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Carney says Canada in mourning following military base deaths in Alberta
Canada in mourning over military tragedy: Carney
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Patrick Doyle
Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a statement in Ottawa on Sunday about a deadly, fast-moving fire at CFB Wainwright in Alberta. The fire on Saturday killed four service members and wounded dozens more.
Here is the text of Carney's remarks:
Yesterday afternoon, a violent, fast-moving fire swept through the Canadian Armed Forces Base in Wainwright, Alta.
What followed was one of the worst tragedies for the Forces on Canadian soil in peacetime.
I regret that I can confirm at this time that four service members have lost their lives and their next of kin have been notified. Dozens more are seriously wounded.
As the situation is evolving rapidly, I have asked that a detailed account and formal briefing be provided to Canadians this afternoon by senior officials on the ground in Wainwright, including the minister of national defence, Canada’s minister of emergency preparedness and Maj.-Gen. Wade Rutland of the Canadian Army. They will be joined by provincial ministers and senior officials.
I would like to take this opportunity to commend the close collaboration between all levels of government. Since last evening, Premier Smith and I have been in regular contact. Our ministers and officials have co-ordinated the response deploying resources from the CAF, public safety, local fire department, Alberta emergency and medical services.
The nation is in mourning for those brave members of our Armed Forces whom we have lost. And I have asked the flags on all federal buildings to be flown at half-mast to honour them. We are praying for the wounded. And we stand in solidarity and compassion for the families, friends and colleagues of all those affected by this tragedy.
Canadians come together in crisis. That is the best of our country.
Military and civilian crews fought this fire through the night, in some of the worst conditions imaginable, risking their lives to protect their fellow Canadians.
STARS air ambulance crews flew in from Edmonton and Saskatoon. Paramedics, nurses, and doctors in Wainwright, Edmonton, Red Deer and Calgary caring for victims. The people of Wainwright are taking care of their own.
Thank you to Albertans and Canadians who are giving blood, who are feeding and housing emergency crews, who are providing solace and comfort to those in their darkest hour.
Those affected came from bases across the country, including reservists and soldiers from the storied Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Throughout Canada’s history, the Princess Pats have fought for freedom, democracy and human dignity — in the First World War, in the Second, in Korea, in Afghanistan and during numerous peacekeeping missions
That is the record, that is the standard, those are the values of the women and men who were training on the Alberta prairie yesterday afternoon when disaster struck. That commitment, that service, those ideals are the debts we, as Canadians, owe to them.
Our country depends on the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces. Our rights, our freedoms, our way of life are fought for and defended every single day by Canadians who answer the call.
CFB Wainwright is where the women and men of our Armed Forces learn to do the hardest things this country can ask of anyone. Those we lost and who were injured were training to defend Canada. To serve Canada.
Now Canada serves them.
We will be there for their families for as long as they need. We will care for the injured through every step of their recovery. And we will stand by the women and men of our Armed Forces as they bear the weight of this loss.
They will not carry it alone. In Canada, we take care of one another.
Thank you.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2026.
Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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Vancouver progressives take power as Green Pete Fry is elected mayor
Progressives sweep to power in Vancouver
Progressives have swept municipal elections in Vancouver, with Pete Fry chosen as the city's first Green mayor after a massive turnout.
Fry will be working with an overwhelmingly progressive council, with Greens and candidates from the Coalition of Progressive Electors, or COPE, each taking four seats out of 10, and OneCity Vancouver claiming a ninth seat for the left-of-centre camp.
The business-friendly ABC Party was decimated, with Ken Sim ousted from the mayor's office and only one councillor elected.
That's a stark turnaround from 2022, when ABC won seven seats on council.
While no single party will have a majority on the new council, the progressive parties have already demonstrated an ability to work together, with COPE's Stephanie Allen and OneCity's William Azaroff ending their mayoral campaigns to give Fry a better chance.
Preliminary results show Fry won handsomely with more than 98,000 votes, about 31,000 ahead of Sim, while the turnout of 209,000 was up 36 per cent compared to four years ago.
Fry hugged his mother, Liberal MP Hedy Fry, at his campaign's party in downtown Vancouver, telling his supporters the Greens would "fight for the city."
Green and COPE candidates won all seven commissioners' seats on the Park Board, while Green, COPE, and OneCity candidates won all nine school trustee positions.
Green Party of Vancouver mayoral candidate Pete Fry celebrates on civic election night in Vancouver, on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns
COPE's Sean Orr, a socialist council incumbent who is suing Sim for defamation after the mayor falsely accused him of handing out illegal drugs, was the top vote-getter on council with more than 83,000 votes.
He celebrated by sharing a meme on social media showing him staring down Sim with laser eyes.
