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Six advocates on what it will take to save the North Atlantic right whale from extinction

This article was written by Jenn Thornhill Verma and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 4, 2025.

Mr. Hawkins developed a specialized camera rig to film dangerous rescue missions of North American right whales. His footage can be seen on The Wild Ones, a wildlife documentary now screening on Apple TV.

This is the seventh and final story in a series on Canada-U.S. cross-border measures to protect North Atlantic right whales.

North Atlantic right whales are teetering dangerously close to functional extinction – the point at which there are too few animals to recover – yet they are dying from known problems with known solutions.

Researchers know what the risks are: mostly fishing gear entanglements and vessel strikes, but also ocean noise pollution caused by human activity and climate change shifting where the whales feed. Policy makers know what to do: Remove fishing lines to reduce the risk of entanglement, reroute and slow vessels, and implement these protections wherever the whales travel.

Yet despite this knowledge, only 384 North Atlantic right whales remain, including 72 mothers. While these numbers represent slow growth in recent years, the population is a fraction of historic abundance.

The gap between knowing and doing has frustrated scientists for decades. “We’re trained to get the facts, show the facts, prove with the facts,” says Nadine Lysiak, a wildlife and ocean health research scientist at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life. “But I just don’t think we live in a society where that matters as much as we want it to.”

Michael J. Moore, a veterinary scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, puts it more bluntly: “The bottom line is the bottom line: It’s all about money.” While a “conservation lobby” pushes for measures to reduce whale deaths, Dr. Moore says a stronger “consumer lobby unintentionally is pushing exactly the opposite direction. They want to have more ships, faster ships, more deliveries and more seafood.”

Yet public opinion offers hope. A 2024 Ipsos poll of 1,053 Americans, commissioned by Oceana, an international ocean conservation organization, found that 86 per cent of U.S. voters believe right whales should be protected from human-caused threats. In Canada, a 2019 unpublished Abacus Data survey of 1,850 Canadians, commissioned by Oceana Canada, found that despite 68 per cent of respondents knowing nothing about right whales, 96 per cent said it was important that the government of Canada protect them.

The poll findings suggest that the disconnect is not about public interest – it’s about translating that into meaningful change.

The gap between knowing and doing has been a throughline of the Entangled series. Over the past year, supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network, The Globe investigated the plight of North Atlantic right whales – drawing on more than 60 scientific studies, government reports and datasets, nearly 50 interviews with scientists, policy makers, fishers and advocates, and records tracking 32 individual whales. The series examined the threats – entanglements, vessel strikes, habitat shifts and ocean noise – and the policies to address them. Now, as the series closes, we return to where we began: the people working to change the outcome.

The Globe spoke to six people – including scientists, educators and rescue organizers – who have taken up action to protect the right whale to understand what compels them and what it will take to close the implementation gap.

1. SEE THE WHALES AS RELATIVES

Bradford Lopes of the Aquinnah Wôpanâak tribe in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., draws on oral traditions that tell of Moshup, a benevolent giant who transformed his children into killer whales to protect them from the harm of settlers.

For Wôpanâak people, right whales aren’t just endangered animals – they’re family.

“It is devastating in a way that I struggle to explain,” Mr. Lopes says. “It’s no different than losing your own family. It’s heartbreaking. Because they’re our cousins.”

Last year, Mr. Lopes held a workshop on the Wôpanâak’s connection to the whales at the North Atlantic Right Whales Consortium, the largest gathering of right whale researchers.

The Wôpanâak have fought to remain in their homelands despite centuries of displacement and cultural erasure. “When I see their story, I see a story that we not only know spiritually, but we know historically.”

The parallel runs deep. “This is something that we’ve experienced with Wôpanâak people in lots of ways. I can relate to that. There’s a very visceral kind of relation there.”

But Mr. Lopes also finds hope in the whales’ persistence. “The other thing I see reflected is their continuance, this fight, this spirit, about not disappearing from their home waters and to hang on.”

As Mr. Lopes told The Globe in April when discussing one of last season’s mothers, Nauset (known under the identification code #2413 in the North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog): “I see these mothers as I see our own mothers. I see our grandmothers, and I see that fight,” he said. “The reason why we’re still here as Wôpanâak people is our women – the strength they’ve had and the fight they’ve had, but also the vision they’ve had.”

This world view – whales as relatives rather than resources – represents what Dr. Moore calls the “only hope” for the species. “There has to be a fundamental change in how we view these animals,” Dr. Moore argues.

2. START YOUNG AND STAY CURIOUS

In the small coastal town of Castine, Maine, middle school science teacher Bill McWeeny posed a simple question to his students in 2004: “How’d you like to help a really big animal?”

“I introduced them to the right whales,” Mr. McWeeny recalls. “And that was that.”

Mr. McWeeny’s teaching philosophy is built on experience rather than textbooks. He brought researchers into the classroom and took his students – who called themselves “The Calvineers” after Calvin (#2223) the right whale – to scientific conferences.

For student Molly McEntee, one of the first Calvineers, the pivotal moment came on a whale-watching trip to the Bay of Fundy in Grade 8.

“We’d already spent two years talking about them and learning about them, and it was just really exciting to see them in real life,” she says.

Dr. McEntee is now a marine biologist studying elephant seals in California.

The Calvineers didn’t just study whales – they took action. “Once we had the facts like Calvin’s mother was killed by a ship, then we could advocate for changing shipping lanes,” Mr. McWeeny says. (Advocacy had worked before: As The Globe reported in June, Transport Canada rerouted Bay of Fundy vessel traffic around the Grand Manan Basin in 2003, marking the first time in International Maritime Organization history that shipping lanes were moved to protect a marine mammal species.)

