One-fifth of New Immigrants Arrive With No Money

via Vancouver Sun

In a new report  by Metro, it shows new Immigrants arrive in Canada with an average of $47,000 in savings – but are left with less than half of that once they get initially settled, says a new BMO Wealth Management report.

And about one-fifth, or 19 per cent, come with no money at all, finds the study being released Wednesday.

“It can be incredibly stressful – financially and otherwise – to pick up, move to another country, and begin the process of creating a new life for yourself, so it’s great to see that new Canadians do have a bit of a nest egg remaining,” said Julie Barker-Merz, president of BMO InvestorLine.

Prince Edward Island wholesale market sees fewer buyers and sellers

CBC - P.E.I. wholesale market sees fewer buyers and sellers

CBC
P.E.I.'s 15th annual craft and giftware wholesale market is happening today at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown, but the number of buyers and sellers is down.

Vendors are set up in booths displaying pottery, jewelry, photography and more.

The public is not invited, instead, craft store owners are shopping wholesale looking for stock for their shelves.

Jennifer Ridgeway is buying for her two stores, Moonsnail and Luna. She says it's becoming harder to find and purchase unique crafts made on P.E.I.

"That's what I'm always looking for. Something traditional, like pottery, but with a new look -- Jewelry, new look -- you know that's what's exciting to me to be able to find," she says.

This year, there are 40 craftspeople wholesaling their wares. A decade ago, there were about 70.
As well there are fewer craft stores buying, and the dollar value of orders placed at the show has been declining.

Quebec Faced With Double Freezing rain and blackouts

Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press

The Canadian Press
Crews were working to restore power Sunday night after more than 150,000 Hydro Quebec customers lost electricity because of freezing rain.

The blackouts, primarily in Montreal and in suburbs to the west and south of the city, had been reduced to about 92,000 by mid-evening.

Environment Canada ended its freezing rain warning for the Montreal area late Sunday afternoon, but maintained a special weather statement into the evening.

It said winds of up to e kilometres an hour, combined with ice buildup on tree branches and power lines, could cause them to break and make the situation worse.

Family release pic of the 7yr old girl who survived plane crash

This is the 7yr old girl who proved to the world recently that miracles still do happen. She survived a plane crash on Friday evening January 2nd that killed her parents, sister and cousin. The plane the family was flying in, a Piper PA-34 went down in Western Kentucky and by some miracle, Sailor Gutzler survived, trekked three-quarters of a mile in the dark barefoot until she found a house and knocked on their door, telling them what had just happened to her family.

"She told me that her mom and dad were dead. And that she had been in a plane crash." The man whose home Sailor knocked on told CNN

Japan population fell by a record 268,000 in 2014

Japan’s population fell by a record 268,000 people last year, new data show, with preliminary figures showing just above 1 million births in 2014, NPR.com reports.

The figures released by the country’s health ministry showed that the estimated number of people who died in 2014 was 1,269,000, about 1,000 above the previous year. The number of births was 1,001,000, down about 29,000 from 2013. The total population declined by a record 268,000.

The Kyodo news service adds that the number of births could slide below 1 million when new numbers are released in June.

Bill O'Reilly & Russell Simmons Go Head-To-Head Over Violence In Black Communities "

Halifax's new $57m 129,000 sq. ft library opens to public

Visitor's to Halifax's new $57-million library wait outside in order to get a first look at the building.

CP
The new Halifax Central Library officially opened its doors to the public Saturday.
At an estimated cost of $57.6 million the building has been touted as the new architectural centrepiece of the city's downtown core.

The 129,000 square foot facility features a larger collection of books than the building it is replacing, as well as meeting and study rooms, technology areas for computers, cafes and a 300-seat auditorium.

Halifax Mayor Mike Savage calls the building, which features a cantilevered rectangular glass box on the top, a "powerful and positive statement" about the city's aspirations.

Danish architectural firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen designed the building with Halifax partners Fowler Bauld & Mitchell.

The federal government is contributing up to $18.3 million and the Nova Scotia government $13 million towards the cost of the project, with the remainder being funded through the municipality and a public funding campaign.

Canada Brace Up! Tim Hortons to hike prices on selected menus

David Friend, The Canadian Press

Your morning stop at Tim Hortons is about to get a bit more expensive.

The restaurant chain says it plans to raise prices for both coffee and breakfast sandwiches at its Canadian locations starting next Wednesday.

A cup of coffee will go up by 10 cents, on average, though the change will vary by region, and the price of a breakfast sandwich will also rise in all provinces except Ontario.

"We have been able to hold our pricing stable since spring of 2011, however due to rising operational costs there will be a moderate increase," spokeswoman Michelle Robichaud said in an email.

The cost of breakfast sandwiches, like bacon and egg on an English muffin and the turkey sausage sandwich, will go up 10 cents to $2.99 before tax.

Quebec | Mother of 3 dead after car crashes through their bedroom

Pieces of a car that crashed into a house in St. Alexis, Que., are towed away Sunday Oct. 26, 2014. A woman died and her partner was seriously injured

CTV News Reports - A mother of three is dead and her partner is seriously injured after a car slammed through the wall of their bedroom while they were asleep in a Quebec home early Sunday morning.

