Man who set himself on fire outside Trump trial dies of injuries, police say
A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former U.S. President Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said.
In the summer, the Sylvia Grinnell River near Iqaluit is a popular spot to fish for Arctic char where ice-cold water cascades over rocky ledges.
Now, with thick layers of ice and snow covering the flowing water below, it has become one of the Nunavut capital's main water sources for drinking and cooking.
The other comes in thousands of plastic water bottles that arrive by plane.
It's been almost two months since Iqaluit's tap water was declared undrinkable. On Oct. 12, the city declared a state of emergency when fuel was found in the water supply. Residents had complained the water coming out of their taps smelled like fuel.
Since then, the city has dug up an old underground fuel tank from 1962, which was buried next to the water treatment plant and thought to be the source of the contamination.
Iqaluit Mayor Kenny Bell says he's frustrated because the city's testing has come back clean since Oct. 23, but the Nunavut government has the final say in lifting the do-not-consume order.
The city has installed a device to monitor for petroleum, but the territory says it wants two. It also wants the city to build a system that would bypass the water treatment plant's underground tanks.
Bell says those are important steps to preventing future problems, but he doesn't think they should be tied to lifting the order.
"It could take three weeks, could take a month, could take two months to build the bypass because of parts and labour and what not," Bell says.
"That's going to take time that we frankly just don't have."
The city has said it will cost $130 million to fix the long-term problem and has called on the federal government to pay for it.
Water quality monitoring from the city shows that between Nov. 16 and Nov. 23 all sample results came back negative for petroleum hydrocarbons.
"The water is clean. These requirements are for a future possible event," says Bell.
Throughout the emergency, the city has continued to hand out bottled water to residents at different sites around the city.
But staff are strained, Bell says, and the city has had to close its gym, pool and two arenas to reallocate workers.
"We're offering $32 per hour to hand out water, but we've only hired a couple of people. We just need more staff," Bell says.
"We're all tired. We were short-handed well before this crisis. It's crap for all of us."
The city has asked the Nunavut government for extra hands, but Bell says that request was denied because the territory has its own staffing issues.
In a statement, Nunavut's health department says it's still reviewing the city's water quality assessments.
"The (Government of Nunavut) is awaiting confirmation from the contracted engineering firm that the site assessment and required remediation have been completed to assure the risk of repeat contamination has been mitigated," says the statement.
"The Department of Health is working closely with the third party to assess the City of Iqaluit's field investigation report."
Nunavut's department of community and government services, which contracted the engineering firm, did not respond when asked for the name of the company.
The Canadian Armed Forces also arrived in Iqaluit on Oct. 23 to collect and purify water from the Sylvia Grinnell River using a reverse osmosis system.
But the operation ground to a halt on Nov. 22, when high winds knocked over a military tent that was protecting the water purification system.
The military has since moved its system inside a hangar at the city's airport, and plans to truck river water there for treatment. There's no timeline for when the operation will start again.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 3, 2021.
A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former U.S. President Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said.
An Airbnb in Montreal's Verdun borough was the source of much frustration from neighbours who say there were constant parties at the location. It has been taken down from the app, but housing advocates remain upset about short-term rentals.
He decided to spend Christmas somewhere that wouldn't involve snowstorm disasters. She was spending the holidays with family, travelling for the first time outside of her native country of Venezuela. 23 years later, they're still in love.
One day after a Montreal police officer fired gunshots at a suspect in a stolen vehicle, senior officers were telling parliamentarians that organized crime groups are recruiting people as young as 15 in the city to steal cars so that they can be shipped overseas.
RCMP say the fire that prompted a state of emergency in a Labrador town is now under control.
Thirteen victims of the Columbine High School shooting were remembered during a vigil Friday on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the shooting that was the worst the nation had seen at the time.
An Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza's southernmost city killed at least nine people, six of them children, hospital authorities said Saturday, as Israel pursued its nearly seven-month offensive in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Soulful gospel artist Mandisa, a Grammy-winning singer who got her start as a contestant on 'American Idol' in 2006, has died, according to a statement on her verified social media. She was 47.
Iraqi authorities said Saturday that they were investigating an explosion that struck a base belonging to the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of Iran-allied militias, killing one person and injuring eight.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.