The students wrote letters to lawmakers, their youth giving them unique power as messengers. “You get a bunch of kids up there who have done their homework, who do not have the agenda that adults have, and they’re saying all the same conservation messages – it just hits different,” Dr. McEntee says.

Twenty years on, the legacy extends far beyond the few students who took up ocean conservation vocations. “This small group of kids at this small school is, over the years, accumulating into a lot of people in the state who really know more about this than most adults,” Dr. McEntee says.

3. UNDERSTAND THAT NEWS MEDIA SHAPES POLICY

As a PhD student at the University of South Carolina, Amadi Afua Sefah-Twerefour initially planned to study how risks to North Atlantic right whales differ across their various habitats, having previously studied oceanography and fisheries in her home country of Ghana, and ocean engineering in South Korea. But as she dug deeper into her research, she realized something crucial was missing.

“If the main risk is from human activities, then there’s a whole new side to this – what compels social change?” she asks. That realization led her to pivot to analyzing how news coverage shapes public understanding and policy response.

“We understand the facts. We are still learning a lot more about the species. But we realize there’s still a disconnect in our efforts and how effective they are,” she says.

Ms. Sefah-Twerefour’s research, the findings of which are not yet published but currently in peer review, scraped tens of thousands of news articles since 2000 about right whales globally, creating a database that tracks volume of coverage, how stories are framed and when they appear relative to key policy decisions.

“Even if there are diverse opinions or people on opposite sides, the media can actually be that connecting agent,” she said, adding that journalism can point to workable solutions.

Coverage that crosses borders (right whales migrate between U.S. calving grounds and Canadian feeding grounds) while rare, is especially important, Ms. Sefah-Twerefour says.

“Even if one country is able to be excellent at protecting the species, it eventually is watered down if the other is not.”

Despite never having seen a right whale, Ms. Sefah-Twerefour can name individual whales such as Punctuation (#1281) and Clipper (#3450), both dead – their stories burned into her memory through repeated news media coverage. One image particularly haunts her: the 2021 calf of Infinity (#3230), struck and killed by a vessel off Florida’s coast in February that year. “I keep seeing the images of that calf with marks across the back.”

4. BEAR WITNESS AND DOCUMENT THE REALITY

Nick Hawkins started as a whalewatching tour guide in his 20s on the Bay of Fundy. Now a conservation filmmaker based in Fredericton, he’s spent nearly a decade developing techniques to safely film right whales – work that resulted in unprecedented footage of a successful disentanglement for Apple TV’s wildlife documentary The Wild Ones, released this year.

The journey began with a moment Mr. Hawkins cannot forget. In 2019, he got a call that a dead whale, Punctuation (#1281), had been towed to a remote beach for necropsy.

“I had never seen a whale like that. Despite being around whales for years, there’s a big difference in seeing it out of the water compared to on the surface.”

Standing next to it, seeing the whale lice still moving, the baleen (the keratin filter-feeding “teeth” in the whale’s mouth), the eye – “it’s like standing next to this completely alien creature.” That encounter changed his perception.

Mr. Hawkins recognized early that “there wasn’t really any highquality footage of North Atlantic

From the ocean to the classroom, and from Atlantic Canada to the U.S. South, these advocates are finding ways to save a species before it vanishes

right whales. They live in remote areas. Underwater isn’t an option [because of permits]. And that was a real problem.” Researchers had so far collected footage, but it did not meet the broadcast standards necessary for reaching broad audiences.

The solution required years of work: buying a boat capable of reaching whales 30 nautical miles offshore, mastering both seamanship and whale behaviour, and lobbying government to acquire species at risk permits in order to document the whales that had never been granted to a filmmaker before. He designed camera systems that could withstand being soaked on a bouncing boat while flying drones and managing audio – all solo. He also became a trained whale disentangler through the Campobello Whale Rescue Team course, a requirement for anyone on the rescue boat.

It took three summers before all conditions aligned – finding the whale (the yearling Athena, then known as #5312), calm seas and a successful rescue.

The danger of disentangling a whale is real. “It’s a scary thing to be that close to an animal that weighs 40 to 80 tonnes, and that animal is distressed and scared, and it does not want you there,” he says.

His drone work proved to have unexpected benefits beyond filming. Flying above the whale, he could tell the rescue team “it’s right there, it’s crossing under the boat, it’s going to port, it’s going to starboard.” This allowed perfect positioning. “It’s a matter of inches. When that whale comes up, you gun the boat in, the cutter reaches [the line] – it’s inches that make the difference.”

Now Mr. Hawkins is helping train others to use drones in rescues. “The drone is one of, if not the most important tool in whale rescue, other than the cutting tool,” he says. But he’s careful about credit: “The real heroes are the whale rescuers. I’ve been an asset to them. It’s one more tool in the tool box.”

5. LEARN TO CO-EXIST – FROM SETTING TRAPS TO SETTING WHALES FREE

When the Atlantic cod fishery collapsed in the early 1990s, Mackie Greene, then only 12, found himself adrift. He had spent his childhood summers fishing the waters around Campobello Island, N.B. “There were a few boats whale watching around here, so I got a little boat and started myself.”

For 26 years, Mr. Greene ran whale-watching tours. On the water, he witnessed something troubling – whales tangled in fishing gear, suffering, with no organized response to help.

Mr. Greene understood better than most that fishermen were not villains in this story. “There’s not a fisherman out there that ever wants to catch a whale,” he says. “He’s losing his gear, he’s losing his catch, he’s going to waste time looking for his gear.

It’s just a nightmare for the fishermen to catch a whale.”

Mr. Greene first encountered whale rescue after he was sent by the province to Cape Cod’s Center for Coastal Studies. But he credits his fishing background most – years of handling rope and reading the water – for preparing him to rescue whales.