The inauguration for the successful candidates will be on Nov. 2.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2026.
Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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Advocates planting the seed of a tree protection law in Winnipeg's election
Advocates call for bylaw to save Winnipeg's trees
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ian Bickis
The giants that Diane Poulin used to live among are all dead, but she's hoping to protect the ones still left in Winnipeg.
“I had five mature elm trees right in front of my house that leaned over the street and formed a beautiful canopy, and they're all gone now,” she says.
In her backyard was the biggest of the bunch.
"He was like the grandfather of the neighbourhood … his canopy filled our backyard, and he’s gone."
The city’s trees are under threat from disease, pests and climate change, but there's limits on how much can be done to push back against these forces of nature.
So, Poulin and other advocates at Trees Please Winnipeg are also pushing to hold back another threat — property owners.
The group wants Winnipeg to put a bylaw in place to control the cutting of trees on private property, since there's currently little stopping owners from cutting down as many trees, however big, as they please.
Advocates like Poulin say protecting the urban canopy is crucial because of the many benefits trees bring to all residents, such as providing shade in heat waves, cleaning the air, controlling rainwater and beautifying the city.
With more than 80 per cent of the city’s trees on private property, there needs to be a way to preserve those trees, too, she says.
To ramp up pressure, Trees Winnipeg has pushed candidates in the municipal election to sign a pledge that includes a commitment to enact a bylaw that would control the removal of all tress more than 15 centimetres in diameter.
Many cities across Canada already have some form of private tree bylaw, which generally still allow cutting trees for development or when they're unhealthy, but not when someone just doesn't want to rake leaves anymore.
Surrey, B.C., passed protections in 2006, while cities such as Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto have since joined in. Edmonton has one in the works.
"We're really falling behind on that front," Poulin says.
About 75 per cent of candidates have signed on to the pledge, she says, though there are some notable gaps, including incumbent mayor Scott Gillingham.
At a recent campaign stop, he said he was proud of his record on trees, which saw the city boost funding and its replacement rate for trees. But he would only commit to council talking about a bylaw protecting trees on private property, not passing one.
"We have to take a look at what it is and what the nuances are, what the requirements would be, what the terms of any bylaw would be," he said.
The mayor and council have been made aware of how passionate many Winnipeggers are about trees. When city leaders tried to fill a financial gap this summer by cutting the forestry budget, there was enough of an outcry they backed down.
But going so far as to tell private property owners what they can do with their trees can also raise passions.
In Toronto, for example, such bylaws have led to frustrated homeowners who have been told they can't cut down their mature ginkgo trees, despite the trees starting to produce their noxious-smelling fruit.
Such a bylaw could have also made it challenging for Paul Taylor to clearcut his tree-covered lot in Winnipeg, which stood as something of an extension of the city’s Assiniboine forest.
Taylor says he did it over security concerns, as the trees hid his old family home from the street, leading to break-ins and vandalism, so he flattened the whole place.
The business owner says he’s still in favour of some kind of bylaw protecting trees, as long as it leaves room for genuine safety and liability situations, and has some kind of replanting requirement.
"I'm generally supportive of protecting Winnipeg's urban tree canopy, and I don't see that as being at odds with being a developer," he says.
Neighbours that were asked about the clearcut didn’t jump to support laws to prevent it.
Brian Paterson, who has lived next door for 67 years and enjoyed the view of the ancient oaks and other trees that grew there, says that within reason, people should be able to decide for themselves.
“Would I rather the trees be there? Yeah, but he has a right to whatever he wants to do with his property.”
Across the street, Bianca Johnson says she loves the idea of protecting trees, but worries about how far a law may go, and what kind of hassle someone might have to go through to deal with, say, a diseased tree.
“In general it sounds great, but details are always the important nitty-gritty bit,” Johnson says.
“There’s always the personal rights versus communal rights.”
While such bylaws do limit the personal, it’s not so different from many existing laws, said Erna Buffie, who published a book earlier this year on saving the urban canopy.
“I have to pull a permit if I want to do any kind of renovation on my property or in my house, but I can go ahead and cut down a tree that's 100 years old without any repercussions,” she says.
“There's something fundamentally wrong with that.”
She says the current lack of protections means, for example, that the owner of the Lemay Forest was within their rights to cut down the roughly 17,000 trees on the property. The forest, and the graves within it, were only saved when the province stepped in to expropriate it last year.
With the city’s trees still largely unprotected, Poulin at Trees Please has also been working to add new ones.
She helped raise money to plant eight trees across from her house, even though she won't be around to see them grow to the grandeur of what they replaced.
"We do this for the next generation of Winnipeggers and kids and grandkids, who need to inherit a city that is livable for them."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2026.
By Ian Bickis | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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