Free Republic

Santa wasn’t the only guest of honour at this Vancouver Island Christmas parade. One man in the Comox Valley decided to turn a widely publicized newspaper typo into reality by showing up to the downtown Courtenay Christmas parade dressed up as Satan.

The teen suspects who were wanted for three murders in Canada confessed to their crimes and said they planned to kill more people in a video recorded not long before the two died by suicide, police said. Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, showed "no remorse for their actions" and expressed "their intentions to potentially kill others" in the video, which was found on a digital camera, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Assistant Commissioner Kevin Hackett said at a press conference Friday. The bodies of McLeod and Schmegelsky were found Aug. 7 in the province of Manitoba. They were the...

Dan Anderson was lying on the forest floor when he regained consciousness. He had no idea how much time had passed. Had it been a couple of hours or a full day? His last memory was of falling about 50 feet from a large tree. “This is a lot farther than I expected,” he remembered thinking as he had accelerated toward the ground. Dan tried to get up but his legs wouldn’t work, and hot searing pain coursed through his pelvis. Feeling an “indentation” in his back, he knew he had broken it.

Several gondola cars came crashing to the ground early Saturday in British Columbia after someone apparently cut the cable, according to Canadian officials. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said in a news release that employees at the Sea to Sky Gondola noticed a cable down and saw several gondolas on the ground around 7:00 a.m. After an initial assessment of the situation by employees, the RCMP was contacted and are currently treating the incident as "criminal in nature." The popular sightseeing attraction is located in Squamish, British Columbia, about 40 miles north of Vancouver. The attraction gives guests a...

What appears to be a human foot inside a boot washed up on Jetty Island in Everett, according to police. Beachgoers in Everett discovered what appears to be a human foot on New Year’s Day, authorities say. The callers reached 911 just after 2 p.m. Tuesday to report finding a foot inside a boot on the south end of Jetty Island, according to the Everett Police Department. Police saw “what appears to be a human foot inside a boot,” but the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office will determine whether the foot is human and will try to determine an identity,...

When a group of TNR (trap-neuter-return) rescuers from British Columbia, Canada found an emaciated old cat, they knew they had to save him. TinyKittensMason the cat was spotted two years ago as an injured feral cat from a cat colony. Rescuers from TinyKittens, a rescue group based in Fort Langley, British Columbia, trapped him and brought him to the vet. They discovered that he had terminal illness but refused to give up. "A surprise diagnosis of advanced terminal kidney disease meant we couldn't return this fierce warrior to his home in the wild due to daily medical and feeding...

Bill and Hillary Clinton are going on tour. The Clintons announced on Monday that they would headline a series of live events together -- billed "An Evening with The Clintons" -- across the country in the final weeks of 2018 and into 2019. The tour will provide the Democratic stalwarts with a notable platform weeks after the consequential 2018 midterm elections and deep into 2019, when a number of Democrats will be jockeying for positions in the fight to be the party's standard bearer against President Donald Trump in 2020. The events, which are being produced by tour promoter Live...

Retailers say they are OK with new trade rules that will allow Canadians to buy more from the United States duty free — because dire alternatives that would have been worse never came to pass. One aspect of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement announced over the weekend is an increase in the so-called de minimis threshold for duty-free shopping — the amount that Canadians can buy from a store in the U.S. and import to Canada without having to pay a duty. Under the old rules, Canada's limit was $20. That's much less than what the U.S. allows, a discrepancy that...

"...It was no surprise that Gov. Jay Inslee was promising the state would take the feds to court over a proposed change in the Clean Power Plan rules regarding coal-burning generating facilities. "...The real surprise was one of Inslee’s reasons for challenging the proposed rule to allow states more control over emissions from coal-burning power plants, a reason that suggests either an unfamiliarity with geography or meteorology. (1st money quote - from the village idiot): "...“We’re breathing smoke from Mississippi,” he told reporters. “We’re breathing smoke from the rest of the United States.” "...Weather patterns generally go from west to...

The fires raging in British Columbia aren't just confined to the province: a NASA satellite captured the smoke as it blanketed the skies over Alberta and Saskatchewan earlier this week. There are nearly 600 fires burning across B.C. which is in its third day of a province-wide state of emergency. Between Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon 36 new fires started, mostly sparked by lightning. NASA used two satellites to image the smoke: the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS on its Suomi NPP satellite and the DSCOVR satellite that launched in 2015. Smoke from the fires rises high into...

