Protesters snarled traffic in the capital, Ottawa, and continued blockades at some of the busiest routes linking Canada to the United States, demanding an end to vaccine mandates and coronavirus restrictions.CreditCredit…Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, declared a state of emergency for the entire province on Friday, as the police in Ottawa braced for thousands of protesters to descend for the third consecutive weekend of a crisis that has disrupted international supply chains.
“With a protest, you make your point and you go back home. I know that’s what the vast majority did,” Mr. Ford said at a news conference. “My message to those still in Ottawa, those still in our border crossing, to those who brought their children: Please take them home. And it’s time to do so peacefully.”
Otherwise, “there will be consequences, and they will be severe,” he said, adding that the maximum penalty for noncompliance would be $100,000 and a year in prison, plus potentially the revocation of personal and commercial licenses. “Your right to make a political statement does not outweigh the right of thousands of workers to make a living.”
Hundreds of miles away, along the border with the United States, Mayor Drew Dilkens of Windsor, Ontario, sought a court order to let him remove protesters from the Ambassador Bridge, which carries roughly a third of U.S.-Canada trade. A hearing was set for noon on Friday.
“The individuals on site are trespassing on municipal property,” Mr. Dilkens said Thursday, and if necessary “will be removed to allow for the safe and efficient movement of goods across the border.”
The crisis began two weeks ago, when loosely organized groups of truck drivers and others converged on Ottawa to protest vaccination requirements for truckers entering Canada. It has swelled into a broader battle cry, largely from right-wing groups, against pandemic restrictions and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s handling of the pandemic.
Automakers have been particularly affected by the partial shutdown of the Ambassador Bridge, which links Windsor and Detroit. Trucks cross it thousands of times a day carrying $300 million worth of goods, about a third of which are related to the auto industry. The blockades have left carmakers short of crucial parts, forcing companies to shut down some plants from Ontario to Alabama on Friday.
The Teamsters union — which represents 15,000 long-haul truck drivers in Canada, but generally not the ones protesting — denounced the blockade, which threatens thousands of jobs.
In Ottawa, the Canadian capital, the scene on Thursday resembled a raucous party, with hundreds of people milling between the cabs of giant trucks parked in the middle of the street. The song “Life Is a Highway” pumped from loudspeakers on an empty trailer that has been converted into a stage. But the crowd had thinned somewhat, with empty spaces where trucks had been.
“Some guys had to go back to work, and the police wouldn’t let us refill those spots,” said Johnny Neufeld, 39, a long-haul trucker from Windsor.
On Thursday, Ontario secured an order from the Superior Court of Justice barring the distribution or use of donations collected through the Christian fund-raising platform GiveSendGo, including more than $8.5 million raised by a campaign called “Freedom Convoy 2022,” a reference to the protesters’ slogan. But the company, which is based in the United States, indicated that it planned to defy the court order.
“Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo,” it tweeted. “All funds for EVERY campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.”
The protests have attracted the attention of far-right and anti-vaccine groups globally, raising millions of dollars and inspiring copycat protests in at least two countries, New Zealand and Australia. Organizers of a U.S. convoy announced a protest in Washington, D.C., on March 5.
Marco Mendicino, Canada’s minister of public safety, said Thursday that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were sending additional officers to Ottawa and Windsor. Mr. Trudeau has ruled out sending in the army; there are few precedents for doing so in Canada, which does not have provincial equivalents of a national guard.
Late Thursday, he said he had convened an “incident response group” and briefed Canada’s opposition parties on the situation.
Some protesters have clearly been on the fringe, wearing Nazi symbols and desecrating monuments. Others describe themselves as ordinary Canadians driven by desperation.
In declaring a state of emergency, Mr. Ford, the Ontario premier, called the protesters occupiers and hostage takers.
“As a province, as a nation, we must collectively draw a line,” he said.
Shashank Bengali and Allison Hannaford contributed reporting.
Truckers protesting vaccine mandates in downtown Ottawa on Tuesday evening.Credit…Kadri Mohamed/EPA, via Shutterstock
As Canadians’ impatience and frustration with the occupation of their national capital intensifies, the protests continued to echo globally on Wednesday, this time in France, where dozens of trucks and vehicles left southern France for Paris to vent their anger over their country’s vaccination policies.
