Year in review: A look at news events in August 2023

A look at news events in August 2023: 01 – The last surviving miner from the October 1958 Springhill, Nova Scotia coal mine disaster dies. Harold Brine was 91. Only 19 of the 174 men working in the mine were rescued after a seismic shock wave trapped them near the bottom of North America’s deepest coal mine.

Brine was just 26 at the time. 02 – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau announce they have decided to separate after 18 years of marriage. They announce the decision on Instagram, saying it follows what they describe as many meaningful and difficult conversations. 03 – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appoints educator and community advocate Edith Dumont as Ontario’s first francophone lieutenant governor.

She will replace Elizabeth Dowdeswell. 05 – British Columbia’s port workers vote in favour of a contract offer, ending weeks of turbulent job action that stopped billions of dollars’ worth of shipped items into Canada. 07 – Hundreds of Canadian scouts attending the World Scout Jamboree in South Korea are treated for heat stress as temperatures soar during the event.

The entire contingent of 235 scouts and 143 volunteers are then moved to the Seoul area because of an approaching tropical storm. 08 – Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault says his office has launched a tip line for foreign workers and advocates who witness wrongdoing in the workplace. Allegations of abuse have plagued the temporary foreign worker program for years.

08 – Hundreds of visitors who took a gondola up Alberta’s Sulphur Mountain in Banff National Park are stranded overnight after a lightning storm causes a power outage across Banff. Some visitors are able to walk down the mountain via a five and a half kilometre hiking trail while others are helicoptered out the next morning with help from Parks Canada.

08 – Liquor store workers in Manitoba walk off the job in protest of contract talks. The workers had been holding short term strikes since last month but decided to ramp up efforts after Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries failed to meet their requests. Around 1,400 workers have been without a collective agreement for more than a year.

08 – A Quebec Superior Court judge authorizes a class action lawsuit on behalf of federal prisoners in Quebec. The suit concerns inmates who were held in segregation units for more than 15 days, which they say amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. 08 – A series of wild fires devastates parts of Hawaii.

Maui in particular experiences major destruction as fire obliterates neighbourhoods and landmarks. The historic town of Lahaina is destroyed. Some survivors jump in the ocean to save themselves. Hundreds of people are killed or are missing. 10 – An audit of the Canadian Museum of History finds hundreds of items missing from the collections.

Canada’s auditor general finds the museum did such a poor job keeping tabs on the more than four million objects and historical and cultural artifacts in its care, that about 800 had disappeared. The federal Crown corporation manages collections for the Canadian Museum of History and the Canadian War Museum.

12 Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson announces $400,000 in funding for a new pilot project aimed at helping firefighters train towards a standardized level of preparedness. This year’s fire season saw the deployment of hundreds of firefighters from different parts of Canada and overseas at hot spots across the country.

11 – Ontario Premier Doug Ford announces he will not reverse course on his plans to build on the protected Greenbelt region despite a damning auditor general report and experts saying provincial housing targets can be met by building elsewhere. 11 – The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issues a national recall of Monster brand energy drinks.

The agency says the products were being recalled due to various non compliances related to caffeine content and labelling requirements. 11 – A B.C. judge rejects a class action lawsuit linked to the wildfire that destroyed the village of Lytton two years ago. Plaintiff Chief Jordan Spinks of the Kanaka Bar Indian Band argued that the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways, Transport Canada and others caused or contributed to the wildfire that killed two people.

The judge says there are deficiencies in the claim that make it obvious that the suit will fail. 11 – Former big league slugger Jose Bautista signs a one day contract so he can retire with the Toronto Blue Jays. Bautista played for eight teams during 15 seasons in the majors, making his final appearance with Philadelphia in 2018.

12 – Jacques Yvan Morin, the politician who helped shaped the charter that defined French as Quebec’s official language, dies. He was 92. Morin held several prominent cabinet roles in Parti Quebecois governments in the 1970s and 80s. 15 – Donald Trump and 18 others are indicted in a criminal probe of efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state of Georgia.

It is the fourth criminal case brought against the ex U S president in a matter of months. 14 – Ontario establishes a working group to implement recommendations from a damning auditor general’s report on the government’s decision to remove land from the protected Greenbelt. 17 – An evacuation order is issued for Yellowknife and some of the surrounding area, as wildfires threatened the city.

With the help of cooler temperatures fire crews eventually managed to hold the blaze about 15 kilometres outside of city limits. 18 – British Columbia Premier David Eby declares a provincewide state of emergency in response to “unprecedented” wildfires that force the evacuation of thousands of people in the Interior.

21 – Two Alberta lawyers are barred from practising in Manitoba and ordered to pay $5,000. The decision from the Law Society of Manitoba comes after complaints that John Carpay and Randal Jay Cameron hired a private investigator to surveil a judge who was hearing a case involving COVID 19 public health orders.

Both men represented several churches that attempted in 2021 to overturn Manitoba public health orders that prevented in person religious services during the height of the pandemic. 22 – Former Olympic figure skater Alexandra Paul dies in a car crash west of Barrie, Ont. The 31 year old is killed and her infant son was treated for non life threatening injuries after a transport truck entered a construction zone and crashed into a line of stopped cars.

25 – Donald Trump makes history as the first former U.S. president to have a mug shot. Trump is booked and released at Georgia’s Fulton County Jail as he surrendered on charges that he illegally schemed to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. 26 – Bob Barker, the longtime host of the popular TV game show “The Price Is Right,” dies at age 99.

The Canadian Press.