Top stories of the week: Contaminated gas, changes to blue box program, and $10K police reward offered

Playing null of undefined

Growing frustrations amongst restaurateurs over 'no-shows' for reservations

Keeping safe in the freezing rain

Stratford Police offer $10,000 reward for missing man

Cambridge driver warns of contaminated gas at Hespeler Road Shell station

A woman from Cambridge, Ont., is warning drivers after her pickup truck was allegedly filled with contaminated fuel.

Krissie Allen said her husband fueled up at a Shell station on Hespeler Road on Jan. 4, but by the morning of Jan. 5, the truck had trouble starting.

“There’s obviously an issue with the gas,” said Allen.

Allen’s family fuels their vehicles at the Hespeler Shell twice a week, every week.

“I didn’t know until my husband came home that he had trouble starting the car yesterday,” she said. “And then he said it was rough. The engine light came on, something that a 2022 truck should not be doing.”

Allen said her husband took the pickup truck into the shop. In the meantime, she turned to social media for answers.

“I can’t believe the amount of people that have said that, ‘Yes, we’re doing the same thing you’re going through right now.’ The car’s in the shop or has been in the shop to have the fuel drained out, because that was the issue,” she said.

Mechanics at Columbia Auto Group in Waterloo said they don’t often see fuel contamination, but it can be a pain for drivers as soon as they leave the pump.

“It’s really difficult to say what it looks like. It’s more of how it performs in the vehicle,” said technical operations manager Kevin Seifried. “You can have something as simple as an engine misfire, check engine light or up to and including drivability concerns or no starts, where the vehicle just won’t start.”

Allen said it’s more stressful knowing the situation could’ve been much worse.

On Jan. 6, pylons blocked vehicles from pulling up to the pumps as crews investigated the possible contamination.

CTV News spoke with the family that owns the station off camera. They confirmed the gas was contaminated, but were still in the process of figuring out what happened.

“I just want the station to hold up to their name,” said Allen. “You’re the one that caused this issue, fix it.”

In a statement to CTV News, a Shell spokesperson said the company is aware of “potential fuel quality concerns” at the Hespeler Road location.

“We have suspended gasoline sales as a precautionary measure, and initial testing has not identified any issues,” the spokesperson said.

“There is no impact to other Shell stations. The site will resume gas sales once we are confident the fuel meets Shell’s quality standards.”

When Allen complained, Shell advised the issue would be addressed through insurance providers. But Allen believes more needs to be done.

“No apology, no nothing, ‘Sorry this happened,’ no. Nothing,” Allen said.

For those who may have fuel contamination concerns of their own, mechanics recommend taking their vehicles into the shop right away so the problem can be dealt with as soon as possible.

Reservation ‘no-shows’ creating planning problems, says Kitchener, Ont. restaurateur

The holidays often mean a boom in business for restaurants, but bookings for tables may inflate those numbers – at least that’s what one Kitchener, Ont. restaurateur believes.

From filling customers’ bellies with classic French cuisine, or quenching their thirst with top European wines, Chez Elixir in Belmont Village offers a fine dining experience.

However, its owner and head chef, Firooz Jafari, is experiencing something he’s not-so-fine with.

“Those two didn’t show, so we labelled them as cancelled. These nine, cancelled. These 12 people, he said ‘Oh, my girlfriend has reserved elsewhere,’” Jafari said, as he scrolled through his tablet that records all the restaurant’s reservations and cancellations.

Reservation no-shows are nothing new for the restaurant business. But the holidays tend to reignite those frustrations.

“I believe people reserve in two or three different places and then at the end, they choose to go to one of them,” Jafari said.

In 2023, Jafari began asking customers for deposits to reserve a table. Then, he ran into a new problem – people stopped booking altogether.

“I removed that from our website. We don’t want the deposit because some people didn’t like it and some people said, ‘Oh, I’m not going to give you my credit card number,’” Jafari said.

So he removed that feature and went back to the old ways, but so did restaurant guests.

Leading up to Christmas, Jafari said out of 49 reservations, he had 25 cancellations.

“It didn’t give me a chance to prepare properly. It affected my service,” he said. “But I couldn’t say anything. The customer is always right.”

It’s a problem that has plagued the restaurant industry across the country.

Earlier this year, Quebec allowed restaurants to start charging $10 per person in an attempt to help with no-shows.

Ahead of the holidays, CTV News checked in to see whether it has helped.

“We have seen an increase in people calling to cancel the reservation, which is really what restaurants want,” said Jonathan Metcalfe, co-owner of Montreal’s Tuck Shop, in December.

Although, reviews were mixed.

“If someone reserved for 30 people but only three people show up, well, you can’t apply it. You can’t charge them – the 27 people that didn’t show up. That’s the way that the law is written,” James Graham-Simpkins of the Joe Beef Group told CTV News Montreal in December.

At Chez Elixir in Kitchener, Ont., the message from Jafari to his customers is clear.

“I love all of them,” Jafari said. “Even if they don’t show, please just let me know that you’re not showing up.”

That way, he can ensure his seats are just as full as his customers’ bellies.

With reporting from CTV News Montreal’s Denise Roberts.

More items can be recycled through Ontario’s Blue Box program

Empty toothpaste tubes, deodorant sticks and other household items can now be put out for recycling in your blue box.

Circular Materials, which oversees the program, said they wanted a create a standardized list across Ontario.

“No matter where you are in the province – at home, on vacation, or just passing through – you can recycle the same materials,” they wrote on their website. “No more having to determine what goes where in each community.”

