Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
People in Iqaluit can drink the city's tap water again after 60 days of living under a do-not-consume notice.
The notice was lifted Friday by Nunavut's Health Department.
Residents of the territorial capital were told on Oct. 12 not to drink tap water after fuel was detected in the city's supply.
The Health Department said in a release that it wanted to see three consecutive tests come back clean at the water treatment plant before lifting the order.
The department said it took several steps to address the emergency, including installing new water-quality monitors, remediating the site around the treatment plant and scrubbing the tanks.
Dr. Michael Patterson, Nunavut's chief public health officer, thanked the city's 8,000 people for their patience throughout the eight-week state of emergency.
“Thorough testing and assessments conducted over the past eight weeks show that the water is safe for consumption and that the risk of recontamination is low,” Patterson said.
The Health Department release said tests came back on Oct. 12 and Oct. 19 with “higher than acceptable” levels of hydrocarbons.
After further testing, Patterson was “confident that the hydrocarbons detected after Oct. 19 were the product of residual hydrocarbons left over from the cleanup and not from recontamination,” the release said.
All tests done after Oct. 19 showed hydrocarbon levels were either undetectable or within safety levels for drinking water.
The release said some residents might still smell fuel in the water, but it should go away after running the tap for 20 minutes.
The Health Department had previously said that Iqaluit residents were unlikely to face health risks from drinking the contaminated water.
Documents obtained by The Canadian Pressthroughan access-to-information request show that staff with Nunavut's health and environment departments inspected the water treatment plant four days before the do-not-consume order was issued.
In emails, government staff said they had to leave the water treatment plant at one point on Oct. 8 because of an “unbearable” fuel smell.
The emails also show that water-testing in Iqaluit consistently came back clean after Oct. 19.
In a separate release Friday, the City of Iqaluit said that with the order lifted, all water bottle distribution has stopped and all water-filling depots are closed.
The Canadian Armed Forces has been in Iqaluit since Oct. 23 to help with the water emergency by using a reverse osmosis system to distribute treated river water to residents.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 10, 2021.
------
This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.