The demonstrations in Canada’s capital of Ottawa — by loosely organized groups of truck drivers and protesters opposed to vaccination requirements for truckers crossing into Canada from the United States — have inspired copycat convoys in New Zealand and Australia as well. And there are talks of another in the works in the United States.
Far-right and anti-vaccine groups around the world have amplified the message of the Canadian protesters on social media, raising millions of dollars in online campaigns.
The main Facebook group for the French demonstrators has attracted more than 300,000 followers in just a few days. The movement calls itself “Convoi de la Liberté,” a direct translation of“Freedom Convoy,” the slogan for the Canadian movement.
In Ottawa, life continued to be disrupted by the presence of more than 400 trucks blocking roads. Residents got some relief on Tuesday night when the drivers of thetrucks for the second night refrained from blasting their air horns, a form of protest that was enjoined by a court order on Monday afternoon.
At the other end of Ontario, in Windsor, a road blockade continued to prevent trucks from entering Canada across the Ambassador Bridge between the city and Detroit. The bridge is critical to the automobile industry, an important sector of the Canadian economy, which relies on the movement ofparts across the border to keep factories in Ontario and the Midwestern United States in business.
Trucks headed to Canada are being directed to another crossing between Port Huron, Mich., and Sarnia, Ontario. But that two-hour detour has created a backlog in Sarnia; late Wednesday morning the Canada Border Services Agency estimated that clearing the bridge at Sarnia will take four and a half hours.
At the Stellantis minivan assembly plant in Windsor, two shifts were cut short Tuesday because of parts supply issues related to the bridge blockade, said LouAnn Gosselin, a spokeswoman for the company. Production resumed Wednesday morning, she said, and the company is working with parts suppliers to to prevent further shutdowns.
On Wednesday, truck protesters were also still interfering with another border crossing between the Western province of Alberta and Montana.
Although most Canadians support the public health measures that Canada has taken to combat the pandemic, the truck protesters have nonetheless tapped into fatigue with pandemic restrictions. On Tuesday, Scott Moe, the conservative premier of Saskatchewan, who has voiced support for the protesters, announced that the province would end vaccination and testing requirements on Feb. 14. Indoor mask requirements will continue until the end of the month.
In Alberta, Premier Jason Kenney announced that the province’s vaccine passport program would end as of Wednesday, and that mask mandates in schools would be lifted next week.
Protesters in vehicles blocking the route leading from the Ambassador Bridge, in Windsor, Ontario. The bridge links Windsor and Detroit.Credit…Carlos Osorio/Reuters
Most Canadian trucking groups have condemned the convoys and blockades, and said that more than 90 percent of drivers were vaccinated. Despite protesters’ claims that the mandatory vaccination of truckers would lead to border disruptions and supply shortages, the Canadian government said that it has not seen any change in truck traffic on its border.
The protesters in Ottawa converged on the city nearly two weeks ago, but a strategy for retaking the city from the truckers — who vow to remain until their demands to, among other things, rescind the vaccine mandate, are met — continues to elude law enforcement. It has also emboldened critics of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his response to the pandemic.
Ottawa’s police chief, who declared a state of emergency on Sunday, has vowed to end the protests but has said the city needs 1,800 more officers to do that. Mr. Trudeau said on Twitter that hundreds of Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been mobilized to support Ottawa police officers, and promised that the Canadian government and city would employ “whatever resources are needed to get the situation under control.”
The mayor of Ottawa declared the state of emergency after more than a week of unrest that began with protests by truckers over vaccine mandates. Demonstrations have spread beyond Canada’s capital.CreditCredit…Patrick Doyle/Reuters
Canadians awoke on Monday with their capital, Ottawa, under a state of emergency, as protesting truckers continued to occupy the country’s center of political power and calls were growing in some quarters for the government to take more drastic action to end the crisis.
With demonstrations snarling traffic and disrupting business and residential neighborhoods, Ottawa’s City Council was to meet Monday to try and find a way out of the upheaval.
The demonstrations, during which some protesters have desecrated national memorials and threatened local residents, have shaken a country known globally as a model for humanism, peace and serenity.
On Sunday afternoon, the mayor of Ottawa declared the emergency after 11 days of unrest that began with protests by truckers over vaccine mandates imposed by the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The protests have since mushroomed into an occupation of Canada’s capital and broader demonstrations over pandemic restrictions that have spread well beyond the capital.