Quebec police say the driver lost control of the vehicle, veered off a long straight road and smashed into the master bedroom of a house in St. Alexis, Que., a community 60 kilometres north of Montreal.

The incident happened at about 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, officers said. The woman was killed in the crash and her partner was taken to hospital in serious, but stable condition

Canada Post Ends Home Delivery Today For 74,000 Addresses In 10 Communities

Canada Post stops home delivery to 74,000 addresses in 10 communities across the country today, part of the Crown corporation's move to end all urban door-to-door mail service to five million Canadians in five years.

People in the affected areas will have to get mail from their local community mailbox.

Canada Post says it is phasing out home delivery, and cutting thousands of jobs, owing to financial losses stemming from falling mail volume and increasing use of digital communication. The corporation says Canadians mailed almost 1.2 billion fewer pieces of mail in 2013 than they did in 2006.

In Montreal's North Shore, people living in Repentigny, Rosmère, Lorraine, Charlemagne and Bois-de-Filion are included in today's change.

Canada Post hasn't been open with its employees about the decision-making surrounding the cuts, said Andrew Rosenfeld, a mail carrier in Lachine, Que.

Saskatchewan | Setback In Controlling Gas Fire Outbreak

Remaining gas is burned off after explosion and fire at a gas pumping station owned by TransGas near Prud'homme, Sask., Saturday, October 11, 2014. Liam Richards/The Canadian Press

Residents in a rural Saskatchewan community are out of their homes for a second time after a setback in controlling a fire at a natural gas pumping station that has been burning since the weekend.

There were no injuries reported when an explosion Saturday started the fire at a TransGas facility near Prud’homme, a village northeast of Saskatoon. TransGas is a subsidiary of Crown-owned SaskEnergy.

Company spokesman Dave Burdeniuk said there was a setback Wednesday morning, when a wellhead failed and caused a larger flame to burn.

The wellhead leads to one of seven underground caverns, which are used to store natural gas for the winter when demand for heating is greater.

“The pressure of the gas coming up the wellhead casing pipe … pushed the wellhead out of the way,” Burdeniuk said. “The wellhead was very heat damaged because it had endured the intensity of those flames.

“It was a situation that we had planned for. We had hoped to be able to use the existing wellhead to cap and seal off the cavern.”

Why Do So Many Canadians Trash Illegally?

CBC  | By Havard Gould

It is astonishing what Canadians do in the woods. Canadians love the landscape and the landscape helps define us. The Group of Seven and other celebrated artists showed the world a country of pristine lakes and glorious forests. Canadians are proud of the country’s soaring mountains and powerful rivers, the unspoiled wilderness a treasure even to those who do not regularly explore it.

But all over this country, people will toss almost anything almost anywhere when they think no one is watching.

This isn't mindless littering. This is deliberate trashing of the landscape, the dumping of vast amounts of household garbage, construction waste and much, much more.

What struck me, as I began investigating this widespread practice for CBC’s The National, is that this isn't simply illegal.

This kind of dumping is also an offence against what we like to think is part of our core values. It is an enormous contradiction. How can Canadians value the unspoiled wilderness, yet spoil it daily by illegally dumping junk all over the landscape?


Spoiling the wilderness
It's hard to quantify - the midnight dumper on some dark back road is hardly going to stop by the weigh scale. He's trying to avoid tipping fees and the local dump by ditching his pickup truck load of garbage out of sight.

Calgary | Power Out For Downtown Residents Until Thursday

Enmax work crews attend to a massive power failure Sunday morning as a fire occurred in downtown area

Power should be restored by Thursday​ to thousands of downtown Calgary businesses and residents left in the dark on the weekend by an underground electrical fire.

The power outage hit approximately 2,100 businesses and 5,000 residents on Saturday night.

Late Monday afternoon, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice and Mayor Naheed Nenshi met with impacted downtown residents at an emergency information centre set up in the Mewata Armoury.

"I think it's fair to say that once again Calgary and Calgarians have risen to the challenge and are showing incredible resiliency and community spirit," Prentice said later in a press conference.

Power should be restored to the entire impacted section of the downtown by midday Thursday, said an Enmax official.

Transportation downtown should be almost back to normal for the Tuesday morning rush hour, Nenshi said during a news conference held early Monday at the Calgary Emergency Management Agency headquarters.

Vancouver Granted Oppenheimer Park Injunction To Begin Eviction

Tamsyn Burgmann, The Canadian Press
A judge has provided one week for homeless residents of a squalid tent city to vacate a downtown Vancouver park, in a ruling advocates say at long last places the problem of poverty at the city's doorstep.

All of about 200 makeshift shelters must come down by 10 p.m. on Oct. 15, or city workers may proceed with the dismantling, Justice Jennifer Duncan of B.C. Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday, while recognizing the campers are people living in "poverty and despair."

"This is the first time in history that a court has given this much time and has acknowledged that this is not a matter of protest," lawyer DJ Larkin, with Pivot Legal Society, told reporters outside court.

