Sunday starts early with a run around Boulevard Lake and ends with a harvest market that shuts down a stretch of Red River Road. After that the week settles in: classic cars at the Dawson Diner on Monday, council's last meeting before the election on Tuesday, and a Thursday worth getting a babysitter for.

Sunday, September 13

Monday, September 14

Tuesday, September 15

Wednesday, September 16

Thursday, September 17

✅ NO WEATHER ALERTS IN EFFECT

Environment Canada had no watches or warnings posted for Thunder Bay as of Saturday evening. The wind is the thing to plan around rather than the rain — west 30 km/h gusting to 50 through the morning, turning north 20 gusting to 40 by afternoon.

🌦️ Sunday, September 13 — Thunder Bay

Overnight low 3°C

Mainly cloudy with a 40 per cent chance of showers. Wind becoming west 30 km/h gusting to 50 in the morning, then north 20 gusting to 40 in the afternoon. UV index 4 — moderate.

After a hard fire season, Vince Rutter would like the city to think differently about cutting trees. Rutter came north in 1996 for Lakehead's forestry program and started Rutter Urban Forestry here in 2000; in 2024 he moved into bio-energy consulting. His argument is that Northwestern Ontario is now under-logging, and the wood nobody takes does not simply sit there. “We're harvesting about half of our annual allowable cut,” he told Northern Ontario Business. “The other half is accumulating — dying and rotting, or catching on fire.” In the boreal forest, he says, decomposition never keeps up: “Whether it's every 20 years or 50 years or 200 years, there will be a lightning strike, and it's going to burn, guaranteed.”

His Thunder Bay Wood Energy Roadmap, released in March and now with the City, proposes a combined heat and power biomass plant near the regional hospital and Lakehead — about 5 MW of electricity plus 15.75 MW of heat for 16 non-residential buildings, at roughly $68 million to build and connect. Solar, wind and batteries producing similar power but no heat would run about $114 million, take more land, and still go quiet on a January afternoon. The hurdles are real: municipalities aren't in the power business, private partners want guarantees up front, natural gas here costs about $1.35 a gigajoule against roughly $30 in Europe, and the province's attention is on nuclear. Rutter isn't pitching it as the answer. “It's an all-of-the-above answer to solve our problems,” he says. “Not everybody is behind bio-energy, though. It's an emotional debate.”

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🗳️ Your call: cut more and burn it for heat, or leave the bush alone. Where do you land?

The Northwestern Ontario Air Search and Rescue Association threw open its doors on John Paterson Drive on Saturday to mark four decades, with an open house and barbecue that ran until 6 p.m. NOASARA is the civilian auxiliary to the Air Force and the Coast Guard, taking jobs from the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Trenton — sometimes flying its own aircraft and crews, sometimes putting trained spotters aboard military or Coast Guard planes. “We conduct our operations exactly the same on their aircraft as we do on our own,” said media officer Ken Widdifield.

It is entirely volunteer-run, and it covers everything between Sault Ste. Marie and Winnipeg. The economics are part of the point: a military aircraft runs $30,000 to $40,000 an hour, NOASARA's about $400. Turnout beat expectations by early afternoon, and the group is recruiting — not just pilots and navigators, but spotters, who need three hours in a classroom and two flights a year, plus people for ground support, bookkeeping and fundraising.

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More than 150 people are in Thunder Bay this weekend for the Ontario Native Women's Association's 55th leadership conference, running under the theme “Building Our Bundles” — passing knowledge and teachings between generations. ONWA carries the voices of more than 35 Indigenous women's agencies, chapters and councils, and members from those groups are spending the weekend sharing knowledge, building capacity and promoting programs.

Sophia Carnovale, ONWA's vice-president and youth director, says the phrase she keeps hearing about young people needs adjusting. Indigenous youth get called the leaders of tomorrow; she thinks they should be recognized as leaders now. “The generations before us have inspired us and forged the path,” she said, “and it's now up to us to continue to speak up and defend our rights, our lands and our communities.” Her own route in was family — her grandmother helped found one of ONWA's chapters. The conference runs through the weekend.

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Thunder Bay runs its own police service, but most of the municipalities around it do not — and the Solicitor General has told them their 2027 OPP bill will not rise more than 11 per cent over 2026. The cap excludes special contracts some municipalities hold for extra policing. Annual billing statements are being prepared now and go out this fall, in time to shape next year's budgets.

The province started capping after an outcry over the 2025 statements, following that up in November 2024 with more than $77 million in relief aimed mostly at small and rural municipalities. The 2025 increase was held to 10 per cent; the 2026 billing came in at 11 per cent with a changed formula that folded commercial and industrial properties into the property count. This year's letter, dated Aug. 14, calls the measure “time-limited” to the 2027 cycle.

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