Three good reasons to leave the house today, one more tomorrow, and then the week gets back to work with the Resource Expo at the Gardens. ✅ Today is the sunny one — Labour Day Monday carries a 40 per cent chance of showers, so check with the organizer before anything outdoors.

Sunday, September 6

Monday, September 7 — Labour Day

Wednesday, September 9

Thursday, September 10

That's a wrap. Voting closed last night, and the counting is under way across all 15 categories. Thank you to everyone who took the two minutes — this was your list, not ours.

Winners run right here on Tuesday, September 8, with a write-up on every one of them.

Know a place that deserved a nod? Hit reply and tell us — we read every one.

✅ NO WEATHER ALERTS IN EFFECT

Environment Canada had no watches or warnings posted for Thunder Bay as of Saturday evening. Latest alerts at Environment Canada.

☀️ Sunday, September 6 — Thunder Bay

Overnight low 15°C

Sunny · no rain in the forecast · humidex 28 · UV index 6 (high) · clear tonight

CBC Thunder Bay put a survey out on Monday asking people across the region to name the single most important issue in this municipal election. More than 430 people have answered so far and 369 finished the whole thing — and the answer at the top is not a surprise so much as a confirmation. More than 50 per cent said homelessness and encampments. Behind it: crime and policing at 47 per cent, road infrastructure at 30, and cost of living at 23. About 86 per cent of respondents live in Thunder Bay, with small numbers from Sioux Lookout, Ignace and other nearby communities.

The open-ended question — what would you do if you were mayor for a day — pulled in three recognisable camps: more support for police to deal with theft and crime in the neighbourhoods, vacant buildings and undeveloped land turned into affordable housing, and more investment in the economy generally. Most respondents said they intend to vote. The ones who said they wouldn't, or weren't sure, gave three reasons: council doesn't act, the candidates aren't good enough, and they can't get to a polling station. The survey is still open, and Election Day is October 26. Worth remembering that this is a self-selecting sample of CBC's audience rather than a scientific poll — but 369 completed answers is a lot of people saying the same thing.

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🗳️ Your call: everyone agrees on the problem. Nobody agrees on the order of operations.

Two people were shot in North Spirit Lake First Nation on Friday evening. One died; the other was reported in stable condition. The Nishnawbe Aski Police Service says officers responded to a report of a disturbance shortly after 5 p.m. CT, that a male suspect is in custody, and that there is no known ongoing threat to public safety. Residents can expect an increased police presence while the investigation continues.

North Spirit Lake is a remote Oji-Cree community of about 430 people, roughly 530 km northwest of Thunder Bay and 170 km north of Red Lake. Chief and council issued a statement Friday night calling it “a devastating and unnecessary loss of life that will have a profound impact on their families and on our entire community,” and described the suspect as a man not known to the community. It follows a shooting at Constance Lake First Nation on August 29. We are keeping the details thin on purpose while next of kin are notified.

Crisis support is available 24/7 through the Hope for Wellness line at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat at hopeforwellness.ca.

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New research says some of the lake sturgeon in the Great Lakes right now may have been alive when Champlain first reached Lake Huron. The old estimate was 150 years. The new one, from a team led by Michigan DNR fisheries scientist Ed Baker, stretches past 400. The trick was in the method: sturgeon are usually aged by counting growth rings in a fin ray, but the rings crowd together as the fish slows down. Baker's team instead used 44 years of catch-and-recapture data and worked backwards from how little the fish grow. One male measured 117 cm in 1990; caught again 34 years later, it had added seven centimetres.

That reframes the whole recovery project. Overfishing and habitat destruction wiped out an estimated 99 per cent of the historic population, and lake sturgeon are endangered in the Great Lakes. University of Windsor biologist Trevor Pitcher says Canada's conservation plan already runs a century — and may now need rethinking. “Assuming they do live, let's say 200 to 400 years, we need to reframe the way we do conservation,” he said. For Perry McLeod-Shabogesic, an elder and knowledge keeper from Nipissing First Nation, the finding wasn't news at all. In Anishinaabe teaching the sturgeon is the grandfather fish, an elder among fish. His response to the science: “Duh.”

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In 1994 Alex and Cindy Cryderman went to Hamilton after learning their unborn daughter was seriously ill, and spent months at the Ronald McDonald House beside McMaster Children's Hospital. Jordin died in her sleep in 1999, at four. “Desperate to take my mind off of grief, I phoned a friend,” Alex says — and that call became a golf tournament that has now run for more than two decades. This year it ran for the first time under its own banner, the Jordin Jewel Foundation, and raised $79,162 for families with sick children.

The rename was partly practical and partly personal. The event had become the Ronald McDonald House Charity Golf Tournament, and circumstances around that charity forced a change; rather than let it fold, the Crydermans incorporated a local non-profit instead. Hearing their daughter's name in public year after year had also become hard. “It was very healing at the beginning,” Alex says. “But it just got very hard for my wife and I to keep hearing her name out in the public all the time.” About 30 per cent of families in Ronald McDonald Houses at any given time come from Northwestern Ontario, he says, and that is the region the new foundation is built to serve. “When you're 1,000 miles from home, and you have a sick child, the last thing you need to be worrying about is how you're going to pay for your hotel.” Donations are accepted year-round.

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