"She truly understood that these are people who need homes, they need outreach and they need services."

The encampment in Oppenheimer Park, in the city's stricken Downtown Eastside, sprouted in late July when homeless campers began to assemble in violation of city bylaws. The Vancouver Park Board took the matter to court on Sept. 25 after neither an eviction notice nor two orders from the fire chief to remove safety hazards persuaded people to leave.

Ontario Confirms 19th Tornado in Sheffield

Environment Canada has confirmed that a storm that hit a community southeast of Cambridge, Ont. on Monday night was the province's 19th tornado.

The storm hit the community of Sheffield, on the edge of the City of Hamilton, at approximately 10:30 p.m. on Monday.

Soon after the storm passed, Environment Canada received reports of siding and shingle damage to homes.

A set of bleachers at the Sheffield ballpark was carried a short distance in the air, the weather agency said in a statement.

"The damage path itself seems to be relatively narrow. It's sort of a focused area of damage," meteorologist Geoff Coulson told CTV Kitchener after the storm.

On Wednesday afternoon, Environment Canada confirmed that the damage was indicative of a tornado, with a damage track of approximately 150 metres wide and 1.5 kilometres long. The small tornado was rated at 1 out of 5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, or EF1.

The latest storm brings Ontario's tornado count to 19 this year.

CTV

IMF Warns Canada Over Pricey Housing Market

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is reminding Canada that its overvalued housing market remains a vulnerability, even as it expects the economy to grow this year and next.

The IMF encouraged "continued vigilance" around real estate in its latest Global Economic Outlook, saying that housing prices remain "high relative to both income and rents" and estimating them at about "10 per cent higher than fundamental values."

It went on to say housing trends could necessitate more regulation.

But its estimate is modest compared to one issued by The Economist last month, which said Canada is among nine countries whose housing markets are overvalued by at least 25 per cent.

It's not the first time that the IMF has warned Canada over its real estate.

Saskatchewan | Major Train Derailment Causes Fire Outbreak

A CN freight train carrying dangerous goods derailed in central Saskatchewan on Tuesday, sending plumes of thick black smoke into the air and displacing residents of a tiny nearby hamlet.

The derailment happened near the community of Clair, which has a population of about 50. Police told those people to leave their homes and also evacuated farms near the scene.

CN spokesman Jim Feeny said the train was made up of three locomotives pulling 100 rail cars and that 26 of them derailed.

He said the fire came from petroleum distillates, which spilled from two of the derailed cars.

The fire had "diminished'' as of Tuesday evening, Feeny said, but was still burning.

Clair is about 190 kilometres east of Saskatoon near the community of Wadena.

Alison Squires, who is the publisher of the Wadena News, went to the fire and said she has never seen anything like it in the 13 years she has lived in the area.

Alberta | Wolf Hit on Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park

The seven-member Bow Valley wolf pack hanging out along the Bow Valley Parkway in December 2013.

Photograph by: Photo courtesy Amar Athwal

A wolf, believed to be a member of the well-known Bow Valley pack, has been hit and injured on the Trans-Canada Highway.

Around 7:30 a.m. on Monday, resource conservation officers from Lake Louise were called to the Bath Creek area on Highway 1 for reports of two wolves — one black-coloured and one grey-coloured — inside the wildlife fence.

“The grey wolf was struck by a car and was quite seriously injured,” said Brianna Burley, human-wildlife conflict specialist with Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay national parks. “It was pretty dramatic.

“It appeared to have a broken leg.”

It’s believed the adult wolves got inside the fence at the boundary of Banff and Yoho national parks, where it ends, and travelled for a few kilometres inside before one of them made its way on to the Trans-Canada Highway just west of the Highway 93 N. turnoff.

It’s been a tough year for wildlife on the highways in the mountain parks, with more than a dozen bears, several moose and a cougar being struck and killed already this year. A wolf pup was also hit, but it’s unknown whether it died.

Vancouver | Chill penguin takes Satan statue’s place

Despite his comparatively formal attire, a statue of a penguin installed on a pedestal in Vancouver has suffered the same fate as his phallic predecessor.

The plaster penguin — sporting a bow tie and pink sunglasses — was discovered Tuesday at the same spot where a lewd statue of Satan was found three weeks ago.

Savvy social media users noted the penguin bore an uncanny resemblance to statues that adorned Earls restaurants in the 1980s.

iWant | Province of Manitoba rolls out winter tire incentive

The province has rolled out a loan program to make winter tires more affordable to Manitoba drivers.

Administered by Manitoba Public Insurance, the program will provide low-interest loans up to $2,000 per vehicle for up to 48 months. The initiative was originally announced in this year’s provincial budget.

“We want Manitobans to be as safe as possible on the roads,” said Andrew Swan, Minister responsible for MPI. “This financing program provides another option to buy winter tires for people who otherwise may not make this road safety purchase.”

hile Swan stressed the enhanced safety of snow tires, the province has previously said it will not follow Quebec’s lead in making them mandatory equipment.

According to CAA Manitoba, the deeper treads and softer rubber used in winter tires can reduce stopping distances by up to 40 per cent compared to all-season models.