• Indigenous community seeks Canada state and church records
• Report on finding of 215 unmarked graves calls for wider search
The First Nations community that shocked Canada with the discovery of unmarked graves says school records will be critical in identifying victims – and that a much greater area needs to be searched to understand the true scale of the tragedy.
Related: The Indigenous children who died at Canada’s residential schools – podcast
Continue reading...As scorching temperatures spread, the search for ways to protect against heat stress is becoming ever more urgent
William Martínez, who as a child worked on a sugarcane plantation in rural Nicaragua, learned the hard way what many in the US and Canada are now realising: that rising temperatures are costing lives and livelihoods.
Martínez, along with fellow villagers in La Isla, found himself getting sicker as he worked long, gruelling days in the fields under the beating Nicaraguan sun two decades ago. Workers at the nearby mill, which supplies molasses to alcohol companies, began to suffer kidney failure, and would be forced out of the workforce and into expensive and time-consuming dialysis. His father and uncles, addled with the same affliction, had died when Martínez was a boy, forcing him to join the workforce.
Continue reading...A First Nations community in western Canada has announced the discovery of at least 160 unmarked graves close to a former residential school – the latest in a series of grim announcements from across the country in recent weeks.
Members of the Penelakut Tribe in south-western British Columbia said in a statement late on Monday that the graves had been discovered near the site of the Kuper Island industrial school on Penelakut Island, nearly 90km north of the provincial capital Victoria.
Continue reading...Judge refuses to admit new evidence that might have helped Meng Wanzhou avoid extradition to US
The prospect of a deepening diplomatic row between the US and China has grown after a Canadian judge refused to admit new evidence that might have helped the Huawei chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, avoid extradition to the US.
The arrest of Meng, the daughter of the Chinese telecommunication company’s billionaire founder, has prompted a sharp deterioration in relations between Canada, the US and China. Soon after Meng’s detention in Vancouver in December 2018, China arrested two Canadians in China: Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig.
Continue reading...I slept under the escalator, surrounded by plastic barriers – the PA announcements would jerk me awake
I was working as the marketing manager for an insurance company in Abu Dhabi when civil war broke out in Syria, the country of my birth. I’d left five years earlier, aged 25, but military service in Syria is mandatory, and the outbreak of war meant I would be expected to return. But I didn’t want any role in the killing machine.
When I refused to join the army, the Syrian embassy wouldn’t renew my passport. Without it, I couldn’t extend my work visa, so I was out of a job. For the next few years, I was forced to live under the radar – remaining in the United Arab Emirates illegally. I sold my belongings and worked off-grid when I could, sleeping in public gardens or stairwells. At the end of 2016, I was finally taken in by the police. After two months in an immigration detention jail, I was deported to Malaysia.
Continue reading...Politicians must respond to the latest warnings that climate science has underestimated risks
Last week’s shockingly high temperatures in the northwestern US and Canada were – and are – very frightening. Heat and the fires it caused killed hundreds of people, and are estimated to have killed a billion sea creatures. Daily temperature records were smashed by more than 5C (9F) in some places. In Lytton, British Columbia, the heat reached 49.6C (121F). The wildfires that consumed the town produced their own thunderstorms, alongside thousands of lightning strikes.
An initial study shows human activity made this heat dome – in which a ridge of high pressure acts as a lid preventing warm air from escaping – at least 150 times more likely. The World Weather Attribution Group of scientists, who use computer climate models to assess global heating trends and extreme weather, have warned that last week exceeded even their worst-case scenarios. While it has long been recognised that the climate system has thresholds or tipping points beyond which humans stand to lose control of what happens, scientists did not hide their alarm that an usually cool part of the Pacific northwest had been turned into a furnace. One climatologist said the prospect opened up by the heat dome “blows my mind”.
Continue reading...British Columbia scientist says heat essentially cooked mussels: ‘The shore doesn’t usually crunch when you walk’
More than 1 billion marine animals along Canada’s Pacific coast are likely to have died from last week’s record heatwave, experts warn, highlighting the vulnerability of ecosystems unaccustomed to extreme temperatures.
The “heat dome” that settled over western Canada and the north-western US for five days pushed temperatures in communities along the coast to 40C (104F) – shattering longstanding records and offering little respite for days.
Continue reading...Is the world getting too hot for humans?
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Last week’s searing temperatures in North America’s Pacific north-west were more than just another heatwave. The 49.6C registered in the tiny British Columbian town of Lytton was not simply the hottest temperature on record in Canada, it also defied computer modelling of how the world might change as emissions rise. Our global environment editor Jonathan Watts looks at how the rare phenomenon known as a heat dome is part of a growing trend towards extreme weather events, while climate science professor Simon Lewis explains why global heating is making more of the planet too hot for humans.
Starting with the Soviet invasion of the 1970s, Afghanistan has spent four decades as a battleground for proxy wars between competing nations and ideologies. As US and British troops withdraw, Emma Graham-Harrison returns to Kabul, where she spent several years as a foreign corespondent, to find little optimism and much anxiety at the resurgence of the Taliban.