“Someone is going to get killed or seriously injured because of the irresponsible behavior of some of these people,” Jim Watson, Ottawa’s mayor, warned on Sunday. City officials and the chief of police said they were under “siege.”
One city councilor, Catherine McKenney, last week wrote to Mr. Trudeau and the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Brenda Lucki, asking that Canada’s national police force and the federal government take over operational control of Parliament Hill and the Parliamentary Precinct to allow Ottawa’s local police to refocus on keeping the peace in local neighborhoods.
Thousands turned out to protest in Toronto and Quebec City over the weekend. Truck convoys congregated near provincial legislatures in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia. Downtown Ottawa, site of the country’s Parliament, was paralyzed as truckers parked their vehicles in intersections and across busy thoroughfares.
Early Monday morning in Ottawa, it was 14 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny, and the thousands of weekend protesters were gone. The streets near Parliament were quiet without the honking horns of the weekend. But trucks still clogged the roads heading to Parliament Hill, and with a snowfall overnight, had become part of the snow scape. Most had license plates from Ontario or Quebec, with a few from Alberta, in the west of the country. Many were decorated with Canadian flags. Several bore anti-Covid restriction posters and signs.
Late Sunday night, heavily armed police seized a tanker truck with more than 3,000 liters of diesel fuel from a staging area used by the truckers, and arrested people in downtown Ottawa for transporting fuel.
Near Parliament, one of the protesters said the group was prepared in the event the police seized more diesel fuel or if their trucks were towed.
“What we are doing is within the law,” said Eric, a demonstrator from the Niagara region of Ontario who declined to give his full name. He was in a large delivery truck with a poppy painted on the side. Eric said he could not say specifically what he wanted from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but that he needed to be “a man of the people.”
Throughout the pandemic, Canadians have been living under varying restrictions to combat the coronavirus. Although polls show that most Canadians support the measures, the protests are an expression of frustrations as the pandemic enters its third year.
The demonstrations were initially set off by Mr. Trudeau’s decision to require Covid vaccinations for truckers returning from the United States. But they have evolved into a more general protest against pandemic rules like vaccination mandates, shutdowns and rules requiring mask-wearing, as well as Mr. Trudeau’s stewardship of the country.
As the convoy rolled along, it was joined and ultimately outnumbered by supporters traveling in pickup trucks and cars. The group — loosely organized and without a single, clear leader — also expanded its demands, pressing Mr. Trudeau to end all Covid rules and restrictions in Canada, including those set by provinces and local governments.
Long before the first trucks began trickling into Ottawa on Jan. 28, Mr. Trudeau said he would not reverse the vaccine mandate. He has refused to meet with members of the groups, which he described as a “fringe minority.”
Mr. Célestin said he also had a radio station called Model FM, which he started in a rural region but which grew to the point that he installed it in a suburb of Port-au-Prince, the capital. The station does have a small, discreet office in the suburb of Petionville, with no signs. On the two occasions when The Times visited, the office was closed, or a single person was there who could provide no information about the station — not even an advertising rate sheet.
Mr. Célestin said he also owned a gas company called PetroGaz-Haiti, but by his own description, it appeared to violate legal prohibitions against profiting from state funds. While politicians are permitted to own businesses, the Constitution forbids them from having contracts with the state, which Mr. Célestin said he had had for four years through the company.
With outrage brewing, the Haitian government’s Anti-Corruption Unit launched an investigation into the purchase of the Célestin home in Canada in February. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the national police force, said it could not disclose whether it was also investigating the transaction. But under Canadian regulations, the purchase should have raised a red flag, said Garry Clement, the former head of an R.C.M.P. unit that investigates money laundering.
As a senator, Mr. Célestin is considered a “politically exposed person” under Canadian money-laundering regulations, which means financial institutions are required to perform due diligence to determine the source of any transferred funds greater than $100,000. These rules would also apply to Mrs. Célestin as the wife of a “P.E.P.,” Mr. Clement explained.
Mr. Célestin said everything about the purchase was above board. “If I wasn’t clean, I would have had a lot of trouble with the banks in Miami,” he added, saying that he routinely transferred between $20 million and $30 million to Turkey to buy iron for what he described as one of his import businesses. “I would be scared if my money wasn’t clean.”
