Ontario

Faro mine tailings pond; critical minerals, Yukon Territory, Canada

The North is key to Canada’s critical mineral rush. Will its environment be protected this time?

July 10, 2023 11 min. read

Old mines in the territories left polluted, scarred sites as they closed. As the federal...

The small marina at the Trout Lake Trading Company near North Bay. Trout Lake is still home to PFAS, also known as forever chemicals.

Being underestimated is a superpower

By Denise Balkissoon

July 6, 2023

In this week’s newsletter, Leah Borts-Kuperman talks about reporting on a new factory opening in...

Kids fish for rock bass, pike and muskie in Trout Lake, near North Bay. The lake and other Nipissing District waterways are contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from a foam that was used to train firefighters by the Department of National Defence. Under existing legislation, a new plastics factory using PFAS opening up near the city is not required to do an environmental assessment.

Chemicals are forever: a new factory opens near Lake Nipissing, where water is already contaminated

By Leah Borts-Kuperman (Local Journalism Initiative Reporter)

July 6, 2023 18 min. read

Imagine driving down a two-lane road on a sunny day in northeastern Ontario, just east...

Located next to Rouge National Urban Park, the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve is part of a crucial wildlife corridor. The federal government has said it may be willing to intervene to protect the area depending on where and what exactly developers propose to build.

30,000 homes proposed for Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve, former ‘crown jewel’ of Ontario’s Greenbelt

By Emma McIntosh

July 4, 2023 9 min. read

Craig Bamford passes through what used to be the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve every Sunday...

Fire burns in the boreal forest in Alberta.

What causes wildfires? Lightning, people, climate change … and obsessively putting them out

By Drew Anderson

June 27, 2023(Updated June 4, 2025) 8 min. read

Decades of fire suppression have made forests more flammable. Add lightning, human error and climate...

Illustration of details related, or not, to the Ontario government's announcement that it would cut into the protected Greenbelt.

Doug Ford’s feedback was in document mentioning Greenbelt months before changes were announced

By Emma McIntosh

June 26, 2023 9 min. read

Staff say Ford’s comments from June 2022 weren’t related to the protected area, but declined...

After spending the first decade of the millennium as head coach of Jamaica’s national swim team through three Olympic games, Beckford Henriques came to Waterloo, where she has been the university’s head swim coach since 2017.

Not everyone in Canada can swim. A former Olympic coach in Waterloo is trying to change that

June 22, 2023 15 min. read

By teaching Black and other racialized people to swim for free, Jacky Beckford-Henriques and her...

An unpredecented coalition of Ontario farming organizations came together in “strong opposition" to the Doug Ford government's move to make it easier to build on farmland.

Can good things still grow in Ontario? Development push adds pressure to shrinking farmland

June 20, 2023 12 min. read

In May 2022, Oxford County — the dairy capital of Ontario — submitted its five-year-plan...

Six Nations: Oneida is set to have a multi-layered, disruptive impact on Ontario’s grid, one that could forever change the way the province’s grid works and the way energy projects are managed and operated across the country.

All you need is 10 acres — and a few spare years

By Karan Saxena

June 15, 2023

In this week’s newsletter, Ontario reporter Fatima Syed takes us on a short road trip...

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