In 2002, Mr. Greene and fellow fisherman Joseph (Joe) Howlett co-founded the Campobello Whale Rescue Team at the Canadian Whale Institute as volunteers with minimal government support. Their approach stood out: “Our motto has always been fishermen helping fishermen. We’re not there to condemn the fishermen. We’re there to help them,” says Mr. Greene, now the director of whale rescue at the Canadian Whale Institute.

The emotional rewards made the risks worthwhile: “When you set a whale free, there’s just no feeling like it. I always say it feels like you can jump out of the boat and run home.”

But there was also heartbreak if a rescue attempt fails: “When you don’t get a whale disentangled, it’s that long, quiet ride home.”

In 2017, Mr. Howlett, 59, was fatally struck in the head by a right whale’s tail immediately after freeing the female whale (#4123) from fishing gear. “Joe’s funeral was the biggest funeral Campobello has ever seen,” Mr. Greene remembers. “The church was solid full. Everybody loved Joe.”

After an extensive investigation, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans implemented sweeping safety reforms in 2018. Responders who had been volunteers now receive paid positions and insurance coverage. The department also developed national procedures for federal fishery officers during disentanglement operations and created specialized training for marine mammal response teams.

Today, Mr. Greene is one of only a handful of people in the country who can lead a whale disentanglement. On July 10, 2024, seven years to the day when Mr. Howlett died, the Campobello team successfully disentangled Athena (#5312) in the Gulf of St. Lawrence – the same whale whose rescue Mr. Hawkins filmed.

The responsibility weighs on Mr. Greene, but also fills him with purpose. “These whales are so endangered right now, with just 70 breeding females, every one we can save really makes a big difference,” he says.

6. MEET PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE – AT THE MARINA

At seven years old, Lydia (Liddy) Clever was fed up with the trash littering the beaches of Tybee Island in Chatham County, Ga. Georgia’s easternmost point, Tybee is a popular destination where beachgoers flock to its white sand shores – the same shores that serve as critical habitat for loggerhead sea turtles, manatees and the calving grounds for the North Atlantic right whale.

Liddy repurposed the collected debris from the beach – plastic bags and other trash – into braided bracelets to keep them out of the ocean. But she realized she could help stop the source of trash before it reached the sea by working with schools. She started “Tidy Tuesdays” at her elementary school, where half her class would pick up trash during recess one week, and the other half the next.

That’s when Liddy, now 11 years old, founded her non-profit, Save Sea Life.

“Our mission is to educate kids at a young age to love the ocean so that when they get older, they don’t destroy it,” Liddy says.

In February, 2021, what washed up on Tybee’s shores moved Liddy to expand her mission: a right whale calf, the offspring of Infinity (#3230), struck and killed by a recreational vessel. “That’s when I really started getting into it, because not only big cargo ships are hurting right whales – small boats hurt them too,” she says.

This past year, Liddy and her mother visited roughly half the marinas in and around Savannah, Ga., to survey boaters about their awareness of right whales. “It was really awesome to see how many boaters did know about them,” she says.

But her findings also revealed a dangerous gap: While more boaters than expected had heard of the species, few understood how to identify them or what to do if they encountered one. That knowledge gap is particularly perilous in Georgia and northern Florida – the only known calving grounds for North Atlantic right whales – where mothers and newborns are most vulnerable to vessel strikes.

To help close that gap, Liddy is working with local government to distribute educational flyers when boats are registered – information “to tell them what to look for in the North Atlantic right whale and who to call if they do see one, how to stay away from them,” she says.

Liddy presented her research at this year’s North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium meeting.

Saving a species is a big job, but as Liddy insists, “No act is too small and you’re never too young to make a big difference.”

This story is part of a series produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.

Jamaica rushes to prepare for peak tourism season

Hotels are working on repairs after storm devastated island

This article was written by John Myers, Jr. and was published in the Toronto Star on November 9, 2025.

MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA Jamaica’s peak tourism season is one month away, and officials in the hurricane ravaged nation are rushing to rebuild from the catastrophic Category 5 storm that shredded the island’s western region.

Before Hurricane Melissa hit on Oct. 28, the government expected Jamaica’s tourism industry to grow by seven per cent this winter season and was preparing to welcome an estimated 4.3 million visitors.

Now, officials are scrambling to repair hotels and clear debris in the western half of the island in hopes of securing tourist dollars at a moment when they’re most needed.

“We are still doing our assessments, but most of the damage was in the northwest and southwest,” said Christopher Jarrett, who leads the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association. He noted that the popular Negril area in Westmoreland was spared major damage.

All international airports in Jamaica have reopened and are receiving commercial flights. But almost a week after one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record struck the western end of Jamaica, tourism officials were still trying to get a true picture of the damage to the sector — a mainstay of the island’s economy.

Jarrett said the lobby group that represents private hotels and attractions on the island is still unable to reach many of its members, especially in the western parish of Hanover, as communication and electricity services were down.

“Every individual member who was affected is doing everything to get back up and running,” he said.

In recent days, Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett said he expected Jamaica’s tourism sector to be back to normal by Dec. 15, the start of the island’s peak tourism season.

“It’s doable for some and not for others,” Jarrett said of the timeline, pointing out that the larger hotel chains would be able to recover quicker.

Jarrett, who operates the familyowned Altamont Court Hotel that has properties in Kingston and Montego Bay, said only one property in Montego Bay sustained roof damage and that repairs were underway.

Despite the disruption to the important tourism sector, Jarrett said he doesn’t expect the economic fallout to be significant. He said many hotels in the capital of Kingston and in the northern coastal town of Ocho Rios were gaining business from the influx of aid workers and volunteers in the storm’s aftermath.

“Right now, we’re giving discounts, between 25 per cent and 50 per cent, and some (hotels) are giving complimentary stays as well,” Jarrett said.

