One summer series takes its final bow tonight, then the blues move into the ballpark for two days and the Fort fills up for the weekend. ✅ Outdoor events can shift on short notice — confirm with the organizer before you head out, especially Friday and Saturday with showers in the forecast.

Thursday, August 20

Friday, August 21

Saturday, August 22

Sunday, August 23

Monday, August 24

✅ NO WEATHER ALERTS IN EFFECT

Environment Canada had no watches or warnings posted for Thunder Bay as of Wednesday evening. As of 12:01 a.m. today the province's Restricted Fire Zone is lifted and Thunder Bay's own fire ban comes off with it — in the city, fires are allowed between 5 p.m. and midnight, with a permit, at least two metres from anything combustible. Other municipalities set their own rules, so check the province's outdoor fire rules and your local fire department first. Latest alerts at Environment Canada.

🌥️ Thursday, August 20 — Thunder Bay

Overnight low 12°C

Mainly cloudy · 30% chance of showers · Humidex 25 · UV 6 (high)

As of 12:01 a.m. today, the Ministry of Natural Resources has revoked the Restricted Fire Zone that has covered northwestern Ontario since July 15 — the blanket ban on open-air burning, campfires included. Thunder Bay drops its own municipal fire ban at the same time. In the city that means fires between 5 p.m. and midnight, with a permit, kept at least two metres from anything combustible. “Each municipality has the authority through the fire chief to have a fire ban whenever they choose,” said Kevin Anderson, division chief of fire prevention at Thunder Bay Fire Rescue — the city usually aligns with the MNR, but other communities may not, so check locally before you strike a match. At 9 a.m. the evacuation and implementation orders around the Thunder Bay 36 and 56 and Dryden 34 and 35 fires also come off: roads and lakes in that area reopen, and more than 600 evacuees from Whitesand First Nation and Armstrong can finally go home. OPP will have extra presence on Highway 527 for the drive back. About 110 fires are still burning provincewide, seven of them not under control, and Anderson's reminder is worth keeping in your pocket: the wildfire season doesn't end until Oct. 31.

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The stretch of Victoria Avenue that disappeared under Victoriaville Centre in the 1970s is set to reopen to traffic this fall — the first vehicles through it in nearly 50 years. With the mall down, reopening the closed-off sections of Victoria and Syndicate to cars and pedestrians is the centre of the city's Reimagine Victoriaville plan, with new public plazas and landscaping to follow after the street work. TBT News has video from the site.

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🗳️ Your call: the street is coming back — but the block around it is still a blank page.

Fifty-five local Workplace Safety and Insurance Board staff were told Wednesday morning their jobs have been declared redundant, according to the Ontario Compensation Employees Union — part of 466 notices handed out across the province at 10 a.m. that day. “It came as a complete shock,” said union president Harry Goslin, who says more than 180 of those land in Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay and Timmins while the board opens three new locations in the Greater Toronto Area: “a complete turn-your-back on the northern communities.” The WSIB says it is modernizing how it delivers service and has made “the difficult business decision to consolidate some claim and account management functions,” that it still serves Thunder Bay, works with 91 local health-care providers and keeps a local in-person return-to-work team. It would not confirm a number. The Thunder Bay office has had no walk-in service since 2020 and its lease expired in 2023; staff work from home. Steve Mantis of the Thunder Bay and District Injured Workers Support Group — who pushed for a local office back in the 1980s — says the concern is the same one they had then: decisions made in Toronto by people who “know nothing about the situation here.”

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Volunteers at the Northwestern Ontario Women's Centre packed the 100,000th Good Food Box on Wednesday — a program that has been getting affordable fresh produce onto Thunder Bay tables since 2005. It moves roughly 650 boxes a month through about 40 pickup locations across the city and region, built first for people on low or fixed incomes, though executive director Katie Bortolin says rising food prices keep widening who needs one. She called the milestone a double-edged sword: not proof that food insecurity is solved, but proof that more than 200 volunteers show up every single month to pack. A dozen of this week's came from Tbaytel, along with a $7,700 contribution. “To feed each other, we need each other,” Bortolin said.

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The Growing Season opened on Algoma Street in the fall of 2009, after four local women went in together on a straightforward idea: a place where the community could sit down to fresh, healthy food and drinks without it costing a fortune. Seventeen summers later it is still doing exactly that — wraps, salads, soups and a juice bar, made from scratch, with local seasonal produce carried whenever it is available.

Small, plant-filled and unhurried — a corner spot where the line moves but the room still feels calm. It is a Bay & Algoma regular's lunch, and one of the easiest places in town to feed a group where everybody eats differently.

If your idea of a good lunch involves something green, something warm and something bright in a glass, this is your corner of town.

Visit The Growing Season →

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