A group of Nova Scotians gathered on the waterfront in Halifax on Saturday with a message for Premier Tim Houston: allowing the construction of a large data centre will be detrimental to the environment and the community.

“These companies don’t have a lot of information that they’re able to give us, we don’t know what this is gonna look like, we already have wells that are drying up in the summertime. I don’t think we can afford to do this,” Megan Boudreau, one of the protest organizers, told Global News.

Energy and infrastructure company, EverWind, announced on Friday $10 billion in private investment in a data centre campus at its existing Point Tupper site. The site would be leased and run by AI development company Anthropic, the creator of the AI assistant Claude.

“Canadians are using Claude in growing numbers, and we want our infrastructure to be closer to the people who rely on it,” said Jacob Glick, head of Canada Public Policy with Anthropic.

EverWind said its campus will begin with an initial 95-megawatt (MW) phase in late 2027. This will be followed by a 325-megawatt expansion targeted for 2028 subject to regulatory conditions.

At full development, EverWind expects the campus to reach a capacity of 420 megawatts.

But the organizers of the weekend protest said the plans seemed to be “randomly announced.” They are now trying to raise awareness about the harms that data centres may cause.

“They tell us AI will take our water and our power and our jobs and our art, and maybe will kill us all. And they shouldn’t be surprised that we’re upset and standing up here today after knowing these things,” Boudreau said.

On Friday, Houston said the opportunity has been discussed for about a month and it will help Canada build its computing power.

“The data we use every day in our healthcare system, for all our banking needs, for everything on our phones. Business is run on data, government runs on it. We need more secure infrastructure, more secure data infrastructure,” he said.

EverWind CEO Trent Vichie said the data centre will also create up to 2,000 jobs during construction, followed by 215 operating jobs.

Protest organizers say these numbers are misleading to Canadians.

“There’s not going to be the CEO coming from Nova Scotia. They’re going to be coming from Anthropic. We know it’s Anthropic that is going to take over this company or this AI center and we simply cannot just be continuing to throw our money back at the Americans,” co-organizer Ashley Drodge told Global News.

Glick said Canada has set a “high bar” for responsible data centre development, but one Port Hawkesbury resident is concerned what the development may do to the town’s water supply.

“The water source that the data centre is drawing from is Landry Lake, and that is the Port Hawkesbury town water source, that’s our drinking water, that is our shower water, that’s our cleaning water, and quite frankly I just don’t think that’s alright,” Aidan Pottie told Global News while holding a sign reading “you can’t drink data.”

Port Hawkesbury is less than a kilometre outside of Point Tupper, where the data centre is to be built.

Pottie said he feels the whole process has been hidden from the residents.

“A few weeks ago there was a conference in Port Hawkesbury with EverWind, that said ‘I was in talks, there’ll be more information’ and yadda yadda, and as we saw yesterday on the news, clearly this has been in the works for months,” he said.

While the deal is signed, the residents say they won’t stop fighting.

Boudreau and Drodge said they are planning a province-wide protest for Nov. 7.

– With files from Global News’ Rebecca Lau and David Murdock

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

• Read the full list of candidates in the 2026 municipal election

British Columbia residents will vote in the 2026 municipal election on Saturday, Oct. 17.

Polls will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. PT

Using the interactive results table above, find your municipality from the drop-down menu and view the list of candidates for mayor and council.

The table will also list live results.

It will be automatically updated when a candidate is projected as the winner.

Results will start to come in around 8 p.m. as the polls close.

General local elections are being held for mayors and municipal councillors, regional district directors, school board trustees, park boards in Vancouver and Cultus Lake and the Islands Trust.

Each local government in B.C. manages its own voting stations.

Local governments provide information on when, where and how to vote.

Global BC will have complete coverage of the municipal elections on TV, radio and online.

We are live on Global BC, BC1, Global Okanagan, CKNW and STACKTV for our Global News election special from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m. PT.

The show will also be livestreamed above and on the Global BC YouTube channel.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

TORONTO – The Maple Leafs will have to get used to life minus another key piece.

The club announced Saturday before facing the New York Islanders that John Tavares is out week-to-week with a lower-body injury.

Toronto added that the timeline designation means the veteran centre could miss up to six weeks. Tavares has two goals and five assists in seven games this season.

The 36-year-old was involved in an awkward collision with Buffalo Sabres opposite Josh Norris in Thursday’s 5-4 overtime loss at Scotiabank Arena.

Norris was bumped by Maple Leafs forward Nick Paul in the defensive zone before sliding into Tavares, who crumpled to the ice and stayed down before being helped to the locker room.

