A township council in eastern Ontario has rolled back its own remote work privileges, but held off on doing the same for staff.

CBC’s Giacomo Panico visited a former NATO radome that's now privately owned and used by a local group of radio astronomers.

Many Canadians are searching for ways to get a better sleep, and they're turning to a market promoting products for a better night's sleep. But as more people cash in, experts say the costs may go beyond individual wallets.

In 2017, the Supreme Court of Canada had the chance to change the landscape of Canadian trade through a decision around a man and his carload of booze. Now, those cross-province trade barriers are getting another look.

A man in his 20s was taken to hospital in life-threatening condition after being hit by a vehicle near the University of Ottawa Saturday morning, police say.

Two men have been charged with second-degree murder in a shooting at an Etobicoke apartment last month that left a 16-year-old boy dead and another male injured, Toronto police say. 

It looks better than a tent, but still where do you put all your stuff?

Members of the media are looking at one of 40 tiny shelters on the Barton-Tiffany lands-a temporary shelter village that has had a very rough start.  Murky procurement, dubiously expensive, delayed by unrealistic deadlines tell just a part of the sad tale that began with a solid rejection of neighborhood consultation.

  When the shelters are all erected and they’re not yet, 80 people could be living there.

  They will move from precarious housing, from storefronts from the sidewalk, from the road edges from public parks to a place where they can lock the door. 

  I pass by Bayfront Park on the way to Barton-Tiffany. If there’s a windier spot in Hamilton I don’t know where it is. Tarps layered over tents for added insulation are shredding.   

   Maybe some of these people will move to Barton-Tiffany. Will their stuff move too?

  The shelter open for viewing is double occupancy, so you have to picture it with a wall dividing it in half. Where do you put boots, shoes, your winter coat, the rest of winter and summer clothes, hygiene products maybe some books, a bit of food, and what about the dog or cat because they’re allowed too? Still it’s warm and dry and the door locks.

  The city says 19 people have moved in while shelters continue being built.

  The white shelters lining up with an engineers precision on the shiny black asphalt look harsh on the cold winter day, but just imagine in the summer stepping out on a 30° day onto a sea of simmering asphalt. There is no catchy planner speak that can turn this into anything but what it is, a utilitarian temporary town. But it’s better than a tent.

  There are washrooms on site a place to do laundry and a communal building where food will be delivered. A kitchen is in place and there’s space to hang out.

  The shelter site is surrounded by chain-link fencing draped in black. Hydro polls ring the property topped by rows of lights which the neighbourhood and shelter residents can only hope is a a grade above prison yard lighting. Later plans include shade structures before summer, and some sort of dog latrine. 

    A bunch of city staffers stand by to answer questions as well as  Mayor Andrea Horwath, but it is Katherine Kalinowski  Good Shepherd  chief operating officer fielding most of the questions.  Good Shepher as operator of the site she details some of the supports available at Barton-Tiffany, addiction counselling , trauma and mental health support, help filling out governments forms. Security will be there around the clock.

   Drugs can be used inside a shelter, but there are no overnight guest allowed. Dogs must be on leash when out on the grounds and Good Shepherd will work with animal services to screen animals before they move in. Right now there are more cats than dogs.

  While there is a quiet sense of accomplishment among the team from the city, Kalinowski captured the essence.

   “People come into homelessness from all sorts of circumstances but I would say one of the commonalities for the folks who were likely to spend time here is (a history of) much violence and much stigma.

And so this place is meant to be a safer haven.”

The skateway shut down on Feb. 24 in order to preserve the ice surface through a few days of warmer weather. The National Capital Commission says a stretch between Rideau and Bank streets will reopen 8 a.m. Sunday.

When one reads the comments section in the Spectator and other social media news outlets including this one, what is apparent is that readers don’t put themselves in the neat jurisdictional boxes that separate, Federal, Provincial and local politics. They don’t feel constrained to “stay in their lanes” politically. Such was the case with online commentators following what was one of the key stories after Thursday’s provincial election namely, the resounding rejection of leftist activists and co-supporters Sarah Jama and Kojo Damptey. Jama finished a distant fourth in the Hamilton Centre race that was handily won by the NDP’s Robin Lennox, even though much of the Hamilton Centre NDP riding association backed Jama. Writing in the Public Record, Joey Coleman suggests Jama’s 5,000 votes tells you the actual size of the hard-left cohort in the riding.

On Hamilton Mountain, Conservative Monica Ciriello pulled off the upset of the night, winning the seat that nobody, including PC insiders who spoke to the Bay Observer, thought she could win. Handicapped by not much money, the PC’s notoriously poor get-out-the-vote “machine,” and the party’s ridiculous ban on candidates participating in debates and interviews, she nonetheless won by 2,000 votes. With Damptey finishing third, the NDP lost 5,000 votes and dropped from 44 percent of votes cast in 2022 to 26 percent. Although finishing second, Dawn Danko more than doubled the Liberal vote from the previous election. The expected low voter turnout didn’t come to pass either, with both Hamilton Centre and Mountain seeing voting up in the 5 percent range from the last election.

