Weekly News Recap: October 9, 2026

Weekly News Recap: October 9, 2026

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announce the next step to accelerate the new West Coast pipeline project in Fort McMurray, Alta. (Todd Korol/Reuters)

To be able to catch the tumult of time and your own heart, who doesn’t want that. -- Anne Carson

AFP INFORMATION SESSIONS: CHANGES TO LOBBYING GUIDELINES

AFP Canada is partnering with the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying (OCL) to offer members two opportunities to learn more about the guidance, understand their potential obligations and share questions and comments. Nancy Bélanger, Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, will participate in both sessions. Advance registration will be required.

  • Changes to lobbying guidelines and their impact on nonprofits - English session, Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. ET. Pre-registration is required at this Zoom link

Session en français:

  • Évolution des directives en matière de lobbying et leur impact sur les organisations à but non lucratif - Session en français, Le jeudi, 15 octobre 2026, 12h00 à 13h00 HNE. Il est demandé de s'inscrire à l'avance via le lien Zoom suivant.

SOME GOOD NEWS

  • School gate to checkmate: British chess prodigy, 11, is youngest ever woman grandmaster (The Guardian) #BoosterSeatProdigy "Over the weekend, 11-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan became the youngest ever holder of the title of woman grandmaster at the Chess Olympiad in Uzbekistan – while playing on a car booster seat so she could reach the board."

  • VIDEO: 'A trip down memory lane': N.S. man reunited with wallet lost 51 years ago (CBC) #Eureka "An accidental discovery at a house renovation site in Dartmouth, N.S., and a social media post have reunited a wallet lost 51 years ago with its owner. While renovating a house for his company on Victoria Road, carpenter Matty Goldsmith found a wallet under the old floors containing identification documents including a driver's licence and student ID, as well as a 1975 theatre ticket for Hamlet and a dollar bill."

  • Kids learn Michif words, play the spoons at new Métis child-care facility in Saskatoon (CBC) I heart this. "Amellia Campbell says her daughter gets to grow up with their Métis culture in a way she didn't get to herself. 'Having her learn this culture now, as opposed to me or my father, it's a lot easier for her to retain that information and have those pathways built.' "

  • VIDEO: No borders, no boundaries: Pluie the wolf's story (YouTube) #RememberPluie Thanks to Recap contributor, Mick Mulloy for this story. "In the early 1990s, a wolf named Pluie rewrote what scientists thought they knew about wildlife movement. Radio-collared in southern Alberta, she roamed an area 10 times the size of Yellowstone National Park, crossed more than 30 political jurisdictions. Her journey revealed a truth conservationists couldn't ignore: wildlife doesn't recognize human borders. Pluie's incredible story helped inspire the Yellowstone to Yukon vision — a bold effort to protect and connect habitat across one of the last wild landscapes on Earth, so animals can roam free the way nature intended. This is her story, and why the wild still needs room to roam."

  • VIDEO: Niagara Falls returns Buffalo, N.Y., love with invite to red-white-blue falls display on Ontario side (CBC) #MeetCute "Amid a heated trade war, there's been lots of love between Ontario's Niagara region and Buffalo, N.Y. In the latest show of camaraderie, Niagara Falls Tourism placed a full-page open letter in the Buffalo News on Friday, inviting Americans to cross the bridge and celebrate with border neighbours Ontario on Saturday night. That's when Niagara Falls will be lit up in the red, white and blue colours associated with the NFL's Buffalo Bills, accompanied by matching-coloured fireworks."

TOP TEN STORIES OF THE WEEK

  1. VIDEO: 'I was fighting for my life': Indian pilot hailed as hero recalls FlyDubai cockpit attack (CBC) #MegaHero "The Indian airline captain who helped thwart an apparent attempt to crash a FlyDubai flight described how he fought for his life in the minutes after his co-pilot stabbed him and the plane began a steep descent. Captain Smit Machchhar, recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital, told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a video call broadcast live on television news channels that he knew he had to get back on his feet to save the passengers aboard the aircraft. 'I had so many wounds. I had fallen down,' he said from the hospital, his head bandaged and tubes in his nose, before breaking down as he recalled the attack."

  2. VIDEO: Canadian Anne Carson awarded Nobel Prize in Literature (CBC) Of course she was in Iceland 'listening to the wind'. If you can get hold of her famous work, 'Norma Jeane Baker of Troy', it is worth a read. "The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Canadian poet and essayist Anne Carson by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Carson, 76, was recognized for 'her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new ‌forms for contemporary literature," the award-giving body said. The academy said Carson was in Iceland 'listening to the wind' when its representatives made contact with her and was surprised to learn she had won."

  3. VIDEO: West Coast oil pipeline becomes 1st project designated in national interest (CBC) "A proposed pipeline carrying one million barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the B.C. coast has become the first project designated in the national interest, the federal and Alberta governments have announced. Listing the West Coast pipeline — which will now officially be named the Pacific Link pipeline — on Schedule 1 of the Building Canada Act means the federal government has moved from considering whether it should be built to how it will be built by fast-tracking and consolidating the approval process, including environmental assessments."

  4. VIDEO: Forgotten Island a 'love letter' to Filipino mythology, family and home (CBC) A cool feature of this article is that you can also read it in Tagalog. "Filipino Canadian Tricia Serdon grew up watching Disney movies and searching for a princess who looked like her. She never quite found one. That changed with Forgotten Island. 'I think it’s such a great love letter to Filipinos,' says Serdon, a marketing co-ordinator in Toronto."