Toronto was already dealing with the loss of veteran shutdown defenceman Chris Tanev. The 36-year-old remains out week-to-week with an upper-body injury suffered in last Saturday’s 6-3 road victory over the Colorado Avalanche.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2026.

© 2026 The Canadian Press

TORONTO – The Toronto Raptors waived five players on Saturday and converted centre Nate Bittle’s deal to a two-way contract.

The seven-foot native of Central Point, Ore., averaged a team-high 16.8 points and 6.9 rebounds over 25 games last season as a fifth-year senior at Oregon.

Forward Tyson Degenhart, centre Jamarion Sharp and guards Nimari Burnett, Jalen Celestine and Tyreke Key were waived, the NBA team said in a news release.

The Raptors will begin their regular season on Wednesday night against the visiting Chicago Bulls.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2026.

© 2026 The Canadian Press

Police in British Columbia say 13 people were sent to the hospital after a semi-truck and trailer, a bus and several other vehicles were involved in a crash on Highway 99 on Friday.

The Surrey Police Service initially reported no serious injuries in the crash, but said late Friday night that two among the injured were seriously hurt, one of whom was airlifted to a hospital.

The force says the other 11 injured were hospitalized in stable condition.

Police say the probe into the cause of the crash is still in the early stages but investigators believe the semi-truck and trailer crossed into incoming traffic.

The multi-vehicle collision shut down traffic for several hours on Highway 99.

BC Emergency Health Services say several ambulances, paramedics and an air ambulance responded to the crash.

© 2026 The Canadian Press

Quebec author Thélyson Orélien has abandoned efforts to compile evidence supporting his denial that artificial intelligence was used to write his novel, his publisher has confirmed.

The decision ends an effort previously disclosed by his publisher, Éditions du Boréal, to document how “C’était ça ou mourir,” which translates to “It was either that or dying,” was written, leaving questions about whether AI was used to write the novel unresolved even as the publisher continues to sell it.

In an email to The Canadian Press, Éditions du Boréal provided comments attributed to its co-director, Renaud Roussel, confirming that Orélien decided to end the effort.

“The publishing house supported him in this process, which he chose to end,” Roussel said.

“That decision is his to make, and we accept it, although we certainly would have preferred to be able to provide definitive answers to the allegations of AI use against him.”

Orélien did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Canadian Press about his decision to end the evidence-gathering process.

In September, Boréal publicly disclosed that it was collaborating with Orélien to compile a detailed record of his work on the manuscript before it was submitted to the publisher.

Orélien previously told French media outlet Libération that he was gathering evidence with his publishers in France and Quebec to support his account of how the novel was written.

Roussel clarified that the initiative came from Orélien, rather than the publisher, which supported him in the process. He maintained that Boréal’s position had not changed.

The Quebec publisher also confirmed that sales of the novel have slowed since the controversy began, although it declined to provide specific figures.

The book remains available in bookstores, but Boréal said it is currently out of stock at the publishing house, with a new printing expected next week.

Earlier this week, Floriane Claveau, a spokesperson for major Quebec bookstore chain Renaud-Bray, said the retailer had not observed any significant change in sales of the novel over the preceding weeks.

Meanwhile, Montreal-based Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, the province’s library and archives institution, says interest in the novel has been exceptionally high, with 1,713 reservations for its digital edition through its online lending service as of Oct. 14.

Spokesperson Claire-Hélène Lengellé said demand has remained strong for several weeks.

In a statement released Wednesday, Boréal said it received Orélien’s manuscript on Sept. 12, 2025, and could not independently verify how the novel had been written before that date.

The publisher argued that its role was not to demand proof from authors, but to stand by them, leaving readers to decide whether to purchase the book.

Orélien, meanwhile, said in a statement released through Boréal on Tuesday that he had nothing to prove to those making accusations against him.

The author has denied using AI to write the novel, saying he began working on it in 2017 and completed a first draft of more than 300 pages in 2019.

The controversy has had other consequences. The novel was removed from the running for France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt earlier this month amid allegations of AI use and separate plagiarism allegations involving Orélien’s earlier writings.

Orélien acknowledged plagiarism in some of his previous work in his statement Tuesday, apologizing for what he described as unacceptable mistakes in his youth, while maintaining that no sentence in his novel was generated by a machine.

Boréal suspended promotional activities surrounding the novel in September, citing concerns for the author’s well-being, but confirmed on Wednesday that it would continue selling the book in the absence of definitive findings about the AI allegations.

© 2026 The Canadian Press

It is voting day in the 2026 B.C. municpal election and polling stations are now open across the province.

Polls will remain open until 8 p.m. local time.

