Friday is the warmest day left this week, but the rain arrives after supper — so plan around it. Wake the Giant takes over Marina Park on Saturday, and there's mountain biking, two comics, a Baroque concert and a street-closing farmers' market to fit in around it.

Friday, September 11

Saturday, September 12

Sunday, September 13

Monday, September 14

✅ NO WEATHER ALERTS IN EFFECT

Environment Canada had no watches or warnings posted for Thunder Bay as of Thursday evening. Showers move in Friday evening with a risk of a thunderstorm, and 10 to 15 mm is possible overnight — worth knowing if you're out late or leaving anything on the lawn.

☀️ Friday, September 11 — Thunder Bay

Overnight low 16°C

Sunny right through the day, humidex 29, UV index 6 — high. Wind turning southwest 20 km/h in the afternoon. Clouding over after supper with showers and a risk of a thunderstorm overnight, 10 to 15 mm possible.

Canadian Lakehead Exhibition members met in a south-side union hall on Wednesday night and voted 16-0 to remove president Basil Lychowyd from the board. Because the directors pick the president from among themselves, that takes the presidency with it. In the same meeting they reinstated three people Lychowyd had declared non-members and two directors he had removed, elected Al Timko to his seat, and passed a motion demanding he return keys, records and other CLE property.

The board had written to members beforehand calling the meeting illegitimate, saying the requisition didn't meet the Ontario Not-for-Profit Corporations Act, the CLE's own bylaws or its code of conduct. Organizers Brita and Rob Hewitson say they asked the board to point to the specific clauses and got no reply. A letter to members from the Ontario Association of Agricultural Societies noted that 10 per cent of members can requisition a special meeting — and can call it themselves if the board won't. Lychowyd did not respond to Newswatch's requests for comment Thursday.

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🗳️ Your call: a 16-0 members' vote on one side, a board saying the meeting never met the rules on the other. Who has it right?

TD Bank Group handed Lakehead University $600,000 on Wednesday toward Gichi Kendaasiwin — Anishinaabemowin for higher knowledge — a planned indoor-outdoor space where Indigenous students can gather, learn and connect. President Gillian Siddall called the gift transformational and said the university is aiming to start construction in spring 2027 if the rest of the funding is in place by then.

The project has been in the works, in one form or another, for about 20 years. It was announced a decade ago as a three-storey, 73,000-square-foot building meant to house all of Lakehead's Indigenous-focused programs; when that funding fell through the university reimagined it as a constellation of spaces and programs spread across its campuses. The donation also supports the Niijii mentorship program, which works with primary and secondary students on their path to post-secondary. Roughly 14 per cent of Lakehead's students are Indigenous.

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Hydro One says the first phase of the Waasigan Transmission Line — the 230-kilovolt, 350-megawatt stretch between Shuniah and Atikokan — is still on track to be energized by the end of this year. Sonny Karunakaran, the utility's vice-president of strategic projects and partnerships, says most of the towers on that section are standing and crews are now stringing conductor, after which they'll do a walk-down to confirm the line is ready to go live.

Phase two, from Atikokan to Dryden, is at the clearing, foundation and tower-erection stage; stringing there isn't expected until sometime next year, with completion targeted for the end of 2027. Across both phases the project is more than 90 per cent complete.

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The Upsala Recreation and Community Sports Centre is getting a bigger skating rink, curling upgrades, a fourth bathroom and shower, a new furnace, snow roof breaks, a new hall sign and bear-proof garbage bins — $199,800 worth, from the Ontario Trillium Foundation's Capital Grant. Recreation administrator Jenny Veal calls the building the community's hub of life: celebrations of life, birthday parties, Halloween dances, community meals, cooking classes, the monthly Senior Social and dog sledding all run out of it.

The curling club is one of the few real-ice sheets left in the region, and the work will add insulation, ventilation, new windows and a cooling system to stop heat bleeding in from the main hall. The shower matters more than it sounds — Veal says it serves the fitness centre and also residents who can't shower at home. It's the third major grant for the centre, after $180,000 from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation and $100,000 from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. The Upsala Local Services Board wants it all finished by July 2027 and is taking contractor bids.

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