Canadian physician Panid Borhanjoo woke up on Friday morning in Iran’s cottage country to an onslaught of messages from family and friends asking if he was safe.

He turned on the news in his relatives’ home in Mazandaran, a lush, coastal province on the Caspian Sea. Israeli missiles had destroyed Iranian nuclear facilities and killed high-ranking military personnel in Tehran, about 200 kilometres away. War had erupted.

Police in the Greater Toronto Area have arrested 18 people who they say are part of an organized network tied to the towing industry that is responsible for alleged acts of extortion and violence.

Peel Regional Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah on Monday announced the results of their operation, Project Outsource, from a podium encircled by seized tow trucks, firearms and a crossbow in a parking lot in Brampton, Ont.

In his hotel room in Tel Aviv, Canadian Artur Wilczynski has quickly adopted a routine intended to keep him alive: His smartphone flashes an alert that missiles are incoming, and he heads to a sub-basement bomb shelter to wait out the latest attack by Iran, listening for the exploding sky to go quiet again.

Right now, there’s no way back to Canada for the retired public servant, who was visiting Israel from Ottawa as part of an international delegation invited by the country’s foreign ministry to meet with members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Mona Ghassemi, president of the Iranian Canadian Congress, was at home in Montreal when she first heard about the Israeli strikes in Iran early Friday. She called her mother, learning her aunt and cousin in Iran awakened to the sounds of nearby missile blasts but were unharmed.

“Residential buildings were hit, and there were children among the killed. So this, of course, is very devastating,” Ms. Ghassemi said.

A Mississauga dentist was among more than 240 people killed Thursday in an Air India flight that crashed shortly after takeoff in the northwestern Indian city of Ahmedabad.

Nirali Sureshkumar Patel, 33, was the lone traveller with a Canadian passport aboard the London-bound flight. Her death was confirmed by her husband.

Workers at Queen’s Park removed wooden boards on Wednesday morning that have surrounded a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald since 2020, when Black Lives Matter protesters covered it with pink paint.

The decision by the Board of Internal Economy, the Ontario legislative committee that voted to uncover the statue, has stoked tensions with First Nations and debate over the legacy of the first Canadian prime minister. Macdonald played a key role in creating Canada’s residential school system.

The Ontario Provincial Police have seized a total of 43.5 kilograms of fentanyl in two separate investigations, including one that the force says is the largest seizure of the synthetic opioid in its history.

Commissioner Thomas Carrique announced the seizures at OPP headquarters in Orillia on Tuesday, standing next to a table covered in bags of coloured powder and stacks of cash. The force also displayed a seized blue Ferrari.

Hazardous fumes and thick smoke have blanketed Western Canada, extending toward large parts of Ontario and even beyond the country’s border – an ominous sign that wildfire season is well under way.