Anyone in line to vote before the polling station closes is still eligible to cast a ballot.

General local elections are being held for mayors and municipal councillors, regional district directors, school board trustees, park boards in Vancouver and Cultus Lake and the Islands Trust.

Each local government in B.C. manages its own voting stations.

Local governments provide information on when, where and how to vote.

Global BC will have complete coverage of the municipal elections on TV, radio and online.

We are live on Global BC, BC1, Global Okanagan, CKNW and STACKTV for our Global News election special from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m. PT.

The show will also be livestreamed at the top of this page and on the Global BC YouTube channel.

In order to be eligible to vote, the following conditions must be met:

• A person must be 18 years of age or older when they register to vote or 18 years or older on general voting day
• Be a Canadian citizen
• Have been a resident of B. C. for at least six months immediately before they register to vote
• Be a resident of the municipality or electoral area
• Not be disqualified under the Local Government Act, or any other enactment from voting in local elections or be otherwise disqualified by law

Eligible electors who live on a First Nation reserve can vote.

Eligible electors without a fixed address or who live in a tiny home or RV without a residential address may still register to vote as a resident elector in the local government they usually reside.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

On Monday, Albertans vote on whether to stay in Canada or hold another binding referendum on quitting Canada.

If the vote goes as polls suggest, a majority of Albertans will mark an X to stay in Confederation, and Premier Danielle Smith has said if that’s so, she expects everyone to accept it and move on. Leaders of the independence movement contest that.

And political watchers are divided about whether separation — previously a fringe sentiment — will now be a prominent, permanent feature of Alberta’s political landscape, as in Quebec.

Julian Castro-Rea, a political-science professor at the University of Alberta who studies the separation debates in Quebec and Alberta, believes as long as Alberta feels alienated from the Canadian capital — feeling that Ottawa benefits from Alberta’s resource economy without giving back — the movement will have fuel.

“Even if the referendum is lost, the westernization will still be around, because it’s kind of a way which, traditionally, Albertans have related to the rest of Canada,” says Castro-Rea, who believes western alienation may remain indefinitely.

Alberta’s independence movement has been compared to Brexit and separation in Scotland, but the most obvious comparator is Quebec.

Earlier this month, Quebec elected a minority government led by the Parti Québécois, which has promised to call a third independence referendum to leave Canada, following votes in 1980 and 1995.

Experts say the two provinces differ in their catalysts for secession. Quebec and its francophone culture have developed over centuries. Alberta, by comparison, was created alongside Saskatchewan out of the division of the Northwest Territories in 1905.

Alberta’s separatists are driven by western alienation rather than a deep-seated nationalist sentiment, like Quebec, experts say. That means it’s difficult to see how the long-term future of the movement could pan out.

“They have different identity, different history, different language, as you know, and therefore they can claim, kind of, this historical legitimacy as the basis for their attempts for separation,” Castro-Rea says.

Separatist sentiment has been sprinkled into Alberta’s saucepan for the past half-century before coming to a boil in recent years. Premier Smith, who has voted to stay in Canada, has repeatedly criticized former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s policies as oppressive to Western Canada’s sovereignty and its energy-driven economy.

That criticism has softened against current Prime Minister Mark Carney, who referred to Alberta’s bid for secession as a “dangerous bluff” on Thursday night. He also said a decisive result would “settle this question.”

Andrew McDougall, an associate political science professor at the University of Toronto, says he sees Alberta’s referendum as a way to garner political leverage with Ottawa, as Quebec has.

“This has sometimes been referred to in Quebec as the ‘knife at the throat strategy,’ where Quebec could sort of push its agenda because we’ve had that incredible threat of a referendum,” he says.

But former UCP premier Jason Kenney, speaking in Edmonton earlier this week, said the knife analogy cuts both ways.

“The idea of making the threat by holding a knife to the throat of the federation is how you end up as a have-not province, like Quebec, instead of the ultimate have province like Alberta,” he said.

“You want to talk about a lack of investor confidence? The next year, moving towards an actual vote on separation when the first one is won — the economic consequences would be catastrophic.”

Political science professor Graeme Young says to understand Alberta’s future, one could look at Scotland.

Young, at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, grew up in Ontario and kept interest in Alberta’s prospective separation from afar as Scotland bolsters another push to leave the United Kingdom.

He says he doesn’t expect Alberta’s separatist campaign will last. He believes the movement could deflate with a different federal political party in power. And he says it can’t draw from the same wellspring of national identity as exists in Scotland.

Young says Scotland’s 2014 campaign was, in large part, defeated by uncertainty about the economics of independence, including pensions, currency, finances and its role in the European Union.