Tourism is Jamaica’s main source of foreign exchange earnings, contributing a combined 30 per cent to gross domestic product directly and indirectly. It employs an estimated 175,000 people.

MATIAS DELACROIX/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO Residents walk in Lacovia Tombstone, Jamaica, in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa last month.

Back from the brink, Taiga goes full throttle

“We're seeing tremendous interest from the European market, which is further ahead on electric adoption, but everything will be designed and built here in Canada,” says Taiga Motors CEO Sam Bruneau.

This article was written by Jared Lindzon and was published in the Toronto Star on November 8, 2025.

Through manufacturing challenges and order delays, creditor protection and restructuring, Sam Bruneau says Taiga Motors’ original thesis — that snowmobile and Jet Ski riders want an electric alternative, and that Canada is the best place to build them — hasn’t wavered.

“The product types, the vertical integration, doing it all under one roof and doing it in Canada,” he says. “That has remained the same as our original business plan in 2015.” That year, Bruneau teamed up with Paul Achard and Gabriel Bernatchez — engineering classmates and teammates in extracurricular electric race car design competition McGill Formula Electric — to make that dream a reality.

After designing a prototype electric snowmobile from their shared apartment in Montreal and hauling it around North America in a rented pickup, the cofounders found a market eager for a quieter, safer, more sustainable alternative.

In 2021, Taiga went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that put its value at more than half a billion dollars. In 2022, it began manufacturing electric snowmobiles and personal watercraft from its Montreal facility and, by 2023, the company employed about 300 workers.

But shortly after going public, Taiga began running into rough patches. Bruneau says rising interest rates, supplychain issues and a global chip shortage hobbled the startup as it sought to create and source new parts for a new product category. By 2024, Taiga Motors had laid off all but 70 staff, suspended production and filed for creditor protection, burdening its earliest and most passionate supporters — including employees, investors and depositpaying customers — with financial losses.

“It’s a terrible feeling to disappoint so many who were rallying behind Taiga,” Bruneau says. “The core thesis was working, we were getting there — just a year or a year and a half behind schedule — and that has a huge impact on the financials of companies in the public markets.”

In October 2024, Taiga Motors was thrown a buoy by British electric boat entrepreneur and investor Stewart Wilkinson. Now, Taiga is attempting a comeback, announcing its latest watercraft — the threeseater Orca WX3 — at the Monaco Yacht Club in early September, alongside its entry into the European market.

The Star caught up with Bruneau, who remains Taiga’s CEO and public face, from its Montreal headquarters to understand what went wrong, why he’s so certain the future of leisure crafts is electric, and why the company deserves a second chance.

Did you ride snowmobiles growing up?

We didn’t own a snowmobile, but I did some touring with friends and family. Growing up in Quebec, you tend to spend a lot of time in the snow. I did a lot of skiing as a kid, and through that you see a lot of the friction between outdoor communities.

How so?

We all have the same goal — to enjoy these beautiful outdoor spaces — but the machines are loud, and quite polluting. It’s similar with Jet Skis in the summer. People want to enjoy the water and, unfortunately, the gas ones are extremely loud and can be used in dangerous ways.

Did you pursue an engineering degree to address that tension?

I never really pictured entrepreneurship. I got into engineering because of a passion for sustainable energy. I wanted to do something to protect the environment, but I assumed I would be doing research into fusion energy or something.

How did Taiga come about?

When I started at McGill in 2010, Tesla was just starting to take off and major manufacturers were starting to invest in electric cars, but nobody was working on this space that felt very close to home.

My cofounders and I are all from different parts of Quebec, but all had the same passion for the outdoors and technology. We realized we could do what Tesla did; start with a clean sheet and reinvent the snowmobile as an electric vehicle.

If someone else was already working on it, we probably wouldn’t have done it, but we saw this big problem and knew people wanted a solution.

Is it really that big of a problem for the environment?

Because they are used on a smaller scale, governments impose less stringent regulations.

Cars are required to have catalytic converters, which remove a lot of the nasty byproducts of combustion engines, but snowmobiles and Jet Skis don’t. Their fourstroke engines pollute as much as 40 cars on a perkilometre basis.

For Jet Skis, those particulates and hydrocarbons go straight into the waterways. There might be less of them, but each has a much bigger and more direct environmental impact.

What are the benefits?

The silent operation is a gamechanger for riders and everyone around them. They run about 30 times quieter than gas alternatives at full throttle. That allows you to really enjoy nature; all you hear is wind and water or snow. It feels more like sailing or skiing, and you can enjoy the fresh air without the exhaust smell.

Electric engines offer instant torque, so faster acceleration. It’s also a lot safer, especially for rental providers and tour operators, because you can set specific speed limits, and track where they go.

In 2026, we’re introducing geofencing, which allows for the ability to restrict access or speed in specific areas using GPS. For a family, that means you can control where your teen can ride, and how fast.

In Toronto, there’s been a lot of concern over Jet Skis disrupting local wildlife or getting too close to busy shorelines, so limiting Jet Skis to certain speeds or areas could be gamechanging.

We’re already having discussions with customers about opening restricted waterways to electric vehicles in areas that currently ban personal watercrafts.

What about the downsides?

There are two main ones for all EVs: the upfront cost is about 20 to 30 per cent higher, and there is less range.

On the price side, it becomes costefficient over time. Not only are you not paying for gas, but ownership costs are lower. There are no oil changes, or coolant, or winterization requirements. For fleet owners, you can save upwards of $7,000 across the lifetime of the vehicle, because it’s used every day. For individuals, the total cost of ownership is $3,000 to $4,000 less.

As for range, our watercrafts get about two hours on a full charge. Unlike a car, most riders aren’t worried about the occasional road trip. Longdistance riders are about 10 per cent of the Jet Ski market and 20 to 30 per cent on the snowmobile side. The snowmobiles get about 100 kilometres of range, and with fast chargers becoming more available it’s becoming easier to stop for a quick coffee and charge.

