Ontario News

SHOAL LAKE, Ont. — A celebration has been held in Shoal Lake 40 First Nation to mark the beginning of construction of a new all-weather road. The 24-kilometre Freedom Road will connect Shoal Lake 40 to the Trans-Canada Highway in Manitoba.

OTTAWA — A senior staff member with the much-scrutinized inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women has resigned. Executive director Michele Moreau cites personal reasons for her departure, which is effective July 21.

WINNIPEG — Idle No More protesters staged a blockade on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Winnipeg on Friday afternoon to draw attention to the suicide crisis among indigenous youth.

VICTORIA — British Columbia premier-designate John Horgan said he spoke with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday about the softwood trade dispute with the United States and he is planning meetings in Ottawa and Washington, D.C.

EDMONTON — The Alberta Court of Appeal has ordered a new trial in the case of an Ontario trucker who was acquitted of first-degree murder in the death of an indigenous woman.

VANCOUVER — A former Liberal cabinet minister in British Columbia says he's been mulling over his poverty reduction plan that was rejected by the party he once sought to lead.

NORWAY, P.E.I. — The deaths of six right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are a "mortality disaster" on a scale likely not seen since whaling decimated their population in the 19th century, an American scientist says.

TORONTO — Blue Jays Rule 5 draft pick Glenn Sparkman didn't even notice he had broken the thumb on his pitching hand when it first happened at spring training four months ago.

OTTAWA — Jessica Mellor was doing her best Friday to catch her son, Lincoln, running — as toddlers often do — towards a security gate around the main Canada Day stage on Parliament Hill.

Ottawa's police chief says the force acknowledges Capital Pride Ottawa's request that police officers not participate in the city's Pride parade in uniform.