  5. VIDEO: Hitting the sweet spot: bear treats itself to baked goods at Colorado farmers’ market (The Guardian) #CheekyBear Also, I love that shoppers are continuing to shop while a BEAR is in their midst. Thanks to Recap contributor, Mick Mulloy, for this article. "Farmers’ market shoppers might not usually pay much attention to the local resident devouring fresh bread and pastries at one of the stalls with extra gusto – but some certainly did last weekend when they realized it was a hungry bear. Onlookers [...] reached for their phones to take photos and videos of the bear in downtown Aspen, Colorado, after it wandered through the stalls and got up on to its hind legs to dig into the baked goods. At one point it jumped up on to the table to get better access to the pastries."

  6. VIDEO: Some TV meteorologists want to talk about climate change. Not everyone wants to hear it (CBC) "John Morales remembers the moment he broke down on air. The veteran meteorologist, who works for the WTVJ television station in Miami, had been talking about climate change in his weather reports for decades. But in October 2024, after watching Hurricane Milton rapidly gain strength off the coasts of Florida and Mexico, he began tearing up. 'I was delivering the facts, but suddenly I realized how strong of a hurricane that could be, how many victims it could take, how many lives it could ruin," he told What on Earth? host Johanna Wagstaffe at the Climate Week NYC conference."

  7. Meet the bizarre toad that 'sees' with its fingertips and gives birth through holes in its back (CBC) #FingerEyes "There are many reasons some might consider the Surinam toad to be strange. For one, there’s the birth. Videos of the fully aquatic toad delivering its babies show fully formed young erupting from tiny holes in the skin on their mother’s back. Then there’s the toad itself: flat-bodied, nearly blind and tongueless with tiny eyes perched atop a triangular head. In the murky waters of the Amazon basin where it is primarily found, it can look almost like a dead leaf lying on the sea floor. But now, scientists in California have discovered another unique feature of this freak of nature: the Surinam toad can, in a sense, see with its fingertips."

  8. VIDEO: How AI could usher in a 'new scientific golden age' — if it doesn't kill us all first (CBC) I am voting for the golden age. "For a week-long experiment, Steve Finkbeiner's team at the biomedical research Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco used their AI-powered 'thinking' microscope to explore the impact of cellular stress on brain cells. Just looking at cells and no external sources, the tool not only found what the relationship was, but also discovered a phenomenon called hormesis — the process in which some stress can actually strengthen cells, said Finkbeiner, who is also a professor of neurology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. So why did this kind of discovery, as he put it, give him 'goosebumps'? 'It took ... 50 to 100 years for humans to discover that. [AI] did it in the first experiment,' he said."

  9. 'A gift from Mother Earth:' Man behind Indigenous site in Edmonton recounts discovery of sacred spring (CBC) #TheLandRemembers "In February 2024, as he prepared for kihcihkaw askî’s first sweat, Lewis Cardinal made a discovery. He noticed a pile of ice forming over a hole in the ground. Plunging a teepee pole into the fissure, water bubbled up. 'I thought, Oh my goodness, this is a spring, right?' he recalled. For Cardinal, the man behind a 17-year campaign to establish the outdoor area for Indigenous ceremony and cultural practices within Edmonton’s city limits, the spring's significance is much more than geological. 'It's a gift from Mother Earth,' Cardinal, an Indigenous educator and storyteller, said during a tour of the spring with CBC News earlier this month. 'When the people return, the land remembers. So it's remembering us and sharing a story with us.' "

  10. VIDEO: Toronto mourns end of famous floating Inconvenience Store | The Moment (CBC) Ha! "Artists Rashad Maharaj and Trevor Wheatley, along with event organizer Brandon Wong, tell The National about the moment they held a funeral for Toronto's famous 'Inconvenience Store,' a floating art installation in the city's harbour."

SEVEN LIFE AND CAREER HACKS

  1. For decades, researchers watched couples love, fight, drift, and reconnect. What they found will change how you see every relationship you’ve ever had. (Heart Affairs) Watch for the 'four horsemen'.

  2. Your First Executive Role Changes More Than Your Job (Andi Nara) Everything you now do as an executive is a signal.

  3. Why Did It Take Humanity So Long to Invent Zero? (Vagelis Plevris) It seems unfathomable that we operated so long with out it. And with it, mathematics has flourished.

  4. The Morning Trash Method: Throw Away 3 Tasks Before 9 AM (Lilikgunawan) I love the CEO quote that a to-do item that has been on his list for more than 14 days is automatically deleted.

  5. Why Busy People Think More Clearly With a Pen #7 (Ai Yat Goh) I find the difference between digital writing and writing with a pen so interesting because it really is a very different experience.

  6. VIDEO: What firefighters want you to know about lithium battery fires (CBC) This is my PSA gift to y'all.

  7. 9 Things Worth Taking Pride in That Have Nothing to Do with Money (Darius Foroux) A lovely reminder of human values.

TOP THREE GIFTS OF THE WEEK

  1. Hedge fund CEO gives $3bn to Carnegie Mellon University in historic donation (The Guardian) "Carnegie Mellon University will receive an unprecedented $3bn donation from the billionaire investor Ken Griffin, making it the largest single donation in the history of US education."

  2. Emma Watson's £1 Million Donation to Support Women Against Harassment (Facebook) "At 27, Emma Watson didn't just speak — she acted. When Hollywood and the UK were finally talking about harassment at work, she donated £1 Million (approx $1.4M) to launch the Justice and Equality Fund. This fund was created to give women real legal help, advice and support when they face harassment, abuse or discrimination at work — not just actresses, but women from EVERY industry."

  3. Michael Jordan Announces $10 Million Donation to University of North Carolina (Yahoo Sports) "Legendary NBA star and NASCAR team owner Michael Jordan has made a big, eight-figure donation. The iconic NBA star donated $10 million to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Social Work [...] Jordan made the donation in honor of his mother."

LAST WEEK'S MOST POPULAR STORIES

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