What challenges did the company run into following its 2021 SPAC?

We had just set up production, had a big order book, lots of optimism about the product, getting those first parts from suppliers, and things were looking good.

Then we started having problems, starting with the supplychain crisis. Automakers stopped production because they couldn’t access microchips, and we started getting calls from suppliers saying those companies were taking our shipment because they buy $5 billion, and we were ordering $1 million.

We’re also creating these complex parts for the first time and there’s a high bar for safety and reliability — everything needs to be tested and validated — and it’s hard to pivot. If the market changes, or supply chains collapse, it has a longlasting impact.

The team did everything possible to keep production on track, but there were delays and customers got frustrated, so investors got frustrated. As a public company, that created challenging market dynamics.

Which proved more challenging, the technology or the market?

On paper, the technology is a lot more complicated — there’s a lot of new IP — but on an emotional level, the market. Technology is math, which is predictable; the market is human, which isn’t.

What happens now that you’ve been acquired?

We just launched a new model in Monaco — a more versatile, larger personal watercraft — and we’re still executing that same road map. The core plan hasn’t changed.

We’re currently at 80 employees, and we’re hoping to scale to 150 by the end of next year. We’re a private company once again, just focused on execution. So far, we’ve sold about 1,500 vehicles — about half snow, half watercraft — and we’re aiming for about 200 a month through next year.

We’re seeing tremendous interest from the European market, which is further ahead on electric adoption, but everything will be designed and built here in Canada. We’re also working with a group of companies to leverage our technology in the wider boating space and enable more manufactures to go electric.

What about your initial backers?

The earlystage venture investors understood the risks and while they were disappointed, they remain supportive. Many of them were impact investors, and they’re happy we’re able to continue.

Many of our customers were relieved, too, because they want this in the market. Even though deposits have technically been wiped in the restructuring, we’re going to honour those as best we can.

Taiga has seen extreme highs and lows. Are you now in the middle?

We’re trying to find a road with fewer wild swings. A restructuring is the worst thing you can experience in business, and we’re taking a more cautious approach so we can survive another 10 years.

The reality is that changing an industry takes time, it’s about perseverance and sustainable growth, but we still need to push more aggressively than an established company. We’re trying to do something that no one else is doing, so it’s going to be uncomfortable at times.

“The silent operation is a gamechanger for riders and everyone around them. They run about 30 times quieter than gas alternatives at full throttle. That allows you to really enjoy nature; all you hear is wind and water or snow. It feels more like sailing or skiing, and you can enjoy the fresh air without the exhaust smell.

SAM BRUNEAU CEO TAIGA MOTORS

Swamped town digs its way out

This article was written by Jamey Keaten and was published in the Toronto Star on November 2, 2025.

BLATTEN, SWITZERLAND When a devastating landslide all but swallowed his Swiss village and top pled his threegeneration familyowned hotel in May, Lukas Kalbermatten was overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness before the emotions hit. But he choose not to dwell on them long, and snapped into action to rebuild.

The hotelier’s response sums up a mindset of many of the 300odd residents of Blatten: They could have left their bucolic village in the southern Lötschental valley for dead — but instead decided to try to see it come alive again one day, and are taking steps to rebuild.

Authorities evacuated villagers and livestock, but a 64yearold man was killed as 9 million cubic metres of ice, stone and earth tumbled down from the Kleines Nesthorn peak on May 28. The landslide left a trail about 2 1/2 kilometres wide and 100 metres high in places. It all came down in about a halfminute, coating the valley in plumes of dust. More than 90 per cent of village homes and buildings were destroyed.

“A lot of people were emotional of course, but I didn’t get much too emotional,” Kalbermatten said. “I was really realistic and the emotions, they came later after three or four days.”

Kalbermatten, whose website for his Hotel Edelweiss in Blatten shows it halfsunk in a pea soupgreen pond created by the disaster, joined up with other local families to set up a temporary hotel at the summit of a gondola lift in the neighbouring village of Wiler — one of three villages in the valley where most Blatten residents relocated.

“For tourism in this valley it’s also a catastrophe because we don’t have enough beds for all the tourists,” he said Tuesday. “The most important for us is to do something quickly.”

Laurent Hubert, coowner of the Nest und Bietsch horn hotel and restaurant near Blatten, said that it was “pulverized” last May. His wife, Esther Bellwald, is spearheading the new hotel with Kalbermatten.

“This project is a bit of the light at the end of the tunnel,” Hubert said in kneedeep snow near the con struction site, with crews in short sleeves working fast under sunny skies for a planned Dec. 18 opening of the “Momentum” hotel.

A 30 centimetre dump of snowfall over last weekend gave the valley its white wintertime gleam again.

In recent months, work crews have restored electric ity and telecommunication lines to the Blatten area, and used backhoes to dig a drainage canal.

Blatten, Switzerland, is slowly rebuilding five months after a landslide destroyed the village.

Access restrictions on wooded areas in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick face opposition

This article was written by Sophia Coppolino and was published in the Globe & Mail on August 13, 2025.

**Under Nova Scotia’s Forests Act, the Minister of Natural Resources can restrict travel in any forested area to protect the woods.**

Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are facing opposition and threats of legal action after ordering residents to stay out of wooded areas and threatening hefty fines in an effort to prevent wildfires.

Both provinces banned hiking, camping, fishing and vehicle use in wooded areas, with violators in Nova Scotia facing fines of up to $25,000.

The restrictions have prompted debate among residents and backcountry users, raised concerns about the impact on homeless people, and prompted an advocacy group to threaten a legal challenge. The governments say the restrictions are necessary to stop human activity that can start wildfires in the current stretch of hot and dry weather.