Continue reading...Satellite data shows temperature peaks are lasting longer and rising higher
North America endured the hottest June on record last month, according to satellite data that shows temperature peaks lasting longer as well as rising higher.
The heat dome above western Canada and the north-west United States generated headlines around the world as daily temperature records were shattered across British Columbia, Washington and Portland.
Continue reading...Mary Simon takes post at time of strained relations between Canada and First Nations after discoveries of unmarked graves
Canada will have its first ever Indigenous governor general after prime minister Justin Trudeau appointed Inuk leader Mary Simon as the Queen’s representative in Canada.
Describing the move as a “historic” step, Trudeau announced Simon’s appointment on Tuesday after coming under mounting pressure to choose a new viceregal. His previous selection resigned after allegations of bullying in January.
Continue reading...After hundreds of unmarked graves were found at Canada’s former Catholic-run residential schools, churches in First Nations territories have been destroyed by suspected arson
For more than a century, the clapboard church set amid rolling hills in western Canada has been a spiritual home to the Upper Similkameen Indian Band.
To build St Anne’s, residents of Chuchuwayha Indian Reserve #2 travelled 40 miles to the closest town, hauling lumber back to their community by horse and wagon.
Continue reading...Left-leaning states had focused on how global heating would affect others. Then the ‘heat dome’ arrived
The record heatwave in the Pacific north-west is forcing a reckoning on the climate crisis, as many living in the typically mild region consider what rising temperatures mean for the future.
A “heat dome” without parallel trapped hot air over much of the states of Oregon and Washington in the United States, and southern British Columbia in Canada, in past days, shattering weather records in the usually temperate region.
Continue reading...British Columbia reports jump in number of ‘sudden and unexpected deaths’ and links them to extreme weather
Nearly 500 people may have been killed by record-breaking temperatures in Canada’s westernmost province, as officials warn the grim toll from “heat dome” could rise again as more deaths are reported.
On Friday, British Columbia’s chief coroner said that 719 “sudden and unexpected deaths” had been reported over the past week – triple the number during a similar period in a typical year.
Continue reading...Residents recovering from record-breaking temperatures face a new threat, with more than 100 fires burning
On the heels of an unprecedented heatwave that left hundreds dead in British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province is now battling a fresh threat.
More than 100 wildfires are burning across the province, as of late on Thursday, 86 of which started in the past two days. Evacuation orders and alerts have gone out in a dozen communities. The province’s premier, John Horgan, suggested that the crisis could become dire enough to see the Canadian military deployed.
Continue reading...Scientists fear heat domes in North America and Siberia indicate a new dimension to the global crisis
If you were drawing up a list of possible locations for hell on Earth before this week, the small mountain village of Lytton in Canada would probably not have entered your mind.
Few people outside British Columbia had heard of this community of 250 people. Those who had were more likely to think of it as bucolic. Nestled by a confluence of rivers in the forested foothills of the Lillooet and Botanie mountain ranges, the municipal website boasts: “Lytton is the ideal location for nature lovers to connect with incredible natural beauty and fresh air freedom.”
Continue reading...Protesters in Manitoba have pulled down a statue of Queen Victoria outside the state legislature as outrage grows over the discovery of unmarked graves belonging to indigenous children sent to the country’s notorious residential schools. A smaller statue of Elizabeth II was also toppled on the east side of the grounds. Both royals are seen as representative of the country’s colonial history
Continue reading...Smaller statue of Queen Elizabeth also removed in Winnipeg during protest at treatment of Indigenous children in notorious residential schools
A statue of Queen Victoria has been toppled in Canada amid growing outrage over the discovery of unmarked graves belonging to Indigenous children.
A group gathered at the Manitoba legislature pulled down the statue on Canada Day – an annual celebration on 1 July that marks the country’s confederation.
Continue reading...Buildings, cars and trees are shown ablaze in footage taken by a resident fleeing a wildfire in the British Columbia village of Lytton. Flames tore through the settlement 95 miles north-east of Vancouver so fast that officials did not even have time to issue evacuation orders. Within hours, most of the village's buildings had been consumed by flames.
A GoFundMe campaign has been set up to help people who have lost their homes
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Officials didn’t have time to issue evacuation orders while dry conditions make suppressing wildfires in Canada impossible
After three days of unrelenting heat, the people in the British Columbia village of Lytton were hoping for a modest respite.
Temperatures which had shattered longstanding national records – at one point reaching a blistering 49.6C (121.28F) – eased slightly on Wednesday, raising hopes that the worst was over.
Continue reading...In Canada, more than 1,000 unmarked graves have been discovered on the grounds of three former church-run residential schools, where an estimated 150,000 First Nations children were sent as part of a campaign of forced assimilation for more than a century until 1996.
On Wednesday, the remains of 182 people were found at a former school in British Columbia – weeks after 215 unmarked graves were found at an institution in the province and 751 in Saskatchewan.
A historic truth and reconciliation commission was conducted in the 2000s. In 2015 it concluded that the residential school system amounted to cultural genocide and that unmarked graves would be found in the former school grounds, but the recent findings still shocked many Canadians and prompted calls for a new investigation. Leyland Cecco explains how the discovery is just the tip of the iceberg in uncovering Canada's traumatic colonial past
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