Average hourly wage in Canada now $34.95: StatCan
Average hourly wages among Canadian employees rose to $34.95 on a year-over-year basis in April, a 4.7 per cent increase, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra will tour for the second straight summer, appearing in eight cities in Europe in support of the nation's war effort against Russia.
Keri-Lynn Wilson, the Canadian-Ukrainian wife of Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb, will conduct the tour, which runs from Aug. 20 to Sept. 3 and is being produced by the Met and the Teatr Wielki-Polish National Opera. The Aug. 24 concert at Berlin's Schönhausen Palace coincides with Ukrainian Independence Day and will be a free outdoor performance.
"Putin and the Russian propaganda machine have kind of weaponized culture and it's very important for Ukraine to mount its own cultural defense," Gelb said Friday, referring to the Russian president.
"Ukrainian people need to be bolstered. They've been battered and their morale needs to be lifted."
Musicians include members of the Kyiv National Opera, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra and Kharkiv Opera. Wilson said all but a dozen of the 74 musicians are holdovers from last summer.
"One of the members is pregnant; she can't join the tour. Others have taken on different jobs that conflict," Wilson said, the orchestra's music director and founder. "Some that we approached last year that were unavailable because they were drafted for the war, we wanted to bring them in this year."
The core of the orchestra lives in Ukraine. Four or five musicians have found positions with orchestras elsewhere in Europe. The principal second violin lost a brother in the war, Wilson said.
The tour opens Aug. 20 in Warsaw and includes stops in Gdansk, Poland (Aug. 22), Lucerne, Switzerland (Aug. 27), Amsterdam (Aug. 28), Hamburg, Germany (Aug. 30), Snape, England (Sept. 2) and London (Sept. 3). It is slightly shorter than last year's tour, which began in Europe and ended in New York and Washington, D.C.
The Warsaw concert features Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Other programs include Verdi's overture to "La Forza del Destino," Yevhen Stankovych's Violin Concerto No 2 with soloist Valeriy Sokolov, Myroslav Skoryk's "Melody" and Beethoven's Third Symphony.
Opening with "Forza" is meant to be symbolic.
"This is a wake-up call I would like to think to the Western World," Wilson said. "This is our message of continuing to fight this war, to galvanize the western world that we must stay together."
Average hourly wages among Canadian employees rose to $34.95 on a year-over-year basis in April, a 4.7 per cent increase, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday morning.
A 4.2-magnitude earthquake was recorded west of Vancouver Island early Friday morning.
Andy Kim's 'Rock Me Gently' is marking a major milestone, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.
Oprah Winfrey said on Thursday evening that she has long played a role in promoting unhealthy and unrealistic diets.
A southwestern Ontario woman has received an $8,400 bill from a hospital in Windsor, Ont., after she refused to put her mother in a nursing home she hated -- and she says she has no intention of paying it.
Toronto police say a man who allegedly attempted to access Drake’s Bridle Path property was taken to hospital on Thursday after an altercation with security guards.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
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.