As of Tuesday, Nova Scotia has issued six fines, and New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt said Monday her province has handed out two fines for violating the woods ban. Burn bans are in place across both provinces, carrying fines of $25,000 in Nova Scotia and $140 in New Brunswick.

The fines in Nova Scotia include one levied against Jeff Evely, who intentionally incurred a $28,872.50 fine as a form of protest. He posted a video about it on YouTube.

Mr. Evely, who frequently walks his husky on the forest trails near his Cape Breton home, said he intends to fight the ticket as a violation of his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“There is no logical connection between my sneakers and fire. There’s no fire hazard associated with simply walking in a wooded area,” Mr. Evely said.

“I’m trying to stand on a matter of principle.”

Under Nova Scotia’s Forests Act, the Minister of Natural Resources can put travel restrictions in place in any forested area to protect the woods.

Two constitutional lawyers told The Globe and Mail the main question in a legal challenge of the restrictions would be whether the measures are proportionate to the risk of wildfires.

“The purpose here is pretty clear and fairly compelling – which is important for these kinds of Charter cases – in that it’s a very high fire risk,” said Wayne MacKay, a law professor at Halifax’s Dalhousie University.

“The real debate is: Is it going too far? Is the fine too high?”

The Canadian Constitution Foundation started a petition against Nova Scotia’s woods ban and sent a letter to Premier Tim Houston, saying the province’s decision “arbitrarily infringes” on Charter and Aboriginal treaty rights.

People living, visiting and running businesses in Atlantic Canada are affected by the ban, said Joshua Dehaas, counsel to the foundation. He said his organization is particularly concerned about the restrictions in Nova Scotia because the fines are large and could apply to private property, including guests of residents with wooded areas in their own backyards.

“The big uncertainty is what really counts as woods, because there’s a legal definition,” Mr. Dehaas said. “Halifax has interpreted woods to mean that if there’s a municipal park and it’s got a lot of trees in it, it’s entirely closed. But if there are roads going through that park … that’s no longer forest.”

The Ecology Action Centre in Nova Scotia previously criticized the province as relying on “blunt tools,” and called the woods ban “heavy-handed.” However, the environmental group has since revised its position, calling on the government to devise “a meaningful, evidence-backed and clearly communicated plan to address the climate emergency.”

This is the seventh time Nova Scotia has restricted travel and activities in the woods, most recently in the spring of 2023. With no rain in the forecast, prevention is the best medicine for protecting communities from wildfires, said Scott Tingley, manager of forest protection with the Department of Natural Resources.

In 2023, Canada’s worst wildfire season on record, humans caused 95 per cent or more of wildfires across the Maritime provinces, according to a Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre report. Some human-caused wildfires are arson, but many are accidental, starting as a partially extinguished campfire, cigarette embers or a falling power line.

Parks Canada is following the provinces’ lead, closing national park backcountry and trails “in the interest of visitor and public safety,” spokesperson Martin Bauman said.

Areas outside of the forest, such as front-country campgrounds and beaches, remain open at national parks.

“These measures will be in effect until conditions allow them to be lifted,” Mr. Bauman said.

It’s important for all levels of government to warn the public about the risks during extreme weather events, said Gordon McBean, a climate expert and professor at Western University. The provinces’ woods bans stop people from accidentally starting fires in densely forested regions and protect them from the toll wildfires and smoke have on their physical and mental well-being, he said.

“They’ve got areas of high-level risk based on their science-based analysis, based on the dryness, the temperature, the lack of precipitation of these areas across New Brunswick and Nova Scotia,” Prof. McBean said.

Other Atlantic provinces are taking precautions to prevent wildfires from spreading.

Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador have banned all open fires on public and private property. Last week, Newfoundland Premier John Hogan announced fines for lighting illegal fires that could amount to $50,000 for first-time offenders, while an unpaid fine could result in up to six months’ imprisonment.

Two constitutional lawyers told The Globe and Mail the main question in a legal challenge of the restrictions would be whether the measures are proportionate to the risk of wildfires.

City tries to get ahead of next heat wave

The city launched a $200,000 program last month to give lowincome seniors free portable air conditioners this summer. Nearly 1,500 people applied and 500 were successful after being selected through a random draw.

This article was written by Ben Cohen and was published in the Toronto Star on June 26,0225.

Forty two people were sent to the emergency room in Toronto during the heat wave this week, when temperatures reached life threatening, record setting peaks, according to Toronto Public Health (TPH).

The city and an MPP at Queen’s Park are trying to address the problem by giving out hundreds of free air conditioners and drafting laws that could force landlords to install them. Temperatures may have fallen from Sunday when an alltime humidex high of 46 was recorded at Pearson airport but the city will almost certainly experience heat waves of similar or greater intensity in the future, according to climate experts. They’re already an annual occurrence that a TPH study in 2007 found kills an average of 120 people in the city each year. The health agency hasn’t tracked heat wave deaths since.

Airconditioning is a powerful lifesaving tool during a heat wave. Nearly all deaths from elevated temperatures happen indoors, where heat can accumulate if it isn’t addressed by a cooling system. According to the latest Statistics Canada data from 2021, 287,861 households in Toronto, or 13 per cent of all homes at the time, didn’t have air conditioning.

It’s people living in homes like these, particularly older people, who are most likely to die from the heat, as seen during the B.C. “heat dome” in 2021, which killed more than 600 people.

“Ninetyeight per cent of them died indoors and most were over the age of 70,” said Dr. Samantha Green, a family physician who researches heat. “Those are the folks we need to protect.”

To that end, the city launched a $200,000 program last month to give lowincome seniors free portable air conditioners this summer. Nearly 1,500 people applied and 500 were successful, selected through a random draw. But the initiative didn’t arrive in time to help seniors survive this week’s heat wave. They will be installed next month.