Three members of a YouTube travel blogging collective have died after falling over a waterfall in Canada. Ryker Gamble, Alexey Lyakh and Megan Scraper were part of High On Life, who post videos of their travel adventures.The group said: "They were three of the warmest, kindest and most driven and outgoing people you could ever meet."Police said the trio were swimming at the top of Shannon Falls in British Columbia on Tuesday when they "slipped and fell into a pool 30m (98ft) below".Other members of the group, who have 1.1 million followers on Instagram and more than 500,000 YouTube subscribers,...

Two leaders of a fundamentalist group who between them have 29 wives and 160 children were sentenced to house arrest on Tuesday after being convicted of polygamy. Winston Blackmore, 61, was found guilty last year of having 24 wives while James Oler, 53, was found guilty of having five wives. Blackmore has 149 kids, the Star Vancouver reported. Blackmore's six-month conditional sentence, to be served under house arrest, allows him to go to work and deal with medical emergencies. Oler's term is three months of house arrest. Both face 12 months of probation. Blackmore was also ordered to perform 150...

"Supreme Court of Canada says 7-2 decision will ensure open access for LGBT students" A B.C.-based evangelical Christian university has lost its legal battle over accreditation for a planned new law school, with a Supreme Court of Canada ruling today saying it's "proportionate and reasonable" to limit religious rights in order to ensure open access for LGBT students. In a pair of 7-2 rulings, the majority of justices found the law societies of British Columbia and Ontario have the power to refuse accreditation based on Trinity Western University's so-called community covenant. The mandatory covenant binds students to a strict code...

The Supreme Court of Canada will deliver a landmark ruling Friday in a closely-watched case that weighs religious freedom against LGBT rights. The judgment effectively could determine whether Trinity Western University (TWU) — a private, evangelical Christian post-secondary institution — can operate a law school at its Langley, B.C. campus. Law societies in B.C., Nova Scotia and Ontario have refused to accredit Trinity's program, arguing that the school's "community covenant" — which requires students to abstain from sex outside heterosexual marriage — discriminates against LGBT people. In B.C. and Nova Scotia, the courts have sided with TWU, ruling the university...

<p>A woman could be facing charges after an irate confrontation at a Langley Tim Hortons Monday ended in feces being thrown at staff.</p> <p>On Wednesday, surveillance video showing Tim Hortons staff being harassed was posted on Liveleak and YouTube.</p> <p>In the video, which has no sound, a woman can be seen screaming at staff before squatting on the floor and relieving herself. She then picks up the excrement and throws it at staff.</p>

The mystery has haunted Canadians for more than a decade: One by one, human feet clad in running shoes have floated ashore on British Columbia’s southern coast with gruesome regularity.Last weekend, foot No. 14 was discovered by a man strolling on a beach on Gabriola Island, a sleepy and picturesque enclave, population 4,000, that is known for its captivating sandstone and close-knit artistic community.This time, the foot, squeezed between a pile of logs, wore what appeared to be a hiking boot, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The 13 feet found previously along the coast since 2007 were in...

A man walking his dog on a British Columbia beach this week made a grisly discovery: A foot in a shoe, along with part of a lower leg. Adding to the mystery is that it is the 13th foot to wash up on the Canadian province's coastline over the past decade. "Our early analysis suggests these are human remains and we will do further investigation and testing ... in the coming weeks," said Andy Watson, a spokesman for the BC Coroners Service, about the Thursday discovery. The remains included a tibia and fibula. The Coroners Service said all previous 12...

A new settlement has been discovered by researchers from the Hakai Institute, University of Victoria and local First Nations members, and it changes everything scientists thought they knew about early civilization in North America. The 14,000-year-old village contains artifacts that date all the way back to the Ice Age and is believed to be one of the oldest human settlements ever uncovered in North America. It’s even suspected to be older than the Giza pyramids! As IFL Science reports, the discovery lines up with the oral history of the Heiltsuk Nation. For generations, stories have been handed down that tell...

Flashback: First FISA Request on Trump Tower Came After Clinton and AG Lynch Met Privately on Tarmac Was it coincidence or an indication of things to come? The pieces to Obamagate are falling together. On June 27th of 2016, Bill Clinton met secretly with Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. A week later FBI Director James Comey laid out in a press conference the many scandalous activities taken by Hillary Clinton while she was President Obama’s Secretary of State and then he said the famous words: "Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would...

A trade school in Canada which banned Israeli applicants due to Israel’s alleged “illegal settlement activity” rescinded the ban on Tuesday following an intervention by B’nai Brith Canada and members of the Canadian Jewish community. Stav Daron, an Israeli engineering student and amateur carpenter, had hoped to take a course at the Island School of Building Arts (ISBA), located on Gabriola Island in the province of British Columbia. However, when he tried to confirm his registration in January, he was told via email that, “Due to the conflict and illegal settlement activity in the region, we are not accepting applications...