THUNDER BAY -- A look at the top stores of November 2017, as chosen by tbnewswatch.com editor Leith Dunick.
1. Eghteen-year-old Brayden Bushby was charged with second-degree murder, nearly four months after Barbara Kentner died in hospital after being struck with a trailer hitch tossed out of a moving vehicle earlier in the year. The victim, an Indigenous woman, was walking with her sister when the incident occurred. Police originally charged Bushby with aggravated assault.
2. On the 10th anniversary of Reggie Bushie’s death, his brother Ricki Strang led a group of about 200 marchers on a walk from Dennis Franklin Cromarty School to the banks of the Neebing-McIntyre Floodway where Bushie’s body was found on Nov. 1, 2007. The Day of Remembrance also celebrated the release of Tanya Talaga’s book Seven Fallen Feathers, which took an intimate look into the deaths of Bushie and six other Indigenous youth in Thunder Bay between 2000 and 2011.
3. Two people died in a grisly crash between tractor trailer units on Highway 17 west of Shabaqua, the second fatal collision on Thunder Bay area highways in a three-day span. Two more people were killed and five were injured on a Highway 102 crash two days earlier.
4. Thunder Bay was one of 14 Ontario cities in which the province will initially establish a government-run marijuana retail outlet when the drug becomes legal in 2018. A site has yet to be chosen, but it will be run by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. The goal is to set up 40 stores province-wide.
5. While the Hells Angels have had a quiet presence in town after being all but wiped out in a 2006 raid, the outlaw motorcycle gang showed signs it wants to be a criminal force in the city once again, posting a large sign on the front of their Simpson Street headquarters.
6. Senator Murray Sinclair delivered an interim report on the Thunder Bay Police Services Board as he continued his investigation on behalf of the Ontario Civilian Police Commission. Sinclair noted several issues related to the TBPSB’s treatment toward Indigenous people.
7. Police seized firearms from a 25-year-old student living at a residence on the Confederation College campus. The student was charged with unsafe storage of a firearm after being reported by a fellow student. College officials said it was a private matter, but did note they do prohibit weapons of any kind from campus.
8. Ontario’s chief coroner announced it’s unlikely charges will be filed in the deaths of Indigenous teenagers Tammy Keeash and Josiah Begg, who both disappeared on May 6 and turned up dead in local waterways. Dirk Huyer, who directed York Regional Police to take over the investigations, said he wasn’t aware of any pending charges in either death.
9. Soccer players in the city were on a roller coaster ride and left in search of a new place to play after a planned temporary indoor field at the waterfront was scuttled by environmental concerns and a challenge to the Ontario Municipal Board. It led to the cancellation of much of the indoor soccer season.
10. The Centennial Botanical Conservatory turned 50 amid calls to make improvements to the aging structure, which in recent years has started to show its age. The facility opened as part of Canda’s 100th-year birthday celebrations.