But Mr. Célestin and his lawyer in Montreal, Alexandre Bergevin, declined to answer follow-up questions or provide the names of his import company or his farm. His wife, a counselor at the Haitian consulate in Montreal since 2019, did not respond to a request for comment.
OTTAWA — At times it was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who came for them. Other times, it was a school van. However it happened, for generations, Indigenous families in Canada had no choice but to send their children to church-run residential schools established by the government to erode their culture and languages, and to assimilate them.
A national Truth and Reconciliation Commission declared in 2015 that the schools, which operated from 1883 to 1996, were a form of “cultural genocide.”
But the profound damage inflicted by the schools didn’t stop there. The commission cataloged extensive physical, sexual and emotional abuse at the schools, which were often overcrowded, understaffed and underfunded. Disease, fire and malnourishment all brought death and suffering.
Now, the national shame of the schools is again dominating the conversation in Canada.
Since May, new technology has enabled the discovery of human remains, mostly of children, in many hundreds of unmarked graves on the grounds of three former schools in Canada — two in British Columbia and one in Saskatchewan. Who they were, how they died or even when they died may never be fully known.
were forced to attend residential schools in a forced assimilation program. Most of these schools were operated by churches, and all of them banned the use of Indigenous languages and Indigenous cultural practices, often through violence. Disease, as well as sexual, physical and emotional abuse were widespread. An estimated 150,000 children passed through the schools between their opening and their closing in 1996.
The Missing Children: A National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up as part of a government apology and settlement over the schools, concluded that at least 4,100 students died while attending them, many from mistreatment or neglect, others from disease or accident. In many cases, families never learned the fate of their offspring, who are now known as “the missing children.”
The Discoveries: In May, members of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation found 215 bodies at the Kamloops school — which was operated by the Roman Catholic Church until 1969 — after bringing in ground-penetrating radar. In June, an Indigenous group said the remains of as many as 751 people, mainly children, had been found in unmarked graves on the site of a former boarding school in Saskatchewan.
Cultural Genocide’: In a 2015 report, the commission concluded that the system was a form of “cultural genocide.” Murray Sinclair, a former judge and senator who headed the commission, recently said he now believed the number of disappeared children was “well beyond 10,000.”
Apologies and Next Steps: The commission called for an apology from the pope for the Roman Catholic church’s role. Pope Francis stopped short of one, but the archbishop of Vancouver apologized on behalf of his archdiocese. Canada has formally apologized and offered financial and other search support, but Indigenous leaders believe the government still has a long way to go.
“Something good has to come out of this,” Joey Desjarlais, 73, said outside the ruins of the Muskowekwan Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, which he was forced to attend, as were his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. “Our children need to learn about the residential school, what we went through and what went on in there but also to learn their culture, so at least they’ll get it back.”
The image below shows girls working in the kitchen at the Bishop Horden Memorial School in Moose Factory, Ontario, around 1940.
Boys at the Shingwauk Indian Residential School playing with handmade bows, and a game of table hockey, in the 1960s.
Boys say their prayers in the dormitory at the Bishop Horden Memorial School in Moose Factory, Ontario, in 1950.
Girls at a residential school in Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories, around 1936. It is estimated that roughly one-third of all Indigenous children were enrolled in the schools by the 1930s.
Boys and girls, in their first communion outfits, posing at Spanish Indian Residential School in Spanish, Ontario, in the 1960s.
CALGARY, Alberta — For decades, the Indigenous children were taken from their families, sometimes by force, and housed in crowded, church-run boarding schools, where they were abused and prohibited from speaking their languages. Thousands vanished altogether.
Now, a new discovery offers chilling evidence that many of the missing children may have died at these schools: The remains of as many as 751 people, mainly Indigenous children, were found at the site of a former school in the province of Saskatchewan, an Indigenous group said on Thursday.
The burial site, the largest one to date, was uncovered only weeks after the remains of 215 children were found in unmarked graves on the grounds of another former church-run school for Indigenous students in British Columbia.
The discoveries have jolted a nation grappling with generations of widespread and systematic abuse of Indigenous people, many of whom are survivors of the boarding schools. For decades, they suggested through their oral histories that thousands of children disappeared from the schools, but they were often met with skepticism. The revelations of two unmarked grave sites are another searing reminder of this traumatic period in history.
