Thursday is the pick of the week — sunny and 22°C — and then the weekend stacks up in a hurry: mountain bikes in Trowbridge Forest, Wake the Giant taking over the waterfront, and Red River Road closed for a farmers market. ⛅ Showers are in the forecast Friday through Sunday, so check with the organizer before anything outdoors.

Thursday, September 10

Friday, September 11

Saturday, September 12

Sunday, September 13

✅ NO WEATHER ALERTS IN EFFECT

Environment Canada had no watches or warnings posted for Thunder Bay as of Wednesday evening. Tonight's west wind — gusting to 70 km/h earlier — eases off around midnight, and Thursday itself looks quiet.

☀️ Thursday, September 10 — Thunder Bay

Overnight low 12°C

Sunny to start, turning to a mix of sun and cloud near noon. Clear overnight. UV index 5, moderate — worth a hat. Sunrise 7:25 a.m., sunset 8:23 p.m.

Every winter, the same complaint: the grader goes past and leaves a wall of packed snow across the driveway you just finished shovelling. On Tuesday the Quality of Life Standing Committee asked city staff to go and price out a fix.

Snow gates are attachments that hold snow back while the equipment passes a driveway. Fitting the city's full complement of graders would run about $6.57 million up front, plus roughly $1.53 million a year to operate — around $25,000 per gate, before lifecycle and replacement costs. Coun. Andrew Foulds tabled the referral after staff warned the gates also mean more equipment, more staffing and more maintenance, and said he would rather see a phased pilot than one enormous purchase.

Coun. Greg Johnsen floated starting with three gates in the north and three in the south. Roads manager Ian Spoljarich said that could work, and agreed rural roads are a better test than narrow inner-city streets with on-street parking and obstacles to steer around. Kayla Dixon, commissioner of infrastructure and operations, noted the obvious catch: with more than 30,000 driveways in the city, a partial rollout means some neighbourhoods get the gates and others watch. The referral passed unanimously — but administration won't report back until the summer of 2027.

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🗳️ Your call: $6.6 million up front, $1.5 million a year, and no report back until the summer of 2027. Where should this one land?

Halfway through the year, the city is spending less and taking in more than it planned. Staff now expect to close 2026 roughly $4.6 million to the good — $3.5 million on the tax-supported side, $1.1 million in water and wastewater.

City treasurer Keri Greaves went out of his way not to celebrate it. A surplus beats a deficit, he told the finance and administration committee, but a big one “means that we've over-levied the community, so we don't want to do that.” At 1.4 per cent of the tax levy, he called this one reasonable; anything under three per cent, in his view, is fine.

Where it came from is the part worth reading twice. About $1 million in unbudgeted investment income and casino revenue sharing. Another $1.1 million or so from Provincial Offences Act fines, thanks to several “unusually large” ones. And millions in wages never paid out, because the city cannot fill the jobs — including about $400,000 at the Thunder Bay Police Service. Coun. Michael Zussino, scanning the vacancy list, asked the question out loud: at what point do you decide you're just not hiring that position? Greaves noted the work often still gets done, by contractors and consultants, at a higher price. Whatever is left at year end goes to the stabilization reserve.

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Neskantaga First Nation sits 430 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. In early August the community evacuated after a sewage backup contaminated its nursing station — the second evacuation of the summer, after July's wildfire smoke, and not the first in recent years. Nearly 260 people have been living in Toronto hotels since, and this week moved into one they will occupy on their own.

Chief Gary Quisess told Newswatch that chief and council have arranged for JK-8 classes to start Monday, Sept. 14, inside that hotel, taught by Neskantaga's own teachers, with Matawa First Nations, Indigenous Services Canada and the provincial education ministry helping to set it up. He has written to Indigenous Services asking for desks, chairs and the rest. Roughly 90 children are waiting.

“They're not happy right now, because they know the school year has started and they want to attend classes,” he said. A hotel is not the Neskantaga Education Centre, he allowed — but it is school. He expects another month or two in Toronto while the clinic is remediated, and when the community does go home, the band administration building will stand in as the nursing station.

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Beginning this school year, the Northwest Black Collective will hand out six scholarships of $1,000 each — one to a Black graduating student from each of Hammarskjold, Westgate, Superior CVI, St. Ignatius, St. Patrick and La Vérendrye.

President Dr. Kristen Kowlessar-Huffman said the timing is deliberate. “We've been witnessing steady cuts to education across the board, and post-secondary education is among the many things that are becoming more and more difficult for people to access,” she said in a release, adding that a systemic lack of investment in Black communities compounds it.

The choice to fund one award per school rather than a single bigger prize was also on purpose: support hasn't kept pace with the city's growing Black population, and rather than have every Black student in Thunder Bay compete for one cheque, the collective wanted to “share things out more equitably.” Children's Centre Thunder Bay made it possible, passing along funding it secured from Ontario Health. Criteria are expected within the week.

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Featured Bakery: Sweet North Bakery

Overview

It started with a pretzel. In 2013 a local brewery asked Erinn DeLorenzi whether she could bake pretzels for its first anniversary party; they went over well enough that she was pushed to sell them at the Thunder Bay Country Market. Salted and cinnamon pretzels turned into scones and cookies, and in November 2014 Erinn and her husband Kris opened Sweet North Bakery in downtown Port Arthur — a cafe doing soup, salad and sandwiches alongside the baking.

Both were born and raised here. Kris cooked his way through North America, Europe, Central America and Australia and brings those flavours into the kitchen; Erinn is family-trained and still uses the recipes her mother and grandparents baked from. Twelve years on it's three locations, and the stated rule hasn't moved: whole-food ingredients, regional flavours, and nothing artificial — no fake flavours, no preservatives.

Highlights

Ambiance & Experience

Three rooms, three different errands. The Fort William Road shop is the one with a drive-through and tables, for the mornings you are not getting out of the car. High Street is a pickup counter with no indoor seating — in and out with a bag. And the newest one sits inside Indigo Books on Memorial, which is a dangerous combination if you like both books and cinnamon.

Location & Contact

Operating Hours

Final Twist

A bakery that exists because somebody said yes to a one-off tray of pretzels is a fairly Thunder Bay origin story. Twelve years and three counters later, the pretzels are still the thing to order.

Visit Sweet North Bakery →

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