It also means even more items can go into your blue box. Here’s what can be recycled:

• Cardboard: Pizza boxes, direct mailboxes, moving boxes and shoe boxes.
• Boxboard: Cereal boxes, tissue boxes, egg cartons, rolls from toilet paper and paper towel.
• Paper laminate packaging: Pet food bags, food service paper bags, and plates.
• Paper laminate containers: Spiral cans, cookie dough package and ice cream containers, as well as hot and cold beverage cups.
• Cartons: Beverage cartons, juice and milk cartons, coffee creamers, and sugar cartons, soup and sauce cartons.
• Paper: Any colour, including flour bags, prescription bags, paper produce bags. Notepads, white or coloured loose paper, file folders, other printed materials. Community newspapers, flyers, brochures and magazines. Greeting cards and envelopes, gift boxes.
• Hard plastic containers: Laundry detergent and household cleaner jugs, shampoo, body wash, salad dressing, condiment, dish soap, mouth wash bottles and plastic beverage bottles.
• Plastic packaging and containers: Food trays, salad, yogurt, peanut butter, bakery and egg containers, plastic cups, plastic tubs and lids, black plastic containers.
• Tubes: Toothpaste tubes, deodorant, hand cream tubes.
• Small item plastic packaging: Hand sanitizer bottles, medication bottles, blister packs, plant pots.
• Flexible plastic packaging: Bags used for dry cleaning, bread, newspapers and flyers. Overwrap (paper towel & toilet paper, beverage containers). Coffee bags or deli pouches, chip bags, bubble wrap, snack wrappers, cereal liner bags, plastic gift bags.
• Foam packaging: Meat trays, takeout containers, cups, plates, bowls, foam packaging for products.
• Metal containers: Food cans, metal lids, cookie, coffee and tea tins, beverage cans.
• Aluminum (foils and trays): Aluminum foil, pie plates, frozen food trays.
• Aerosol containers: Food spray, hairspray, air fresheners, shaving cream, deodorant. (Aerosols with toxic, corrosive or flammable symbol are not accepted with the exception of: Cooking oil sprays and products designed for food, as well as Hairsprays, cosmetics and products designed to be used on hair/skin.)
• Glass containers: Clear and coloured glass. Food containers, jars and bottles, cosmetic containers, spice bottles, oil and vinegar bottles, non-alcoholic glass beverage containers.

Property owners are reminded to give items a quick rinse and bundle cardboard boxes before putting them into the blue box. Hazardous materials, like batteries, should stay out.

The changes went into effect Jan. 1.

More information can be found on Circular Materials’ website.

Freezing rain and icy conditions expected in parts of the province

More bad weather hit southwestern Ontario on Jan. 6.

A special weather statement was issued for areas south of Bracebridge and Kingston, including Waterloo Region, Wellington County, Haldimand County, Norfolk County, Huron County and Perth County.

According to the forecasting agency, these areas got anywhere from one to five millimetres of ice accretion, or build up, starting on the morning of Jan. 6.

For Waterloo Region and areas to the north, that freezing rain switched over to snow as a cold front moved in.

“Areas along the Lake Erie and Lake Ontario shorelines may see very little ice accretion or build up,” Environment Canada advised at the time, adding, “Roads and walkways may become icy and slippery. Icy surfaces could be difficult to detect. Local utility outages are possible.”

Why police are offering a $10K reward for tips in an Ontario man’s disappearance

Friends have not given up hope that someone knows why Derek Ritz vanished.

He was last seen at a home in Sebringville, Ont., on Dec. 31, 2016. Since then, there’s been no sign of the 51-year-old.

“It’s been nine long years and Ritzy deserves better than this,” his friend Shelly Smith told CTV News. “We’re trying not to give up. His best friend and I will not give up. We’re doing the best we can right now.”

Ritz’s disappearance has haunted not only his friends, but the small community west of Stratford which has dubbed itself “The Hamlet with Heart.”

Smith and the Stratford Police Service, who are investigating the case, both believe someone knows what happened to Ritz.

“A lot of the information that we get is pretty similar in nature,” explained Mark Taylor, the acting deputy chief for Stratford Police. “Everyone’s hearing the stories that are out there.”

While there’s been a lot of rumors, they haven’t resulted in any concrete clues in the case.

“We know we’re on the right track,” Smith insisted.

Ontario Provincial Police began the investigation into Ritz’s disappearance before it was ultimately handed over to Stratford Police.

“We’ve had four investigators dig into it,” Taylor said. “As of 2024-2025, we had two investigators who were strictly involved in investigating over 100 individuals in regard to this case, to try and close it for us.”

Those efforts have not ceased.

“We were actually going to sit down this week as a group and go over every piece of information that we’ve got and see if there’s anything that we missed,” Taylor told CTV News on Tuesday.

There have been several ground and air searches in the area over the years, as Ritz was known to walk from Sebringville to Stratford.

“They’ve all come up negative,” said Taylor. “We still get the odd tip here and there. Just not as frequently as we’d like. We just need to close the loops.”

That was what prompted police to recently issue a $10,000 reward for information on Ritz’s whereabouts, or lead police to those responsible for his disappearance.

“It’s rare for us to have an open case for this long,” Taylor admitted. “We’re not [dismissing] the fact that he may be alive because we don’t have proof that he is deceased.”

The decision to offer a reward was overdue, according to Ritz’s friend.

“It’s sad that there had to be a reward for them to want to come forward, or some incentive, but this is where we’re at,” Smith told CTV News.

She has been one of the consistent factors in case, pushing to keep Ritz’s name in the spotlight and working alongside both police and Please Bring Me Home Canada, a non-profit organization that helps families search for their missing loved ones.

“We’re pretty sure we know what happened,” Smith said. “We just need to be able to prove it.”

She’s resigned, however, to never seeing her friend again.

“Very sad for Ritzy,” Smith said through tears. “He doesn’t deserve this.”

With additional reporting by Hannah Schmidt