Chief Cadmus Delorme, of the Cowessess First Nation.
The recent unearthing of remains in Canada have reverberated globally, including in the United States, where this week the interior secretary said the country would search federal boarding schools for possible burial sites of Native American children. Hundreds of thousands of them were forcibly taken from their communities to be culturally assimilated in the schools for more than a century.
a system started in the 19th century that took Indigenous children from their families.
A National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 2008 to investigate the residential schools, called the practice “cultural genocide.” Many children never returned home, and their families were given only vague explanations of their fates, or none at all. Canada had about 150 residential schools and an estimated 150,000 Indigenous children passed through the schools between their opening, around 1883, and their closing in 1996.
The commission estimated that about 4,100 children went missing nationwide from the schools. But an Indigenous former judge who led the commission, Murray Sinclair, said in an email this month that he now believed the number was “well beyond 10,000.”
1.7 million Indigenous citizens, who make up about 4.9 percent of the population, the finding of yet another mass burial site is a visceral reminder of centuries of discrimination and abuse, which has led to intergenerational trauma among survivors of residential schools and their families.
“There’s no denying this: All of the stories told by our survivors are true,” Chief Cameron said.
Florence Sparvier, 80, an elder of the Cowessess First Nation, said she attended two residential schools, including Marieval, the school where the unmarked remains were found.
were forced to attend residential schools in a forced assimilation program. Most of these schools were operated by churches, and all of them banned the use of Indigenous languages and Indigenous cultural practices, often through violence. Disease, as well as sexual, physical and emotional abuse were widespread. An estimated 150,000 children passed through the schools between their opening and their closing in 1996.
The Missing Children: A National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up as part of a government apology and settlement over the schools, concluded that at least 4,100 students died while attending them, many from mistreatment or neglect, others from disease or accident. In many cases, families never learned the fate of their offspring, who are now known as “the missing children.”
The Recent Discovery: In May, members of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation found 215 bodies at the Kamloops school — which was operated by the Roman Catholic Church until 1969 — after bringing in ground-penetrating radar.
‘Cultural Genocide’: In a 2015 report, the commission concluded that the system was a form of “cultural genocide.” Murray Sinclair, a former judge and senator who headed the commission, recently said he now believed the number of disappeared children was “well beyond 10,000.”
Apologies and Next Steps: The commission called for an apology from the pope for the Roman Catholic church’s role. Pope Francis stopped short of one, but the archbishop of Vancouver apologized on behalf of his archdiocese. Canada has formally apologized and offered financial and other search support, but Indigenous leaders believe the government still has a long way to go.
In September 2017, Mr. Trudeau acknowledged the nation’s past “humiliation, neglect and abuse” of Indigenous people, and vowed in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly to improve their lives.
Pope Francis has still not taken that step. By contrast, the leadership of the United Church of Canada, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, apologized in 1998 for its role in running the schools.
Since the Kamloops announcement, Chief Cameron said, he has been traveling around the province, where farming and mining are major industries, looking at former school sites.
“You can see with your plain eye the indent of the ground where these bodies are to be found,” he said in an interview Wednesday night. “These children are sitting there, waiting to be found.”
Given that Greyhound had already suspended operations for about a year because of the pandemic, its announcement on Thursday that it was permanently ending all of its remaining bus service in Canada was almost symbolic.
money being spent in Toronto on the subway. And yet when it comes to rural people, well, they’re just chopped liver. There is no subsidy for transportation.”
In parts of the country where Greyhound operated, its service was usually the most affordable form of travel. And for many rural communities it was frequently the only alternative to owning a car or finding a ride in one.
A 2012 inquiry into dozens of women who went missing on the Highway of Tears in British Columbia found that a lack of reliable public transportation led many of them into danger through hitchhiking. (A subsidized service was restored several years later.)
Professor Prentice added that buses didn’t just provide low-cost travel for people, their quick and economical parcel delivery service offered same-day shipping between many places and gave rural communities not served by courier companies a quick and reliable method to receive time-sensitive shipments such as parts for farm equipment.
The medical system was also a major user of bus parcel express. When shipping packages to family members at Christmas, I often managed to always show up at Ottawa’s bus terminal just after someone had dropped off a cooler covered in stickers indicating that it contained human eyeballs destined for corneal transplants.
government-owned Saskatchewan Transportation Corporation, saying that it could no longer afford its subsidies.
