![](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.6928617.1718492429!/httpImage/image.png_gen/derivatives/landscape_800/image.png)
Ottawa Food Bank receives largest donation in its 40-year history
210,000 pounds of food was delivered to the Ottawa Food Bank on Saturday, the largest donation in its 40-year history.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is set to sign two bills Friday that overhaul the state's oversight of the funeral home industry after a series of gruesome discoveries, including 190 decomposing bodies in a facility, families being sent fake ashes and the unauthorized sale of body parts.
The cases put Colorado's lax funeral home regulations — some of the weakest in the United States — in the spotlight and rocked hundreds of already grieving families. Some had ceremonially spread ashes that turned out to be fake. Others said they had nightmares of what their decaying loved ones' bodies might have looked like.
The proposals bring Colorado in line with most other states.
One requires regulators to routinely inspect funeral homes and give them more enforcement power. Another implements licensing for funeral directors and other industry roles. Those qualifications include background checks, degrees in mortuary science, passing a national exam and work experience.
Previously, funeral home directors in Colorado didn't have to graduate from high school, let alone get a degree.
The funeral home industry was generally on board with the changes, though some were concerned that strict requirements for funeral home directors were unnecessary and would make it difficult to find hirable applicants.
The bills' signings follow a rocky year for Colorado funeral homes.
In early October, neighbours noticed a putrid smell emanating from a building in the town of Penrose, about two hours south of Denver. Authorities soon found 190 decaying bodies there, including adults, infants and fetuses.
Some were stacked atop each other, decomposition fluid covered the floors, and inside were swarms of flies and maggots. Almost two-dozen bodies dated back to 2019, and some 60 more were from 2020. As the bodies were identified, families who had received ashes soon learned the cremains weren't their loved ones.
In most states, funeral homes are routinely inspected, but no such rules were on the books in Colorado. The owners of the funeral home were arrested in November, and collectively face hundreds of abuse-of-a-corpse charges and others.
Just months later, in February, a woman's body was found in the back of hearse, left there for over a year by a suburban Denver funeral home. The discoveries included at least 30 people's cremated remains stashed throughout the funeral director's home.
Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
210,000 pounds of food was delivered to the Ottawa Food Bank on Saturday, the largest donation in its 40-year history.
Your father's diet before you were born could have played a role in your health, a new study has found.
Canadians would get more than $1 billion in unclaimed benefits each year through an automatic tax filing system, according to a report published by the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO).
Nova Scotia has installed fewer than 10 per cent of the 200 shelters it promised to set up for the province's homeless residents more than eight months after first making the pledge.
Prince William on Sunday shared a photograph showing him as a child with his father, King Charles III, to mark Father’s Day in the United Kingdom this year.
Some of Hollywood's brightest stars headlined a fundraiser for U.S. President Joe Biden that took in a record US$30 million-plus for a Democratic candidate, according to his campaign, in hopes of energizing would-be supporters for a White House contest they said may rank among the most consequential in U.S. history.
A fire in an underground parking facility in Regina led to no injuries, according to the city's fire department.
On a day that a local state of emergency was declared in Calgary, city residents answered a request from the mayor and emergency officials to use less water.
Nearly 80 countries called Sunday for the 'territorial integrity' of Ukraine to be the basis for any peace agreement to end Russia's two-year war, though some key developing nations at a Swiss conference did not join in. The way forward for diplomacy remains unclear.
The thunderstorm that hit Ottawa Thursday evening was accompanied by heavy rain and lightning that struck a house in Orléans.
Canadian and U.S. ironworkers shook hands across the border as the Gordie Howe bridge deck officially becomes an international crossing.
Age may be just a number to George Steciuk, but it’s just one of many that add up to one inspirational athlete.
It has taken more than 100 years, but Almonte’s forgotten soldier, George B. Monterville has had his name etched back into history.
For Father's Day, CP24.com and CTVNewsToronto.ca reached out to local politicians, community advocates, and other prominent figures in the city to ask them to share what important lesson they have learned from their dads.
Fancy Pokket owner Mike Timani has decided to create a 220-foot long flat bread to celebrate its 35th anniversary.
If certain goals that are in the Paris Climate Accord aren't met, the existence of polar bears in the Hudson Bay may come to an end.
In an attempt to invite one of the most popular recording artists in the world to the land of living skies – the City of Swift Current has offered to rename itself in honour of Taylor Swift.
More than a dozen dogs arrived by Cargojet early Thursday morning to the People for Animal Wellbeing Shelter to find a permanent place to call home in New Brunswick.