In a large commercial kitchen in Halifax’s north end, chef Shane Gallagher sprinkled a garnish of parmesan, garlic, parsley and breadcrumbs onto the creamy broccoli pasta his team had just plated. It was a simple dish, but Mr. Gallagher – who’s worked at some of the city’s best restaurants, including Bar Kismet and Drift – added some cheffy touches: The breadcrumbs were processed from fluffy, olive-oil-rich slabs of focaccia, and the sauce’s flavour was punched up with the sweet funkiness of puréed garlic confit.

This was lost on many diners. Some took a few bites before throwing out the rest of the dish. Others refused to taste it at all.

© Carolina Andrade

Prolific Canadian actor Graham Greene, who earlier this year received a Governor General’s award for lifetime artistic achievement, has died.

Greene’s management team said he died on Monday in Stratford, Ont., after a long illness. He was 73.

When Maurice McGregor graduated from high school, his father sat him down for a pragmatic talk about the future. The fact that young Maurice had not been the smartest of students did not preclude him from pursuing a career in education, law or medicine because if only the smartest were able to take on positions of authority, the world would be in a lot of trouble.

The son chose medicine because it was a field that sparked his curiosity. And, coming from a family of fierce pacifists who were all aware that a new world war was on the horizon, he wanted to be able to take part as a healer who would not have to maim or kill others.

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Many of the more than 35,000 public-service employees from two unions in British Columbia will be heading to the picket lines on Tuesday morning if they are not called back to the bargaining table, the union heads say.

“We think our government is out of touch with both our membership and the public‚” said Paul Finch, bargaining chair and president of the British Columbia General Employees’ Union. “We think the government needs to take a knee and revise their position here.”

The BCGEU, which represents 34,000 public-sector employees, as well as the Professional Employees Association (PEA), which represents more than 1,800 licensed government professionals, each issued a 72-strike notice on Friday.

© Adrian Wyld

Nearly a fifth of the Liberal caucus has issued a letter calling for more to be done to address a rise in antisemitism after a Jewish woman in her 70s was stabbed at an Ottawa grocery store.

Mount Royal MP Anthony Housefather posted the letter on social media he signed along with 31 other Liberal lawmakers that decries what the letter calls the “deplorable” rise in antisemitism, warning it is “becoming normalized” in Canada.

All eyes will be on Quebec Premier François Legault on Tuesday as he is set to testify at the public inquiry into the cost overrun scandal at the province’s auto insurance board.

The commission, overseen by Judge Denis Gallant, is examining how the creation of the online platform known as SAAQclic incurred cost overruns of at least $500-million.

A year ago, then-NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s Labour Day message to workers insisted that his party alone would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with working Canadians and the unions that work to protect their rights.

Six months later, Singh stood outside of an auto plant in Windsor, Ont. during the federal election, hoping to offer support and comfort to workers reeling from news of new auto tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump. But Singh was not greeted with warmth – most of them ignored him entirely, rushing past with their heads down as they came off shift, while some others indicated a preference for the Conservatives and Leader Pierre Poilievre.

Fewer tourists are coming to Jasper, Alta., than usual this year, but it’s not for a lack of people eager to visit the picturesque Rocky Mountain town. 

Numbers are about as good as they can be, considering about one-fifth of the town’s overnight accommodations burned when a ferocious wildfire swept through last summer, said Tourism Jasper CEO Tyler Riopel. 

Monty Python’s absurdist tribute to Canadian tree fellers – the famed Lumberjack Song – is renowned across the world as a comedic classic.

Even real lumberjacks like to sing the lyrics: “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay. I sleep all night. And I work all day.”

It was a 22-second video that changed the fortunes of a Hong Kong bakery in British Columbia.

Laura Ullock, a prominent food and lifestyle social-media influencer based in Vancouver, had heard about Unique Slow Rise Bakery, a small, family-run business tucked away next to a campground in the shadow of Shannon Falls, in Squamish.

Police say a man is dead after a home invasion in the northwest of Toronto.

York Regional Police say they responded to a report of the invasion in Vaughan, Ont., at around 1 a.m. Saturday.

The night before they had to leave their home in the Northwest Territories because of an encroaching wildfire, Paschalina Nadli and her daughter carefully packed up their truck.

Their community of Fort Providence, NWT, where fewer than 1,000 people live, is located west of Great Slave Lake along the Mackenzie River. It was placed on evacuation alert on Saturday evening as a wildfire raged nearby.

Margaret Atwood is taking aim at Alberta’s controversial ban on school library books containing sexual content with a new, satirical short story after the famed author’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale was yanked from some shelves owing to the province’s sweeping new rules.