Meanwhile, at Queen’s Park, an NDP MPP is planning to try to force landlords to install indoor cooling in the summer by capping the maximum allowable temperature indoors. It’s a prospect that has been batted around at both the provincial and municipal level for years, and which medical experts say has become an urgent necessity as heat waves intensify.

“We need this law on the books, as soon as we can get it on the books, to protect the most vulnerable people,” said Green. City hall is about halfway through a yearlong study into whether it should pass a similar bylaw. Last year, council also voted to ask the Ford government to legislate it provincially.

NDP MPP Jessica Bell introduced a motion in 2022 that wasn’t successful but she said she will be reintroducing it this fall.

“Air conditioning isn’t just about comfort anymore, it’s about keeping people healthy and alive during heat waves,” she said. “This is a warning to the Conservatives. It isn’t a matter of if, it’s a matter of when Ontario will suffer the extreme heat event like the one British Columbia experienced.”

TESTING THE WATERS

This opinion was written by Dan Rubinstein and was published in the Globe & Mail on June 14, 2025. Dan Rubinstein’s latest book is Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage, from which this essay has been partly adapted.

Dan Rubinstein departs Bluffer’s Park in Scarborough just after dawn on Sept. 13, 2023, the start of the fourth and final leg of his 2,000-kilometre stand-up paddleboarding journey from Ottawa back to Ottawa via Montreal, New York and Toronto. One of the main reasons he embarked on the trip was to meet people.

The aquatic equivalent of green space has received increased attention from researchers who are interested in its impact on our health, as well as the health of the planet, Dan Rubinstein writes

‘Hey! What’s the rush? Take a break! Have a beer.” I’m paddling hard, head down, at the tail end of another sweltering, stormy day of voyaging west along the Erie Canal. The waterside campground I’m aiming for, on the outskirts of Weedsport in upstate New York, is less than a kilometre away. Knackered, all I want is a shower and food, not to hang out with some dude hollering at me from shore.

Looking over my right shoulder, I see a small group on the back of a boat docked at a marina. A man with a big grin is waving me over. Despite what seems like a genuine invitation to join their party, it’s not always wise to approach strangers who may be well into happy hour. But one of the main reasons I embarked on this journey – a 2,000-km circumnavigation from my home in Ottawa back to Ottawa via Montreal, New York and Toronto – was to meet people. So I pivot my paddleboard and beeline to the boat.

Matt Donahue helps me climb aboard and introduces his wife, son and friends. “Where the hell are you going?” he asks, handing me an icy can of beer.

Leaning back on a bench, I provide a précis. I’m a writer and love stand-up paddleboarding (a.k.a. SUP), and I’m curious about the curative properties of “blue space,” about what happens when we spend time in, on, or around water. The aquatic equivalent of green space has received increasing attention in recent years from researchers who are interested in its impact on our psychological and physiological health, as well as the health of the planet. Concerned about these things myself, both the world’s well-being and my own, I hopped on a 14-foot-long inflatable SUP with a couple drybags of camping gear and some notepads and started paddling down the Ottawa River toward Montreal.

That departure took place early in the summer of 2023, which turned out to be one of the hottest ever on the continent (at least for now). Now it’s late July, and nearly two months of immersion journalism, and about 40 self-propelled kilometres every day, are draining my energy and resolve.

But Mr. Donahue and his crew are inquisitive and enthusiastic. They are happy for me. That somebody on an offbeat expedition is passing through their part of the state. There is teasing and laughing, high-fiving and rib-digging. Their joy makes me joyous.

Mr. Donahue gives me another beer for later and we hug. Not awkward, one-armed back-patting. A real hug.

“Where else,” I ponder while paddling away, “do two middleaged men who’ve just met hug like that?”

My obsession with blue space was sparked when I got my first paddleboard a decade ago. I had lived in half a dozen cities across Canada, all on either a river, lake or ocean, but never owned a watercraft of any kind. With a SUP, which can be carried under one arm, or in an oversized backpack if it’s inflatable, I suddenly had intimate access to aquatic environments.

When paddling, I could gaze at shoreline forests or the shimmering horizon, or down into the water at fish and plants, the primordial soup our ancestors clambered out of. When it was hot, it was easy to jump in for a swim. Whether in urban or rural areas, being perched atop a SUP always made me feel better. And while we interact with blue space in individual ways, I’m far from the only person for whom water is an elixir.

The science is clear that being in nature is generally good for our bodies and brains. We tend to be more active and less anxious. Although it’s difficult to differentiate between green and blue spaces, according to Mat White, an environmental psychologist at the University of Vienna and arguably the world’s leading authority on this subject, water seems to uncork a multiplier effect.

Dr. White explores what happens when we do anything (paddle, swim, surf, walk, sit) in, on or near just about any type of water, from vast seas to downtown fountains. After leading several research projects and crunching the data, he believes that blue space has a mostly positive and, compared to other outdoor environments, a more pronounced impact on our mental and physical health.

“The crucial point about that research was that it was the poorest communities and individuals who got the benefits,” Dr. White told me. “If you’re rich, it doesn’t matter how often you spend time in blue space. You’re healthy and happy anyway. But if you’re poor, it matters hugely.”

Water is a double-edged sword, Dr. White cautions. Drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional injury death around the world. Around two billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water. Rising seas, intensifying storms, widespread flooding and water-borne diseases are among the deadliest consequences of global warming, and they tend to displace and kill those with the least capacity to escape or adapt.

These realities notwithstanding, people are happiest in marine and coastal margins, a pair of British environmental economists determined, gathering more than a million pings on their “Mappiness” app. Blue neighbourhoods are “associated with lower psychological distress,” reports a paper out of New Zealand. And taking the sea air – breathing in “bioactive compounds that may originate from marine algae,” in the parlance of Belgian biologist Jana Asselman – appears to give our immune systems a boost.

