'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
The wreck of a storied military ship that served in two World Wars, performed patrols in waters off Alaska for decades, and at one point was captained by the first Black man to command a U.S. government vessel has been found, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday.
A wreck thought to be the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, which sank in 1963 about 260 miles east of Boston as it was being towed to Philadelphia, where it was going to be converted into a floating restaurant, was located in 2019.
But it was only in August that a team of experts looking at the evidence came to the conclusion that they are "reasonably certain" that the wreck is indeed the Bear, officials of the Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said at a waterfront news conference in Boston.
"At the time of the loss of Bear, it was already recognized as a historic ship," said Joe Hoyt, of the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
The legend of the Bear is so ingrained in Coast Guard lore that the sports teams at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut are named the Bears, partly in honour of the vessel.
Built in 1874, the steam and sail-powered Bear was purchased by the U.S. in 1884 to take part in the search for the ill-fated Arctic expedition led by Lt. Adolphus Greely, a member of the U.S. Army's Signal Corps.
The 190-foot Bear then spent more than four decades patrolling the Arctic, performing search and rescue, law enforcement operations, conducting censuses of people and ships, recording geological and astronomical information, recording tides, and escorting whaling ships.
The U.S. Revenue Cutter Service merged with the U.S. Life-Saving Service in 1915 to form the Coast Guard.
"During Bear's 40-year career in Alaska, the cutter performed some of the most daring and successful Arctic rescues in history," said William Thiesen, the Coast Guard Atlantic Area's official historian. "And when malnourished Native Americans needed food, Bear brought it. When stranded whalers needed rescue, Bear saved them. One hundred years ago when thousands of Alaskans contracted the Spanish flu during the pandemic, Bear brought doctors and medicine."
Thursday's announcement coincided with the arrival in Boston of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, named after the Bear's captain from 1886 until 1895, Michael "Hell Roaring Mike" Healy.
The Healy, an icebreaker commissioned in 1999, recently completed a transit of the Arctic Northwest Passage.
Healy, born in 1839, was the son of a Georgia plantation owner and a slave. Healy's father sent him to Massachusetts to escape enslavement, Thiesen said.
He likened the Healy -- commissioned by Abraham Lincoln a month before the president's assassination -- to an Old West sheriff, whose jurisdiction was an area the size of the lower 48 states.
"While he never, during his lifetime, self-identified as African American, perhaps to avoid the prejudice he would likely have encountered in his personal life and career, he was in reality the first person of African American descent to command a ship of the U.S. Government," a NOAA news release said.
Even after its time in the Arctic was over, Bear's career continued.
The ship saw service during both World Wars, patrolling Greenland's waters in World War II and helping capture a German spy vessel.
Between the wars, the Bear was repurposed as a maritime museum by the city of Oakland, California; used as a movie set; and purchased by Adm. Richard Byrd for use in his Antarctic expeditions.
The ship was decommissioned in 1944 and remained in Nova Scotia until its trip to Philadelphia ended prematurely in 1963 about 90 miles south of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, according to NOAA.
"Bear had served in various capacities for nearly 90 years, a remarkable record for a ship build of wood," Thiesen said.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
There is currently a whooping cough epidemic in Europe, with 10 times as many cases compared to the previous two years. While an outbreak has not been declared nationwide in Canada, whooping cough is regularly detected in the country.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
British Columbia's human rights tribunal has awarded a neurodigergent actor, who was diagnosed with sensory and learning disorders, more than $55,000 after finding that a Kelowna theatre company discriminated against him because of his disabilities.
It's not quite clear who is supposed to be regulating so-called sovereign cannabis stores or even ensure they're benefiting Indigenous communities.
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.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
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 mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.