In a social media post on Sunday, Ms. Atwood said since the literary classic is no longer suitable in Alberta’s schools, she has written a short story for 17-year olds about two “very, very good children” named John and Mary.

Some small Indigenous businesses are halting shipments to the U.S. in the wake of President Donald Trump’s tariff regime, even though trade ties exist that predate the founding of both Canada and the United States.

“There needs to be a resolution to allow Indigenous Peoples to continue to undergo the trade routes that they have established and practised, and the treaties that have been signed in the past have suggested that these would be honoured,” said Matthew Foss, who serves as the vice president of research and public policy at the Canadian Council for Indigenous Businesses.

An evacuation order was issued for a second community in Northwest Territories on Sunday due to a dangerously close wildfire.

After being told to be ready to leave a day earlier, the community of Fort Providence, which has a population of about 600 people, was ordered out because a forecast of strong winds in the afternoon risked flames encroaching the north side of town.

A NWT wildfire information officer said the wildfire was about two kilometres away from the community.

© JASON FRANSON

New research on a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu – a small portion of which should arrive in Canada soon – is offering a glimpse into how it came to be.

Studies published in Nature Astronomy and Nature Geoscience last week offer some insight into the granules that were collected and brought to Earth in September, 2023, as part of the NASA-led OSIRIS-REx mission.

In nearly 30 years as a palliative care physician, Dr. Nathalie Allard has provided end-of-life care in busy hospital hallways, and consulted with families with only a curtain separating them from sick people screaming or vomiting on the other side.

On Thursday, she attended the opening of a brand-new palliative care facility northeast of Montreal that represents the kind of place where she wants to work and, one day, to die.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent decision to lift countertariffs on U.S. goods has renewed questions about whether more Canadian provinces will allow liquor retailers to put U.S. alcohol back on their shelves.

American industry associations have been calling for an end to the booze bans, arguing that they harm Canadian consumers and businesses.

A Prince Edward Island man facing a terrorism peace bond has been ordered to follow a raft of conditions, including not accessing the internet and not holding a passport.

The RCMP in Prince Edward Island sought a terrorism peace bond for the 51-year-old man, fearing he may commit a terrorism offence.

Officers say they seized 3D printed firearm components and arrested the man at his residence in February.

© JASON FRANSON

Federal public servants were less likely to call in sick to work during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, new government data show.

The figures shared by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat indicate that in 2020-21, when the pandemic had most office employees working entirely remotely, the average number of sick days for the public service was 5.9.

Police in Sudbury, Ont., say they are looking for additional suspects after a double homicide in the city on Friday.

The Greater Sudbury Police Service says officers were called to a building on Paris Street just before 10:30 p.m. on Friday after gunshots were heard.

The bodies of a man and a woman were located in the building.

© Gino Donato

A disc jockey playing alt-rock tunes on Edmonton’s airwaves on a late Sunday night introduces herself and jokes about being regularly asked about firmware updates.

Her sarcasm, she says, also gets auto-corrected.

In 2011, on the federal election campaign trial, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives promised Canadians “the right to defend their property.” The next year, after his party won a majority government, Mr. Harper rewrote Canada’s law on self-defence.

The previous version, dating back to the Liberals in 2003, stated that anyone who is unlawfully assaulted, without provocation, was “justified in repelling force by force” – but no more than necessary. The response also could not be intended to cause death or grievous bodily harm.

Michelle Duff was the first North American and, so far, the only Canadian to win a motorcycle race on the world championship grand prix circuit.

A triumph at the 1964 Belgian grand prix helped make Duff a popular figure among racing fans in Britain and on the Continent – where the sport enjoyed crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands – but earned her little notice back home.

The Ontario government, alongside Toronto City Hall, recently announced planning reforms in Canada’s largest city that would legalize larger apartment buildings around most transit stations.

Ontario Housing Minister Rob Flack and Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow jointly announced the changes on Aug. 15. They alter Toronto’s official plan in 120 mass transit station areas, or MTSA, around transit stations or stops.

When hydrogen sulphide − also known as sour gas − started bubbling up from underground behind the local library in Wheatley in late June and forced a brief evacuation of nearby homes, it was a stress-inducing déjà vu for this small Ontario town about an hour from Windsor.

Four years ago, a similar leak in the basement of a defunct pub caused a massive explosion that destroyed two buildings and injured 20 people − and drew attention to the danger posed by the thousands of old and often improperly capped oil and gas wells that dot much of Southwestern Ontario.

