A busy Friday night — the waterfront, the Auditorium and a silent-film festival with live piano all going at once — then the convention and the toy run fill Saturday, Terry Fox takes Sunday, and the week starts up again with classic cars on Dawson Road and a history talk at the museum.

Friday, September 18

Saturday, September 19

Sunday, September 20

Monday, September 21

Tuesday, September 22

⚠️ FROST ADVISORY IN EFFECT

Environment Canada has a frost advisory posted for Thunder Bay overnight, with a low of plus 3 and clear skies. Cover anything still growing. It burns off quickly — Friday itself is the nicest day of the week.

☀️ Friday, September 18 — Thunder Bay

Overnight low 6°C

Sunny. UV index 5 — moderate. A few clouds moving in overnight.

The $1.2-billion Thunder Bay Correctional Complex is close to finished — substantial completion is set for November 23, when the ministry takes occupancy from contractor EllisDon — but the union representing the workers who will run it says the province's goal of housing inmates there by June 2027 is “ambitious.” The problem is not the building. It is that nobody has been given a staffing number.

Shawn Bradshaw, president of OPSEU Local 708, has been inside and calls it “absolutely massive,” easily bigger than the regional hospital, with capacity for almost 470 inmates. By his count the ministry needs to fill upwards of 500 positions if it intends to keep the existing jails running alongside it: roughly 150 full-time officers and 120 fixed-term to open the new building, then another 200 full-time and 130 fixed-term after that — and that is before kitchen staff, social workers or anyone else. “It makes it a little hard to open a building without true, hard and fast staffing complements,” he said. A June job fair at Lakehead drew interest; more recently there have been plenty of applicants but fewer successful interviews. Two more job fairs are planned, one before the end of the year and one early in 2027. On what happens to the two current jails, Bradshaw says the union has been asking for two years and it “continues to be murky waters.”

Read more →

🗳️ Your call: a finished building in November, 500 jobs unfilled, and an opening date in June. Something has to give — what?

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Enbridge Gas has shut its customer service call centre in Thunder Bay. The utility confirmed the decision was announced Tuesday and that changes “will take effect immediately.” Twenty-four positions are cut.

Spokesperson Kendra Black called it “a difficult business decision … made after careful consideration as we respond to changes in the external environment,” and said the work moves to other locations within Ontario. Enbridge says it is working with the affected unions, that existing agreements may let some employees move to other jobs inside the company, and that severance and career management services are available. The union representing local workers had not commented by the time Newswatch published. The closure comes about a month after the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board told staff it was shuttering its Thunder Bay office, taking 55 jobs with it — two white-collar employers pulling out of the city inside five weeks.

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If the waterfront looks unusually busy on Saturday and Sunday, there is a reason. The Canadian Armed Forces is running a naval exercise called Waking Giant in the Port of Thunder Bay and the Kaministiquia River, bringing more than 75 sailors, soldiers and aviators into the city.

HMCS Griffon announced the exercise Thursday. It pulls in the Canadian Coast Guard, 17 Field Ambulance, 435 Transport and Rescue Squadron and Naval Reserve divisions from across Ontario. The public can watch parts of it from Marina Park across the weekend — including Royal Canadian Air Force search and rescue technicians parachuting from aircraft into the harbour. Officials say road and water access will not be affected, no live ammunition is involved, and the training is being planned around commercial shipping, fishing boats and pleasure craft already using the water.

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Staff at Fort William Historical Park have been waiting more than a year to find out how their site would look in somebody else's film. This week they got the answer: the first teaser for Ithaqua is out, and the park is all over it.

The production shot at the historic site in January and February of 2025, in temperatures that ran between −30 and −40. “We were so excited to finally see it, the trailer,” said Jennifer McFarlane, the park's manager of marketing and visitor experiences. The film comes from Hammer Films, the long-running British studio, and carries two local threads: director Casey Walker worked at the fort as a university student before he was a director, and cast member Kevin Durand grew up in Thunder Bay. “To have Casey come back as a director and just his love for his home community… was really great,” McFarlane said. The park has hosted crews before and just wrapped another project with White Bear Films — and is hoping the teaser makes the case for Thunder Bay as a place to shoot.

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Spinal Cord Injury Ontario brings its Access Expo to Thunder Bay on Wednesday, September 23, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Urban Abbey, 308 Red River Rd. It is free, and it is the only northern stop on a tour that has otherwise stayed in the south — Kingston, Toronto and London.

The format is loose: adaptive technologies, accessible products and supportive services on display, with staff and vendors on hand to talk through what actually works, plus food and a chance to meet other people navigating the same things. If you use a wheelchair or a walker, care for someone who does, work in rehab or home care, or are just trying to make a house or a storefront easier to get into, there will be something on a table worth putting your hands on. Organizers ask that you register so they know how many to expect.

Details at sciontario.org/access-expo →

Full disclosure: I'm helping out with SCIO at this one.

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