Work stoppage possible as WestJet issues lockout notice to maintenance engineers' union
A lockout notice issued by WestJet to a union representing aircraft maintenance engineers could result in a work stoppage next week.
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."
A lockout notice issued by WestJet to a union representing aircraft maintenance engineers could result in a work stoppage next week.
A man accused of arson in a January Old Strathcona apartment fire is expected to be charged with manslaughter after a body was discovered in the burned building late last month.
A man was denied a $5,000 payout from his brother after a B.C. tribunal dismissed his claim disputing how many kittens were born in a litter.
Three bodies recovered in an area of Baja California are likely to be those of the two Australians and an American who went missing last weekend during a camping and surfing trip, the state prosecutor’s office said Saturday.
Almost a week after all London Drugs stores across Western Canada abruptly closed amid a cyberattack, they began a "gradual reopening" on Saturday.
Quebec provincial police handed out hundreds of fines to Hells Angels members and other supporting motorcycle clubs who met for their 'first run' in a small town near Sherbrooke, Que.
Auston Matthews was back on the ice with his teammates Saturday.
Russia has put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on its wanted list, Russian state media reported Saturday, citing the interior ministry’s database.
According to an X post by the Transportation Security Administration, officers at the Miami International Airport found the small bag of snakes hidden in a passenger's trousers on April 26 at a checkpoint.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.