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A defrocked Catholic priest has been found guilty of raping dozens of children and a sled dog in the Canadian Arctic, where he worked as a missionary for decades. The Belgian-born Eric Dejaeger, 67, was on Friday convicted of 31 counts of sexual offences against children and one count of bestiality. At the start of his trial last November in Iqaluit, the capital of Canada's northernmost Nunavut territory, Dejaeger acknowledged and pleaded guilty to eight out of 80 original charges.

Do you remember Occupy Wall Street and its many imitators across North America? It was three years ago next week that the movement went public and eventually set up tent cities across the continent. People camped out in parks, they held marches and meetings and demanded change. They demanded the one percenters pay their fair share. It was supposedly a grassroots reaction to the bailout of big business, the fat cats that run the banks. But of course we know those bailouts happened in 2007 and 2008 and Occupy, some might say the left's answer to the Tea Party, didn't...

Headline only, just breaking. Doug Ford to run for mayor, other reports indicate that Rob will run for Council.

U.S. Border Patrol agents slapped a $5,000 fine on an American citizen this week for slipping into the United States from Canada on a mountain bike, the agency announced Wednesday.

Rob Ford, the controversial mayor of Toronto who became an international celebrity last year after acknowledging using crack cocaine in a “drunken stupor,” is believed to have a tumor in his abdomen, health officials said. Dr. Rueben Devlin from Humber Regional Hospital said Wednesday night that Ford had been complaining of abdominal pains and that an examination has resulted in a working diagnosis of a tumor. He said Ford had been suffering from stomach pains for at least three months and they had worsened in the last 24 hours. “It became unbearable for him,” he said. …

One of two British explorer ships that vanished in the Arctic nearly 170 years ago during a search for the fabled Northwest Passage has been found, Canada's prime minister announced Tuesday in a discovery that could unlock one of history's biggest mysteries and swell Canadian pride. Last seen in the 1840s while under the command Sir John Franklin, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror have long been among the most sought-after prizes in marine archaeology and the subject of songs, poems and novels. Harper said the discovery would shed light on what happened to Franklin's crew. Franklin and 128 hand-picked officers...

'One of two British explorer ships that vanished in the Arctic more than 160 years ago has been found, Canada's prime minister says. Stephen Harper said it was unclear which ship had been found, but photo evidence confirmed it was one of them. Sir John Franklin led the two ships and 129 men in 1845 to chart the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. The expedition's disappearance shortly after became one of the great mysteries of the age of Victorian exploration. The Canadian government began searching for Franklin's ships in 2008 as part of a strategy to assert Canada's sovereignty...

A woman has been arrested and charged with the sexual assault of a man after an alleged break-in of a home in downtown Toronto early Saturday morning. Police say the woman entered a home in the Dundas Street West-McCaul Street area through an unlocked door at about 3 a.m. Saturday morning and then confronted the tenants of the home with pepper spray. The woman then sexually assaulted a man, police said in a brief statement. The woman was arrested later Saturday.

The ship was circled by one surveillance plane and two fighter jets, according to the defence minister's office. The frigate HMCS Toronto left Halifax in late July to replace HMCS Regina, which has been a part of the Standing NATO Maritime Forces since May. "Canada and its allies are involved in security measures taken by the acts of military aggression perpetrated by the Putin regime and because of the invasion of Ukraine," he said, calling on Russia to stop its "irresponsible actions." This ship has about 250 crew on board and is participating in Operation Reassurance

Sources say three Russian aircraft flew low over HMCS Toronto on Sunday. Two of the Russian planes were SU-24 fighter jets and the third was a slower AN-26 surveillance aircraft, a source said. “We expect this,” the military source said. “They’re going to play cat and mouse with us for as long as we’re there.” At least one of the Russian planes came within 300 metres of HMCS Toronto, a government source said.

A new one from James O’Keefe and Project Veritas, whose “Bin Laden crosses the Rio Grande” video a few weeks ago got the Texas Department of Public Safety to perk up. This time he’s on the northern border, noting that ISIS fighters with British passports can enter Canada without a visa. True, but they can enter the U.S. without a visa too. The only reason for a jihadi to take the long route via Lake Erie would be if he thought he’d have a better shot at infiltrating North America through a Canadian point of entry than an American...