 Back to how members of the public saw this election, many commenters hoped the seeming move to what appears to be more centrist politics provincially in Hamilton, might translate into changes in the likely imminent Federal election and even the next municipal election. Their comments can be impolite at times but the messaging and the precision of who is being targeted is unambiguous.

When one sees a post condemning politicians at all three levels as well as the school board and the Police board, it becomes apparent that politics in Hamilton is changing from being party-based to being ideologically-based. candidates like Matthew Green and Sarah Jama joined the NDP more as a vehicle to conduct culture wars, than to seriously deal with the challenges of managing an economy. It’s easier to talk about issues like Palestine when one is unburdened with any real responsibility to the electorate other than getting re-elected. In fairness, that is also the case for government backbenchers. Substantial numbers of NDP voters in Hamilton Centre and Hamilton Mountain appeared to say they were done with the extreme rhetoric and wanted more serious representation. Lennox’s win in Hamilton Centre appears to have been in spite of the local NDP executive, the local labour council and a gaggle of unions, increasingly, but not entirely public sector. Most of the trade unions and construction unions have gone to the Tories. In the upcoming Federal election. we will have to see if the Liberals and Conservatives deviate from their practice of nominating sacrificial candidates, particularly in Hamilton Centre.

It would be a mistake to read too much ideological interpretation into Lennox’s election in Hamilton Centre. While as far as we know she is not a keffiyeh-wearing, defund-the-police-er, her background as a medical doctor, prior to election aligns with the progressive-left. She has worked with the with the Shelter Health Network and was medical director for the supervised consumption service at the YWCA, as well as co-head of the substance use service at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. She had been recently appointed to  the City of Hamilton’s public health sub-committee, the establishment of which was demanded by so-called equity-seeking groups in Hamilton.

The municipal election is still nearly two years away and much can happen in that time, but there appears to be unprecedented voter unrest across the city—a good deal of it aimed at the progressive majority on Hamilton Council. Nrinder Nann and Cameron Kroetsch have borne the bulk of the criticism because of the concentration of encampments in their wards, and their support of the encampment protocol that normalized tents in city parks for much of the past three years. (Nann has recently joined six fellow councillors in reversing their support of the protocol). In addition, both Kroetsch and Nann were active supporters of Jama in her two election campaigns. Whether that results in any impact on their political capital by 2026 is anybody’s guess, but there is significant political mobilization underway across Hamilton now.

A woman in her 70s has succumbed to her injuries after she and another woman in her 60s were hit while crossing the street Friday evening, police say. The other woman remains in serious, but stable condition.

Earlier this month, Hamilton Police issued a warning about the release of sexual assault suspect Leikeze Cheruiyot.

Leikeze Cheruiyot, who was charged with two sex assaults in Hamilton, was located living in the United States and extradited to Canada in November 2024. He appeared at a bail hearing on February 10, 2025, and was released pending his trial.

On February 27, 2025, the Superior Court of Justice heard a bail review brought by the Crown. Following the review, the court revoked the 22-year-old’s bail and returned him to custody.

The man is accused of two violent incidents that targeted vulnerable victims.

On Wednesday, July 13, 2022, at approximately 9:30 a.m., a woman was walking in the area of Upper Paradise and Donnici Drive when she was approached by an unknown male and dragged off the trail into a wooded area. The victim was gagged and her wrists bound behind her back. The male proceeded to assault her, but was interrupted by witnesses walking by the area. The suspect fled on foot southbound towards Upper Paradise and was later seen on video in the area of Edgehill Drive.

On August 7, 2023, a 74-year-old female was alone in her residence on the West Mountain when an unknown male entered her residence and confronted her when she was sleeping. The male assaulted the victim for over an hour before leaving the residence on foot. Again, investigators were unable to identify the suspect.

In January 2024, forensic evidence enabled investigators to connect the 2022 and 2023 assaults to the same male suspect. Hamilton Police assembled a project team to identify and locate the offender.

Anyone with  any additional information that could help in these investigations, are asked to call Detective Constable Ben Kingdon at 905-540-5543 or email at [email protected]. To provide information anonymously call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 of submit anonymous tips online at http://www.crimestoppershamilton.com.

An 18-year-old male is facing weapons charges following a daylight shooting lastTuesday in Stoney Creek Shortly after 3:30 p.m., the Hamilton Police Service were called to the townhome complex at 238 Highway 8 for a report of a shooting. Police were told a gun was fired inside the home and that there were numerous people present. Luckily there were no reported injuries. The Shooting Response Team continued the investigation and now have identified and charged an 18-year-old Hamilton man for the incident. Nathan Oussoren, 18, of Hamilton faces two weapons charges.

Police are asking if anyone has  any information that may assist the investigation, to contact the Shooting Response Team by calling 905-546-4883 or by emailing [email protected]. For those who wish to provide information anonymously, they can call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or submit anonymous tips online at Crime Stoppers Hamilton’s Website.

Just Ask Bob, available on Cable 14, is all about teaching and advocacy. Host Bob Assadourian brings his extensive experience to every episode of this half hour series. Bob believes in homeowner rights and teaches how to find the right contractor for residents to keep them from getting ripped off.

