More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
Now we know what Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog who predicts whether an early spring will arrive each Feb. 2, does on the other 364 days.
The Pennsylvania group that handles Phil, and his groundhog wife, Phyliss, says the couple have become parents.
The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club said in a Facebook post Wednesday that Phyliss recently gave birth to two healthy babies. It did not specify their sex or give names for either one.
“We’re pleased to announce that Punxsutawney Phil has had his first children; we believe there are two baby groundhogs and that Phil and Phyllis have started a family,” said Thomas Dunkel, president of a tuxedo-clad group called The Inner Circle that carries on the groundhog tradition each year. “We’re pleased about it, and I talked to Phil with my cane, which lets me speak Groundhogese, and Phil could not be more excited that he started a family.”
Dunkel said a club member discovered the babies Saturday when he came to feed their parents fruit and vegetables.
Phil emerges from his burrow each year the morning of Feb. 2. If he sees his shadow, tradition holds, there will be six more weeks of winter. This year, he did not see his shadow, heralding an early spring.
Although the best known, Phil is far from the only groundhog to try his hand at meteorology. There have been weather-predicting groundhogs in at least 28 U.S. states and Canadian provinces, and less formal celebrations far and wide.
Phil and Phyliss live in climate-controlled quarters at the Punxsutawney Memorial Library.
But like most growing families, they now need larger digs. The club plans to move them to a larger home on the library's grounds.
Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, Punxsutawney Phil comes with his own mythology, including the claim that he will live forever, due to imbibing some magic juice called “The Elixir Of Life.” (His wife is not allowed to partake of the elixir, and thus, is not immortal. Where are groundhog suffragettes when they're truly needed?)
Given that the annual Groundhog Day ritual has been performed since 1887, that would place Phil in his late 130s, a procreational feat that puts Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and Mick Jagger to shame.
And what about the kids? Will they someday inherit the responsibility of predicting whether there will be six more weeks of winter? Will they have to spend their lives waiting for dad to shuffle off to that big burrow in the sky before they can inherit the throne?
Alas, no, Dunkel says. Because their father is immortal, there will always be only one of him.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
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.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”