These settings also offer opportunities for social interaction, suggests a Scottish literature review, kindling “a sense of community [and] mutual support between people.” Moreover, hanging out in blue space promotes “pro-environmental behavior,” especially among children. In other words, we pay more attention to others and take better care of the planet.

To decipher the mechanisms at play, I contacted another environmental psychologist, Jenny Roe at the University of Virginia. Blue space triggers our parasympathetic nervous system, Dr. Roe said to me before I left home, which basically tells the brain what our bodies are doing and then acts like a brake, dampening the stress response. Water can instill a sense of being away and boundless possibilities, she added, yet also a feeling of compatibility with our location, of comfort and belonging.

Evolutionarily, this makes sense. Our bodies are mostly water and, like all living things, we need it to survive. Even looking at a creek or pool is enough to lower blood pressure and heart rates, a pair of University of California, Davis, psychology researchers concluded, attributing this link, in part, to our forebears successfully detecting drinking water in arid environments.

I was thirsty throughout my trip. Lukewarm electrolytes don’t cut in when you’re paddling for hours in hot, humid conditions. But the kindness of strangers kept me hydrated.

People in boats and on shore offered me cold water and sports drinks; they shared snacks, stories, local intel about guerrilla campsites and, on several occasions, let me tent on their lawns. Poor and rich and every socioeconomic status in between, Black and brown and white and every blended colour on the spectrum, they welcomed me and looked out for me.

The interviews I had set up in advance were validating my holistic health thesis: in Kahnawake, Que., a Mohawk reserve near Montreal, I saw young leaders reestablishing their community’s relationship to the river decades after the St. Lawrence Seaway was bulldozed through their front yard; I met kayakers on the Lower Hudson whose non-profits fight for free access to the river, so everybody can take advantage of its healing power. But it was serendipitous encounters that buoyed me the most. And even academics like Howard University’s Lemir Teron affirmed that despite long histories of injustice, waterways such as the Erie Canal hold promise as public realms where a cross-section of people can gather.

Why does blue space seem to encourage connections between strangers? There’s no peer-reviewed paper on this topic, but I think it’s because of the impact of aquatic places on our well-being, coupled with a latent danger that compels us to watch out for one another, and the fact that we tend to slow down around water, creating opportunities for face-toface conversation.

Much of my paddle took place in upstate New York, which leans Republican. One muggy morning on the Erie Canal, I pull over and chat with a man sitting on a staircase that descends into the water, feet submerged, below his Trump-flag-adorned RV.

We discuss whether the dark clouds gathering to the northeast will blow this way. He thinks I’ll be fine.

Soon, I’m out of sight upriver and it’s pouring, but there’s no thunder and the rain feels like the best kind of shower. Had lightning struck, my new friend would probably have granted me refuge.

Our bodies are mostly water and, like all living things, we need it to survive. Even looking at a creek or pool is enough to lower blood pressure and heart rates, a pair of University of California, Davis, psychology researchers concluded, attributing this link, in part, to our forebears successfully detecting drinking water in arid environments.

Studying a glacier before it’s gone

This article was written by Sarah Palmer and was published in the Globe & Mail on February 27, 2025.

**Guests taking part in the Tread Lightly tour peer into a crevasse.**

A new type of tourism mixes science and traditional knowledge atop a vanishing landmark

As glaciers disappear, tourists want to experience these receding ice masses

The first steps onto a glacier can feel like you’re on another planet. Some people compare it to being on the moon or Mars, likely because of the look of the surrounding rocks and glacial silt. The air is as fresh as you might expect from a mountain range but on Alberta’s Athabasca Glacier, you can still catch a whiff of diesel fuel from the giant tour buses that escort tourists up and down each day.

As features of our planet disappear – think coral reefs, rain forests or glaciers – tourists have begun to get curious about experiencing these last-chance wonders.

Located in the Rocky Mountains, the Athabasca Glacier recedes approximately five metres every year and is expected to disappear entirely by 2100. Traditionally, tours shuttled guests onto the ice on diesel buses. But recently, smaller outfitters have begun to take a new approach, one that considers the climate crisis.

Max Darrah, owner of Rockaboo Mountain Adventures, created the Tread Lightly Glacier Hike, which he describes as “the world’s first net-zero daily glacial monitoring program involving park visitors.” Through his tours he encourages visitors to deepen their connection to the land.

One of the ways he does this is asking them to help out with collecting research data. When guests hike to the ice mass, they also take daily measurements of the incoming and reflected solar radiation on the glacier, as well as surface ice loss.

“There’s something powerful about being able to hold this field book and to see all these entries and know every one of those entries was done because somebody chose to join our hike,” says Mr. Darrah.

The data they gather are then shared with scientists around the country. An Decorte, from Belgium, took part in a Rockaboo hike and described the experience of learning about the glacier’s history and future as “both humbling and awe-inspiring.”

Nlaka’pamux guide Tim Patterson, owner of Zuc’min Guiding, also runs an eco-friendly operation. Mr. Patterson’s mission is to be respectful to the glacier, while introducing visitors to an Indigenous perspective.

He wants to remind people that Indigenous culture and knowledge is alive, present and thriving in everyday life. “What I do and what my guides do is no different than what our people did historically in how we observe and navigate the terrain. Our mountain knowledge and our Indigenous culture continues here.”

While on the tour, Mr. Patterson offers observations on how much the ice has receded, the different moraines of the glaciated landscape and the process of how glaciers are made. “Every time I come onto the glacier, I’m shocked at how much it’s changed,” he says. His aim isn’t to reverse climate change directly, but to open people’s eyes to the power and beauty of the land.

“As long as one person on my trip understands and is able to learn and influence from their own power, then I’ve done something meaningful.”

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