Cabinet after years of study has approved cellphone jamming at federal prisons. The waiver under the Radiocommunications Act targets bootleg cellphones used by inmates to bypass surveillance systems that monitor prisoners’ calls: “This is the first exemption granted to correctional facilities.”
When wars begin, grandmothers chide the invaders,
As they enter the square.
But it’s tolerated,
When most expect to be home by Christmas.
The Theater contends with a specialized form of theater,
Generals assure,
Leaders assume,
The soldiers recite the lines as they are written.
A thousand heartbreaks bleed into a million.
Calamity compounds.
Glory recedes.
A million injustices spill onto the field.
As the pretense of honour fades,
The weary and worn,
Sit down to ring up the bill.
As the grandmothers bury the future.
By W. N. Branson 
On September 26, 1950 the sun turned deep blue over Edinburgh. The phenomenon was so unnerving Scottish motorists pulled over to gape at the indigo light. U.S. President Truman had announced hydrogen bomb testing earlier that year; no one could be sure what the Soviets were up to. If atomic scientists unleashed the end of time, it was bound to change the colour of the sun.
The cause was not a physics experiment gone awry, but a forest fire in northwest Alberta – the Chinchaga Firestorm of 1950. It might rate among the great fires of all time but for its location. Unlike the 1666 Fire of London or the blaze that razed Chicago in 1871, the Chinchaga fire raged far from any major city and merely captivated eyewitnesses over half the globe.
Firestorm is an intriguing account of one of the largest forest fires in Canadian history. Author Cordy Tymstra is a Government of Alberta wildfire science coordinator; contributor Professor Mike Flannigan is a director of the Western Partnership for Wildlife Fire Science at the University of Alberta. The result of their collaboration is a meticulously-researched story, rich in anecdotes, that documents an epic failure.
The fire was first spotted June 2, 1950 by a British Columbia forest ranger in a remote region near the Alberta border, at a place poetically called Whispering Pines Lake. Maddeningly the cause of the fire is lost to history: a lightning strike, a cigarette butt, a campfire? No one is certain. That day the fire had burned fewer than 200 acres and was considered a nuisance. “They had so damn much timber in the south they didn’t give a damn about the north,” Firestorm quotes one ranger. If anyone had trees to burn it was Alberta in 1950, a vast territory larger than France with a population half the size of Dallas.
“Fire control policy in 1950 for northern Alberta stipulated no suppression action could be taken on fires located more than 10 miles from a highway, settlement or major river,” authors note. The entire fire watch system in the Peace River district consisted of a single wooden lookout ladder and anecdotal reports from mail pilots.
Unchecked, the fire spread through peat bogs and spruce forests. By Labour Day 1950 it had run to five million acres. “That’s about half the size of Nova Scotia,” Tymstra writes. It led to what the U.S. Weather Bureau called the Great Smoke Pall, a plume of gas and ash so spectacular a passing RCAF pilot reported his cockpit filled with blinding smoke at 14,000 feet.
Firestorm recalls, “The high concentration of smoke reduced the incoming solar radiation and produced unique optical effects: darkness, coloured skies, moons and suns of varying colour and intensity, blue rays of light that flooded through windows, and unexpected blockage of the eclipse of the moon.”
Ontario Hydro reported a midday power surge as streetlights came on in Toronto. In Bradford, Pennsylvania hundreds of panicked townspeople called the Bell Telephone Co. as ash blacked out the midday sun. In New York the pall made the front page of the Times.
Firestorm is a crisp and timely account of a little-known natural disaster, the spectacle of an indigo sun.
By Holly Doan
The Chinchaga Firestorm: When The Moon And Sun Turned Blue by Cordy Tymstra and Mike Flannigan; University of Alberta Press; 264 pages; ISBN 9781-7721-20035; $34.95
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday confirmed he will resign next week. Trudeau rejected repeated claims by U.S. President Donald Trump that he was scheming to remain in office under the pretext of managing a trade war: “Are you considering playing some kind of caretaker role?”
Ontario effective Monday will impose a 25 percent surcharge on hydroelectricity exported to Great Lakes states, Premier Doug Ford said yesterday. All blame rested squarely with U.S. President Donald Trump, he told an American television audience: “Isn’t that a shame that we have to put a tariff on the electricity?”
Claims for millions in damages against the Freedom Convoy should be heard, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled yesterday. Judges rejected an appeal by protest organizers to dismiss a claim by Ottawa residents for $290 million in damages for “public nuisance” and “psychological distress.”
Canada lost more than 131,000 small businesses through the pandemic, according to Department of Industry figures. New data follow evidence at the time that one business group took suicide calls from desperate shopkeepers: ‘Business owners saw their life’s work crumble in their hands.’
Public display of swastika flags and other Nazi symbols should be banned, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said yesterday. B’nai Brith Canada publicly thanked the Premier for endorsing its national petition to outlaw anti-Semitic emblems: “Send a clear message that Canada stands united in condemning hate.”
A continental trade war will push Canada into a deep recession, the Budget Office said yesterday. Its prediction echoed a similar forecast by the Bank of Canada: “It’s more than a shock. It’s a structural change.”
Canadians must not parley with the U.S. on half-tariffs in the hope of averting a full continental trade war, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said yesterday. “Am I the only guy with a backbone to go after Trump?” Ford asked a radio talk show host: “Your country is under attack.”
It is “unlikely, very unlikely” that the United States can run without Canadian energy, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said yesterday. His remarks coincided with new federal data confirming crude oil exports hit record volumes last year: “Trump can say the United States doesn’t need Canada’s energy resources but that’s actually not true.”
Liberal leadership contender Mark Carney yesterday would not discuss tax planning by Brookfield Asset Management to avoid billions in Canadian payments while he served as chair. Brookfield’s tax avoidance was legal but obscene, said an MP: “This is obscene.”
Like-minded parties should join forces to prevent any election of a majority Conservative government, Green Party leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.) said yesterday. Liberals, New Democrats, Bloc Québécois and Green organizers should be “thinking about how we might co-operate together,” she said.
U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to destroy the Canadian economy and annex the country, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday. “I don’t know if negotiations would be any use,” he told reporters: ‘Our government needs to make sure nobody goes hungry.’
Ontario Premier Doug Ford yesterday said the province will shut down hydroelectricity exports to America if the U.S. piles on more tariffs. Ontario is the United States’ largest English-speaking trading partner, by federal estimate: “This is going to be a long battle.”
