'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
When Hurricane Fiona made landfall over the weekend as a post-tropical storm, Prince Edward Island and one of its most important ecosystems endured significant damage as the storm triggered erosion on the province’s coastline.
Photos from the Canadian Space Agency showed the extent of the storm’s force as it swept through the province. Citizen scientists on the ground also captured its impact on the sand dunes of national parks, including Dalvay, Brackley and Cavendish Beach.
Chris Houser, a science professor at the University of Windsor, says the damage to the Dalvay national park sand dunes is unlike anything seen before
“The dune basically was cut in half,” Houser told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Tuesday.
“It lost a large part of its volume, it’s going to collapse eventually, lose a lot of its height, and most of the sediments went offshore with some of it going behind the barrier through little washover channels.”
Meteorologists have described Fiona as one of the most impactful storms to have hit the Atlantic region as wind gusts reached over 100 kilometres per hour with some areas in P.E.I. nearing 150 km/h. Though the main brunt of the storm was its staying power, as forceful winds made for a consistent storm surge that lasted for hours.
Houser says early reports from his team of citizen scientists with Parks Canada’s Coastie Initiative indicate the high tides caused by the storm took nearly 10 metres off the dune and approximately 30 cubic metres per every metre of sand was lost from the beach. While sand dunes naturally recover themselves, it’ll likely take years for the dunes to recover because of Fiona’s force.
“It's going to have an impact on that system over the next couple of years because it could almost take 10 years for that system to fully recover,” he said.
Sand dunes are an important ecosystem to the province, says Jennifer Stewart from Parks Canada P.E.I. She says they play an essential role as a natural barrier to protect other ecological communities and ourselves from future extreme weather events.
“During Hurricane Dorian, in 2019, we lost an average of two metres of coastline throughout P.E.I. National Park, and so we are used to having hurricanes in this area, but I haven't seen this level of erosion before,” Stewart told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Tuesday.
Sand dunes are able to rebuild themselves during the spring once beach vegetation begins to grow marram grass. This grass is essential in rebuilding the dunes as the grass catches sand to grow new dunes, spreading under the surface of the sand to create roots that will form a net to keep the sand in place.
“That's the protection that we would have against the forces of the Gulf of St. Lawrence,” she said. “So not having that sand dune there, it leaves us a bit more vulnerable to damage from winter storms and weather in general.”
However, with the effects of climate change increasing every year, ecosystems like the sand dunes may not be able to recover fast enough before further extreme weather events cause more damage.
With melting ice caps triggering rising sea levels, Houser says storms like Fiona will only increase with time and further delay the recovery process of these ecosystems. Additionally, warmer winters that are unable to create ice over our lakes can cause further damage to the dunes as the ice would normally give them a break from consistent waves.
“I think the most important piece here is the recovery. The erosion is always such a dramatic event and we focus on that, but the most important thing that will determine how the system will change is the recovery, which is going to take years to a decade,” he said.
Houser says it’s become more important than ever for citizen scientists and environmentalists to continue to collect photos and data on the effects of these extreme weather events to help better understand the ways to protect these ecosystems.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Rookie goalie Arturs Silovs will start in net for the Canucks as Vancouver kicks off a second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers Wednesday night.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.