Though Canada's political centre of gravity of gravity has shifted westward in recent times - the country's conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, though Toronto-born, represents a constituency in resource-rich Alberta - this trend has not sparked a separatist revival. Paradoxically, the two referenda were held when two pro-Canada Quebecers, Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien, were Prime Minister. A key difference between Scotland and Quebec is the simplicity of the six-word question posed in the referendum: "Should Scotland be an independent country?" In 1995, Quebecers faced a 43-word question that many voters found incomprehensible. In 1980, it ran to a riddle-like...

The Conservatives are pointing out that Cartier was a “Bleu,” hoping to remind Quebeckers that their party is at the heart of the constitutional deal that protected the province’s francophone culture. “He was a key player in the movement towards the Quebec Conference and Confederation. He promoted the rights of French Canadians, championed provincial rights, reformed the legal and public education systems in Canada East (Québec) and encouraged the expansion of the national railway,” said Carl Vallée, a spokesman for Mr. Harper. Emboldened by the defeat of the Parti Québécois in the recent provincial election, the Prime Minister has embarked...

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard took advantage of a public appearance with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to repeat his wish for the province to sign the Constitution. Couillard said he wants Quebec to sign on by 2017, the 150th anniversary of Confederation. The premier made the comments Saturday during a Quebec City speech, at an event commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir George-Etienne Cartier, a French-Canadian statesman viewed as one of the Fathers of Confederation. Cartier’s vision for a united Canada that incorporates “a strong Quebec identity” could serve as an inspiration in future talks, Couillard said

Language/violence warning. Surprised this is Wal-Mart. Canada no less.

Jeremy McNaughton won’t quickly forget his encounter with a rogue beaver that attacked him off the shores of Nova Scotia. The 23-year-old Halifax man was snorkelling in Spanish Ship Bay, near Sherbrooke, with a couple of friends, when one of them looked down and noticed an animal of generous proportions with reddish-brown fur following them. “I thought it must be a seal,” said Paul Skerry, who was in the water with McNaughton, due to the sheer size of the creature, which he estimates weighed nearly 50 pounds. Never suspecting its true identity, considering beavers live exclusively in freshwater, Skerry couldn’t...

Canada's WSP Global Inc (WSP.TO) said it would buy Balfour Beatty Plc's (BALF.L) U.S. professional services division, Parsons Brinckerhoff, for an enterprise value of about $1.24 billion (about 692 million pounds), to increase its footprint in the U.S. transportation segment.

Introduction Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced the deployment of several dozen members of the Canadian Armed Forces to Iraq. Upon receipt of final consent from Iraq, they will join the U.S. in advising the Government of Iraq on how to enable security forces in the northern part of the country to be more effective against the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This will contribute to protecting Iraqi citizens being persecuted by ISIL and help prevent any further escalation of the humanitarian crisis being caused by those fleeing the terrorist group. More specifically,...

The merger of U.S. hamburger giant Burger King with Tim Hortons, Canada’s favorite coffee shop, will create the world’s third largest fast-food company, with a total of 18,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. It is also a piercing wake-up call for the U.S., because the new company will make its global headquarters in Canada’s province of Ontario. That underscores what savvy businesses everywhere have learned — the U.S. is an increasingly less attractive place to do business. “Canada has quietly and politely become, well, more American than America,” says columnist Stephen Green. Since 2003, more than 35 major U.S. companies...

An online fundraising project to publish new LGBTQ2S picture books for children aged 4-8, with the hope of having the books picked up by schools, has recently met its fundraising target.  693 backers pledged a combined $56,793 to the project, called the “Flamingo Rampant Book Club.”  The fundraising goal was $49,000. The books will “celebrate a great and wide variety of LGBTQ2S kids, families, and communities,” according to the description of the project.  The books will also “celebrate gender-independent kids and adults.” The individual behind the project is S. Bear Bergman.  Given that his same-sex spouse, who goes by the...