Bob Assadourian answers homeowners and provides valuable household tips in his show, on his website and now, in the Bay Observer. Following are some examples:

Q Hello Bob,

We have been provided an estimate for having our bathroom remodeled by a company that installs what are essentially plastic panels right over top of our existing tiled walls above our bathtub.  They say they can also line our aging metal bathtub with the same plastic so we don’t have to replace it — a “time and cost savings.”  While I can certainly see the “pros” of this….  I am worried that there could be some serious “cons” they’ve not told us.  We’ve seen enough of your work on TV to trust your professional opinion… would you install this in your own home Bob?

Answer:

I see this system as preying on homeowners’ fears of a big mess and unknown costs and disruption when having to open up walls.  This system promotes a virtually new tub surround in one day as opposed to potential weeks spent installing a new bathroom, with permits, the demolition and the eventual re-building. This system is “Nothing but a Cosmetic Coverup, it does nothing to address any mold in the walls.

it does not allow an option to update the insulation inside an exterior wall, or add noise-suppressing insulation to interior walls. You are not updating the plumbing within the walls, for both the water supply lines and the drains. Your newly installed panels are really only as well bonded as your tiles underneath are… meaning that in the future once the tiles come loose that movement will be transmitted directly to your new plastic tub surround.

In the case of using the same materials to “line” the bathtub (bathtub lining), it is not a question of if it will ever come loose (ie. un-bond) from the metal tub…. it is a question of when will it come loose… then every time you step into your bathtub you will feel a bouncy hollow spot beneath your foot.

For more information click here. https://triplerinc.ca/contact-us/

Oakville Dairy Queen Franchisee Bryan Benninger, is being honoured for his significant support for the McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton. Bryan is the 2024 recipient of the Miracle Maker Award presented by Dairy Queen. The award is presented annually to a Canadian franchisee or operator who goes above and beyond in their fundraising efforts to support their local Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) hospital. Bryan was nominated by Milaina Wright,  the Program Director at McMaster Children’s Hospital for his exceptional dedication and leadership in community fundraising. Over the tears Bryan and his staff have raised nearly $250,000 for Mac Kids.

Milaina told the Bay Observer, “It was my privilege to nominate Bryan as the 2024 Miracle Maker.  Bryan consistently exemplifies philanthropic leadership and annually exceeds fundraising goals. He achieves this through his innovative fundraising, his genuine approach in championing a culture of support and his sincere pride in the Dairy Queen/CMN partnership.”

She praised him for instilling a sense of mission with his staff who encourage customers to “round-up” their order to raise additional funds for the Hospital.

The funds raised by Benninger have enabled the expansion of McMaster Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), enhancing capacity by nearly 50%, and     the purchase of life-saving equipment for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), such as incubators and ventilators.

Forget tapping your debit card or flashing your phone to make a payment. A former champion auctioneer from Mitchell, Ont. has tips for selling in a more lyrical way.

A record 38 awards and scholarships were handed out during the 2025 Reverend John C. Holland Awards, an event celebrating Black youths' community achievements and contributions to Hamilton. One recipient, high school student Maya Ahmed, says when her name was called, it was "like I was just transported to a fantasy land."

While Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives' third majority win was obviously the most significant development of this week's Ontario election, it had other political ramifications. Here are some of the other key takeaways.

Muslims in Toronto and around the world are getting ready to mark Ramadan, the holiest month of the Islamic lunar calendar. It’s a time when worshippers are heavily involved with charity here at home and abroad.

The House gets an exclusive look into the corridors of power on Capitol Hill as Canadian Ambassador Kirsten Hillman makes a last-ditch push to spare the country's economy from President Donald Trump's punishing tariffs.

The company that runs the Ottawa parking garage that partially collapsed on Wednesday said it could be up to two weeks before trapped vehicles can be accessed, a delay that is frustrating owners.

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board shared its proposed changes to elementary school boundaries on Friday. Reaction from parents has been swift, with some expressing anger over what's being put forward.

Like other post-secondary institutions that have announced sweeping program cuts recently, the Belleville, Ont., college is blaming a lack of provincial funding and a change in federal policy regarding international student enrolment. 

Ontario's maple syrup producers are cautiously optimistic about this year's yield, thanks to consistent cold followed by gradually warming temperatures heading into spring — the ideal conditions for tapping maple trees.  

A marine researcher from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia has taken a deep dive into North America's largest freshwater commercial fishing fleet, in Ontario's Great Lakes, with the new documentary Last Boat on the Lake.

The Toronto Zoo says a copy of transaction data from its guests and members — including names, addresses and credit card information — was taken and "leaked on the dark web" in a cybersecurity attack on its computer systems more than a year ago.

Two women have been taken to hospital in critical condition after they were struck by a vehicle in Mississauga on Friday evening, Peel police say.

After a snow storm swept through much of southern Ontario, this artist got out some spray paint and gave painting an 8-foot-high snow drift a try.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford is the first leader since the 1950s to win three consecutive majorities in the province. CBC’s Lorenda Reddekopp breaks down the latest reaction and analysis of Thursday’s election results.