The provinces are now the only authority over bus lines, and some of them have completely deregulated their industries.
The result is an increasingly fragmented system in which Greyhound and others have been replaced by newcomers using smaller buses and nonunion drivers to find profits, although not always successfully. In some cases the newcomers have improved service, but many routes have gone unfilled.
Above all, it’s no longer possible to book a single ticket and enjoy, or perhaps endure, a bus ride across most of the country.
Coast to Coast Bus Coalition. The group is calling on the federal government to return to regulating buses and to work with bus lines to create a national system that would integrate with Via Rail.
Professor Prentice said that the end of Greyhound in Canada had elevated the importance of at least hearing out such a plan.
“It’s remarkable how little people care, or seem to care, about buses,” he said. “Rural areas need transport, but that doesn’t seem to be ever something that translates into votes and therefore doesn’t get a lot of attention.”
The National Rodent
symbol of the sovereignty of Canada.” But beavers don’t immediately conjure up warm feelings among all Canadians.
Property owners struggle to keep their land from being flooded by the industrious creatures, and their dams sometimes lead to dangerous highway washouts. This week, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Saskatchewan found a pile of fence posts that had been reported as stolen incorporated into a beaver dam.
please email me directly and include your contact information and where you live. Please don’t labor over the note, I’ll be interviewing everyone who has a story that will fit with the article.
Trans Canada
caught up with some of its artists. For one aerialist, Dan found that “the long pause had undermined his confidence, since he couldn’t rehearse his airborne routines. When he recently started retraining, he said, he discovered that he had lost his ‘muscle memory’ and felt afraid to be in the air.” Also be sure to check out this video presentation of the artists getting back to the unique line of work.
Four months after President Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada is again at odds with the United States over another pipeline.
A prepandemic pregnancy means that Mandy Bujold, a top ranked boxer from Canada, may miss the Tokyo Olympics because of selection rule changes.
Tom Wilson, a Toronto native who plays for the Washington Capitals, is the talk of the N.H.L. for all the wrong reasons right now. Ben Shpigel reports that Wilson is the teammate that everyone wants and the opponent that everyone loves to hate. And Victor Mather has previewed the upcoming N.H.L. playoffs.
Jon Pareles writes that a new recording by the singer Allison Russell, a native of Montreal, delves into some dark places in her past and is “an album of strength and affirmation, not victimization.”
A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.
How are we doing? We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to nytcanada@nytimes.com.
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Winnipeg sits far from the territory of the Inuit. But the Winnipeg Art Gallery has long been the leading collector of their art.
Heather Igloliorte, an Inuk and associate professor of art history at Concordia University in Montreal, took a break from the last-minute preparations for the opening exhibition, on which she was one of curators, to speak with me. A researcher on circumpolar Indigenous arts, she was the co-leader of an Indigenous advisory circle that the gallery created early in the planning for the new center.
“Because it is in southern Canada, I didn’t want it to be just another place to show non-Inuit about Inuit art,” she told me. “I really hoped it would be a place where Inuit, Inuvialuit and global circumpolar Inuit would know that it was for them when they were inside. So they would see their language, things would be designed in such a way as to be inviting for Inuit.”
What visitors see as soon as they walk in is partly the result of Professor Igloliorte’s vision. Like most art galleries, Winnipeg has stored the overwhelming majority of its 14,000 Inuit works in storage, viewed only by curators and visiting scholars. The Qaumajuq center has brought the vault up into a three story high space, encased in glass and lined with artworks on shelves for all to see.
Michael Maltzan, an architect from Los Angeles, joined him in the north after he was commissioned to design the sculpted building which, on the outside, evokes an iceberg.
Domaine de la Florida where 520 Quebecers, surrounded by plastic palm trees and snow, are dreaming of prepandemic times when they spent winter in much warmer climes.
A scathing independent review detailed the callous, discriminatory treatment by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police of the family of Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Cree man who was shot and killed by a farmer in Saskatchewan in 2016.
In a significant victory for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate change program, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected claims by the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario that the mandatory federal carbon pricing plan was unconstitutional.
A court in Beijing secretly tried Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat held since 2018, on espionage charges this week. Like the earlier secret trial of another Canadian, Michael Spavor, also held since 2018, the verdict in Mr. Kovrig’s case has not been announced. More than two dozens diplomats from various countries tried to attend but were turned away.
