Morning News – June 2nd

Weather

A mix of sun and cloud. Fog patches dissipating this morning. Wind becoming southwest 20 km/h late this morning. High 18. UV index 7 or high.
Tonight – A few clouds. Low 11.

 

Status of COVID-19 cases in Algoma

Last Updated: 9:50 AM, June 1, 2021

 

Northeast Forest Fire Region

There were no new fires discovered in the Northeast region by mid-afternoon on June 1, with 5 active, 4 are either under control or being held.

The fire hazard ranges mostly from high to extreme across the Northeast region, with some areas near the Highway 11 corridor showing a low to moderate hazard today.

 

Northwest Forest Fire Region

There were four new fires confirmed in the northwest region by the evening of June 1. There are 14 active fires in the region. One fire is not under control, one fire is being observed, six fires are being held and six fires are under control.

The wildland fire hazard is mainly moderate to high with areas of low hazard in the districts of Nipigon, Thunder Bay and Sioux Lookout.

 

News Tidbits:

Because of extremely dry conditions, a fire ban is being imposed in Elliot Lake and Blind River.​

It looks like Wawa is down to one webcam now, the one at the Wawa Goose. The project began with three cams: Lake Superior (mouth of the Michipicoten River), Wawa Goose Monument, and Wawa Lake. A hack on the website shut them down for an extended period of time. A renewed project saw all the cameras go back online, and the addition of another camera pointing over the Magpie Valley from the Goose Monument (Tourist Information Centre). Then probably a year ago, the feed from the Lake Superior and Magpie Valley cams disappeared from youtube, and over the past several days the Wawa Lake Cam has had a failure as shown by the screen clip at the right.

A monument of shoes has been started at Queen’s Park in recognition of the 215 children whose remains were discovered by ground-penetrating radar at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The school operated from 1890 to 1978, and was the largest school in the Indian Affairs residential school system with enrollment peaking in the early 1950s at 500 students.  At the site of the Muscowequan Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan  (1880’s – 1997) unmarked, unidentified graves were discovered during waterline construction in the early 1990s. In 2018 and 2019, with the use of ground-penetrating radar, the nation found at least 35 unmarked graves.

There have been ‘rumours’ for many years about children being buried in unmarked graves by residential school survivors. It is past time that the organizers of these ‘schools’, the churches be forced to fund the research into revealing the locations and maybe even consider DNA research (if possible) to discover who these children were.

Bearskin Lake First Nation (400 km N of Sioux Lookout on Michikan Lake) says it will use July 1 as a “day of mourning” until the federal government acts on finding missing children who went to Indian schools across the country.