Before last fall, when cellphones weren’t yet officially banned during classes in Orly Kaye’s Toronto high school, the students’ glowing screens were ubiquitous. They scrolled TikTok and Instagram Reels, made lunch plans via group chats, played games or watched YouTube videos. Some kids, the 16-year-old says, wouldn’t even turn down the volume or use earbuds. The refrain of “put your phones away, please” from desperate teachers was near-constant, and mostly ignored.

Orly wasn’t immune to their phone’s pull either. When they’d get bored during science class, they’d start scrolling. “I’d be half paying attention to class, and half paying attention to Pinterest and drawing,” says Orly, who is going into grade 12.

© Amber Bracken

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says Edmonton's public school board has gone over the top in complying with new rules banning books with sexual content. Smith says the school listed books the policy had no intention of targeting.

A teachers’ strike or a lockout is looming in Alberta just days before the start of school. The conflict between the province and union is coming to a head as the government mandates book restrictions in school libraries and implements sweeping rules around students’ pronouns and transgender identity.

Contract negotiations between the Alberta Teachers’ Association and the province’s bargaining team have reached a significant impasse, said Education and Childcare Minister Demetrios Nicolaides. He characterized the union as “manipulative” after it declined to accept an offer during mediated talks this week.

“Parents should be furious that union leaders are gambling with their kids’ future,” Mr. Nicolaides told reporters in Calgary, joining Alberta’s Finance Minister Nate Horner on Friday to emphasize that the province cannot afford to pay teachers more than a proposed 12-per-cent salary increase over four years.

© Jeff McIntosh

Hong Kong is a special sort of place. A tiny enclave on China’s flank, it rose in the course of a generation from steamy colonial port to modern economic dynamo – a magnet for struggling migrants from mainland China, a financial hub for East Asia, a bustling entrepôt with trading links around the world.

When I arrived there in the early 1980s to work on a regional newsmagazine, signs of its rising wealth were all around. Skyscrapers were going up left and right. Rolls-Royce limousines carried freshly minted millionaires through the clogged streets. Even the tin-roofed shanties that spilled down the hillsides boasted new television sets.

The private developer who had partnered with British Columbia’s Squamish Nation to build the country’s most ambitious Indigenous-owned apartment project to date has sold the last of his stake to a major Ontario pension fund.

The move by Ian Gillespie’s Westbank Corp. is the latest in a series of divestments by the company as it grapples with a dramatic slowdown of the Vancouver residential market. The Squamish announced Thursday that the Senakw project, which is just completing the first three towers of a planned 11, will now be a “restructured partnership.”

A 71-year-old man from Cornwall, Ont., is facing charges after he allegedly stabbed an elderly woman in Ottawa in what police consider to be a hate-motivated crime.

Police say a woman in her 70s entered a grocery store on Baseline Road with a friend at around 1:35 p.m. on Wednesday when she was approached by a man who stabbed her, causing serious injuries.

In late July, Steffen Skjottelvik set out on what he knew would be a perilous journey through the Canadian North.

Carrying a rifle and his backpack, and with his two huskies by his side, the Norwegian hiker planned to traverse 300 kilometres along the coast of Hudson Bay, from Fort Severn, Ont., to York Factory, a remote national historic site in Manitoba, about 250 km southeast of Churchill.

The summer that the ocean fell silent stays with Mike Reid.

“It looked like a dead zone. There were no birds, no seals, no otters. When you looked into the water column, there was no urchin, there was no [sea] cucumber, no fish swimming about.”

The BC General Employees’ Union says provincial public-sector workers have voted to approve strike action.

Union president and public service bargaining committee chair Paul Finch says a 72-hour notice has been issued of potential strike action beginning 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday.

Finch says there was 92.7-per-cent support for strike action, and 86.4 per cent of Public Service Agency members in the union voted.

© Adrian Wyld

Zellers is making a comeback with its first new store set to open in Edmonton next week.

Landlord Henry Zavriyev says Londonderry Mall in the city’s north will be home to a Zellers location in a space formerly occupied by Hudson’s Bay.

A 17-year-old boy who allegedly intended to carry out an attack on behalf of the Islamic State is facing a new charge of assaulting a peace officer, a federal Crown prosecutor said Friday.

Prosecutor Marc Cigana told reporters at Montreal’s youth court that the alleged assault occurred at RCMP headquarters in Westmount, Que., after the teen was arrested on Aug. 20.

“The charge is a charge of assaulting a police officer in the fulfilment of his duties causing bodily harm,” Cigana said.

© Christinne Muschi

The federal government needs to amend the Criminal Code so the use of force is presumed to be reasonable to defend your home and family if someone breaks into it, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Friday.

Poilievre called a news conference in Brampton, Ont., amid an outcry over assault charges that were laid against an Ontario man who encountered another man who allegedly broke into his apartment while carrying a crossbow.