Alphonso Davies, the Bayern Munich soccer star who grew up in Windsor, Ontario and Edmonton, didn’t learn his own refugee story until his parents talked about it in a team video. It prompted him to lend his support to the work being done by the U.N.H.C.R., the U.N. refugee agency that helped to organize his family’s resettlement in Canada. This week, the agency appointed Mr. Davies a good-will ambassador.
Canadian Pacific, the railway that provided Canada with its first transcontinental land link, is now part of a deal that will create the first railway linking Canada, the United States and Mexico.
The head coach of Canada’s national artistic swimming team is stepping aside while the sport’s governing body completes an independent review of allegations that his hiring added to the sport’s history of abusive coaching.
A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for the past 16 years. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten.
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OTTAWA — When seven police officers arrived at the home of Debbie Baptiste in August 2016, encircling the house and carrying rifles, they informed her that her son was dead. Then, instead of comforting the grieving mother, they asked if she had been drinking and told her to “get it together.”
The callous treatment of Ms. Baptiste, a Cree woman, as well as other incidents of racial discrimination by the police against her family, were detailed in an independent review released to the public Monday that inquired into police conduct and their investigation of the death of Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Cree man in Saskatchewan.
The scathing report by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found that the officers treated Ms. Baptiste “with such insensitivity that her treatment amounted to a prima facie case of discrimination.” The watchdog group, which has no power to penalize, also found that the police failed to protect evidence at the crime scene where Mr. Boushie was killed and destroyed records related to its handling of the case.
“It felt like I was forever fighting a battle that could never be won,” Ms. Baptiste told a news conference on Monday. “The injustices of racism in the courtroom, the discrimination needs to stop. Things need to change. We need a change for the future generation.”
posted a message of support and met with Mr. Boushie’s family following the 2018 trial.
On Monday Mr. Trudeau told reporters that the treatment of Mr. Boushie’s family and friends “was unacceptable,” adding, “We have seen, unfortunately, examples of systemic racism within the R.C.M.P., within many of our institutions, and we need to do better.”
R.C.M.P. union is still asking people in this country not to believe this woman,” Chris Murphy, a lawyer for the Boushie family told reporters. “Shame on them.”
The killing and the acquittal remain sources of anger for many Indigenous Canadians who have argued the case exposed significant flaws in Canada’s legal system. Mr. Boushie’s family and others said that police were racially discriminatory toward them while being deferential to a farmer who was ultimately charged with murder.
Mr. Boushie had gone swimming with friends when a tire went flat on their Ford Escape near Mr. Stanley’s farm in central Saskatchewan. Mr. Stanley testified that he and his son thought the group, many of whom were intoxicated, was trying to steal vehicles. The two men came out with guns and also attacked the Escape with a hammer. After Mr. Boushie was killed, the others fled.
As a result, the commission found, police descended on Ms. Baptiste’s house on the Red Pheasant Cree Nation, her Indigenous community, with two goals: to inform her of Mr. Boushie’s death and to search for a member of Mr. Boushie’s group of friends as part of a related investigation into theft and attempted theft. No one from the group was ultimately charged with theft.
Officers armed with rifles encircled Ms. Baptiste’s house and told her about her son’s death when she came to the front porch. After hearing the news, Ms. Baptiste collapsed and was brought inside by police.
“Ms. Baptiste displayed distress at the news they had just given her, one member told her to ‘get it together,’” the report found. “One or more RCMP members smelled her breath” apparently for signs of alcohol.
Saskatchewan division of the mounted police said in a statement, adding that it plans to carry out the recommendations in the commission’s report.
In addition to recommendations that involve reviewing procedures with the officers involved in the case, as well as reviewing the general practices of the Mounties in that part of Saskatchewan, the commission said that cultural awareness training should be provided for all employees of the police force “bearing in mind the factors identified in recent inquiries.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner, Brenda Lucki, who was given the opportunity to comment on the commission’s findings in advance of its release, said that she accepted its main findings although she rejected some small points in the report
“This whole justice system from the top down needs to be restored,” Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents First Nations in Saskatchewan, told a news conference. “Brenda Lucki, what are you going to do rather than just say we agree with what’s been found? Big deal. Brenda Lucki, do something.”
