harold Steves’ family has been farming in the area since 1877, lending their name to the community of Steveston.

The 88-year-old former politician only retired from council three years ago, and few can match his knowledge of the controversies surrounding Richmond’s farmland – the creation of the province’s agricultural land reserve, influxes of foreign-money investors, a spate of mega-mansion construction and now the Cowichan Nation’s Aboriginal title claim.

Good morning. Flight delays, labour disputes and a Trump slump have made the travel season a game of chance – more on that below, along with Newfoundland’s dangerously dry summer and the chances for a Bank of Canada rate cut. But first:

Today’s headlines

• Nearly 150 Canadians held in ICE custody this year, including two toddlers, data show
• In war-weary Kyiv, Ukrainians view the Trump-Putin summit with skepticism
• Thousands in St. John’s are under an evacuation alert as wildfires threaten urban centres
• Non-profits accuse Israel of ‘weaponizing’ aid as its forces step up their Gaza City bombardment

© DARRYL DYCK

An 18-year-old who faces charges in a crash that killed a father of three had no restrictions on his drivers’ licence after a collision involving Premier Doug Ford earlier this year, the Ontario Provincial Police confirmed.

Now, a member of the victim’s family wants to see legislative change to prevent people accused of dangerous driving from being on the road.

Jaiwin Kirubananthan, of Oshawa, was arrested in connection with a head-on collision on Aug. 3 that killed 35-year-old Andrew Cristillo of Mount Albert, Ont., and injured his wife and three daughters. He was charged with dangerous driving causing death, three counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm, failing to remain at an accident resulting in death and public mischief. The crash happened in Whitchurch-Stouffville, northeast of Toronto.

© Spencer Colby

Canadian auto parts companies say the current North American trade agreement is helping them manage headwinds from south of the border, even as tariff disruptions intensified over the past months.

With recent earnings reports from Martinrea International Inc. MRE-T and Linamar Corp. LNR-T, both firms highlighted compliance with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement as a source of shelter from the harsh tariffs imposed by the United States.

With its frequent fog, rainstorms and snow squalls barrelling in from the Atlantic Ocean, Newfoundland and Labrador has long been known as a place with unpredictable weather. But until recently, dangerously hot and dry summers weren’t something people had to worry about.

As unprecedented wildfires chase thousands from their homes in the eastern part of the province, Newfoundlanders are concerned that their usually damp island is entering new territory.

A motivated herd of lean biting machines is back on duty and cleaning up an overgrown park in northwest Calgary. About 800 goats are grazing the 58 hectares, gnawing on excess vegetation and reducing the risk of fire and promoting biodiversity.

Two nine-month-old Scottish Highland bulls are making their debut at the Toronto Zoo. The zoo's manager of wildlife care says the brothers were born and raised at a local Ontario farm before moving there.

Conservative MPs are calling for a parliamentary investigation into Spanish drugmaker Grifols’s GIFOF use of Canadian-donated blood plasma to make medicines for sale abroad.

The call follows a Globe and Mail investigation that found Canadian Blood Services is selling some blood components to Grifols to manufacture a product called albumin, as part of a complex arrangement between the international pharmaceutical company and the Canadian charity to collect and process blood plasma.

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner says the federal government needs to do more to fight Canada’s devastating forest fires.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday in Ottawa, the Alberta MP accused Ottawa of “inaction” on wildfires. She also blamed that lack of action for new measures restricting activities in the forests of two provinces — even though those bans were imposed by the provinces themselves.

A raging wildfire that has forced evacuations on south-central Vancouver Island has been burning at some of most severe levels of fire behaviour, a display that is “unusual” for the region, the British Columbia officials said Wednesday.

Karley Desrosiers, an information officer with the service, said there was “aggressive” growth on the fire within a couple hours of its discovery on Monday.

John Miszuk, a refugee from war-torn Europe who only learned to skate at age 12, overcame a late start to forge an 18-season career in professional hockey.

A dependable, stay-at-home defenceman, Mr. Miszuk (pronounced MISH-ook) gained a reputation for delivering punishing bodychecks, including once knocking out an opponent with a clean hit during a playoff game.

© B Bennett

American pop star Chappell Roan is known to many as the “Midwest Princess” and now is promising to travel a touch north to the land of the living skies.

Roan has created a buzz in Saskatchewan with the release of The Subway, her new song about post-breakup frustration, where she name-drops Saskatchewan.