On a Friday afternoon, the sun blazes down on a Mississauga truck yard. With less than 24 hours before Toronto’s annual Carnival parade, Freedom Mas hasn’t started building its sound system. The semi-truck bed for the float is four hours late, and the rented speakers aren’t what were ordered.

Khalil Bernard is pacing anxiously across the yard. As lead DJ for Freedom Mas, the only masquerade band (mas band) playing primarily Jamaican music in the Grand Parade, Bernard carries the weight of ensuring their sound system delivers not just tunes, but a statement of cultural pride.

“Will they know that we were pulling out hair and crying behind the scenes and all of this before the parade started?” he asked.

© Sarah Espedido

Laurentian Bank of Canada LB-T says it had a net income of $37.5-million in the third quarter, up from a profit of $34.1-million in the same quarter last year.

The Montreal-based bank says earnings worked out to 73 cents per share for the quarter ending July 31, an increase from 67 cent per share last year.

Thomas Verny is a clinical psychiatrist, academic, award-winning author, public speaker, poet and podcaster. He is the author of eight books, including the global bestseller The Secret Life of the Unborn Child and 2021’s The Embodied Mind: Understanding the Mysteries of Cellular Memory, Consciousness and Our Bodies.

Today, as a society, we are under a great deal of stress. Men and women, LGBTQ people, racialized people, Indigenous people and new immigrants are experiencing these rapidly changing times differently. An in-depth discussion of these differences would take a book, not a column, so, in this piece I have elected to focus on men.

BRP Inc. DOO-T says it delivered better than anticipated results despite the economic environment, leaving it confident enough to issue full-year guidance. 

“Since we are starting to see the benefit of our action, and despite ongoing volatility, we are comfortable issuing guidance,” said outgoing president and chief executive José Boisjoli on an earnings call Friday.

The federal government says it’s “looking into” what appears to be the accidental removal of a privacy provision in its Online Streaming Act.

Earlier this week, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist outlined in a blog post that a privacy provision in the legislation was removed only two months after the bill became law, through an amendment contained in another bill.

Canada’s economy contracted in the second quarter by a much larger degree than anticipated on an annualized basis as U.S. tariffs squeezed exports, but higher household and government spending cushioned some of the impact, data showed on Friday.

The GDP for the quarter that ended June 30 decelerated by 1.6 per cent on an annualized basis from a downwardly revised growth of 2.0 per cent posted in the first quarter, Statistics Canada said, taking the total annualized growth in the first six months of the year to 0.4 per cent.

Canadian child-protection advocates are urging the administrators of the network that underpins much of the dark web to block access to millions of child-abuse images and the thousands of websites that post them.

They are warning that pedophile material is proliferating on the anonymous web, including tips on how to abuse minors and evade the police, which is jeopardizing the safety of huge numbers of children worldwide.

Good morning. As one of the few news organizations in the world with a contributing reporter on the ground in Gaza, sharing these stories is a unique privilege and a challenge – and today we take you behind the scenes on our coverage. More on that below, plus improving international relations and preparing for back to school. But first:

Today’s headlines

• The Supreme Court declines to hear the appeal of the Sauble Beach, Ont. land claim, granting the Saugeen First Nation to keep a stretch of coastline after a 30-year legal battle
• The law firm that took on big tobacco is awarded an unprecedented payout of nearly $1-billion in legal fees
• With no full-time vet, Iqaluit residents face steep bills for access to pet care

© Hatem Khaled

Mayah Obadia was vacationing in Toronto when she received a text message from her petsitter about her cat, Fig. He was not eating or playing.

For most Canadians, this would warrant a pretty simple solution: a trip to the local veterinarian’s office, likely scheduled during regular clinic hours.

Spirits maker Diageo DEO-N will cease operations at its bottling facility in Amherstburg, Ont., early next year, as it shifts some bottling volume to the U.S., the company announced on Thursday.

The facility, which bottles Crown Royal products, will close in February in a move aimed at improving its North American supply chain.

Nova Scotia’s largest wildfire destroyed 20 homes in the Annapolis Valley over the weekend as dry winds fanned the flames of the Long Lake fire that continues to burn out of control. 

Minister of Emergency Management Kim Masland said 20 homes and at least 11 outbuildings, such as sheds or garages, were destroyed or seriously damaged Sunday.

A huge sinkhole shut down the intersection of Coxwell and Cosburn Avenues early on Aug. 28. The City of Toronto said crews were called after reports of a watermain break, which led to flooding, pavement damage and the sinkhole. The area is expected to remain closed for repairs until Sept. 1.