And while Scotland has been preparing for more than a decade for another run at independence, Alberta’s movement is underprepared, Young says.

“(Alberta’s case) has been put together quite hastily,” he says. “It does not seem that they have invested as much time and energy into that case as one would expect for setting up a new country.”

— With files from Lisa Johnson in Edmonton and The Associated Press

© 2026 The Canadian Press

When Chelsea Smith heard the Backstreet Boys were coming to Toronto, she had a simple message for the five men who soundtracked her childhood.

“Here’s my credit card, take all my money.”

The 35-year-old Vancouver fan wasn’t bluffing. Having already travelled to Las Vegas to see her teenybopper crushes, she’s now preparing to fly across the country for two Toronto concerts, spending roughly $600 on tickets alone.
And she’s hardly the only millennial willing to pay a tidy sum to party like it’s 1999.

Nearly three decades after their commercial peak, the Backstreet Boys have booked a staggering 12 shows at Toronto’s Rogers Centre in 2027, citing “overwhelming demand.” The run doubles the venue’s previous record of six shows, set by Taylor Swift during her Eras Tour in 2024.

While some current major artists are cancelling tours amid sluggish ticket sales, the once-baggy-jeaned quintet is proving nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

“I haven’t seen a Top 40 artist in so many years,” says Smith, a self-described “Y2K-era girlie” who made two trips to the Backstreet Boys’ Las Vegas Sphere residency last year.

She suspects millennials are seeking comfort in the past.

“I feel like during COVID we all retreated back to our nostalgia,” says the customer support professional.

“Times are tough. You’re going back to when it was simpler and just living in that moment.”

When Queen Street went Backstreet

Bill Welychka remembers when the Backstreet Boys could bring downtown Toronto to a standstill.

At the height of the boy-band craze in the late ’90s, the former MuchMusic VJ watched thousands of screaming teenagers descend on the channel’s Queen Street West headquarters, hoping to glimpse the five American heartthrobs.

“There were certain bands where we knew we’d have to hire security, where we would have to close the street down. The Backstreet Boys were certainly one of those bands,” he recalls.

“I think they fed off of that energy and the applause and the screams and the tears.”

The Toronto residency is dubbed “Into the Millennium — Homecoming: Live in Canada,” fittingly so: Canada was the first North American market to embrace the group.

Welychka remembers the frenzy spreading from Europe to Quebec, then across Canada, with MuchMusic putting their videos into heavy rotation.

“We latched on to them very, very early on,” he says.

But the boy-band bubble eventually burst. As tastes shifted in the 2000s, the Backstreet Boys faded from the charts, trading stadium-scale hysteria for more theatres and casinos.

Now, with their original fans approaching middle age, Welychka reckons they’re yearning for a time when their biggest responsibility was keeping a Tamagotchi alive.

“It’s a different day and age now. It’s a lot more frustrating,” says Welychka, citing unemployment and the cost-of-living crisis.

“A lot of people want to get those feelings back you once had. If you’re a 45-year-old woman and screaming and crying, nothing wrong with that.”

Same crushes, bigger allowances

Eleni Papamichelakis knows the feeling. The 39-year-old Durham Region mother drifted away from the Backstreet Boys as adulthood took over, only to rediscover her teenage obsession when she caught their Sphere residency last year. Now she’s taking her 11-year-old daughter to see the group, just as she did at that age in 1998.

Part of the appeal is revisiting a pre-smartphone era, when having fun just required a CD and some friends to dance with.

“The world and, like, life has changed and it’s become so digital and sometimes a little bit impersonal,” says the mortgage agent.

“We lived in such a fun era where we had to kind of entertain ourselves.”

A grown-up bank account helps, though: “We have the money to go and see these concerts in a better seat than when we were younger.”

Not every artist is benefiting from that spending power.

The concert industry has been grappling with so-called “blue dot fever,” named for the unsold seats dotting Ticketmaster seating charts.

This year, Meghan Trainor scrapped her tour, Zayn Malik cancelled his U.S. dates and Post Malone scaled back his stadium run. Though the artists cited varying reasons, the cancellations have fuelled speculation about sluggish ticket sales.

The Backstreet Boys, meanwhile, are once again larger than life at the box office. Their Toronto residency could draw nearly half a million concertgoers, with tickets ranging from around $100 to well over $1,000 for VIP packages.

Nostalgia has always sold concert tickets. But Scott Henderson, a professor of popular culture at Trent University, says it’s becoming an increasingly vital draw for major venues amid an uncertain touring market.

“It’s kind of fuelling the industry in ways it never used to,” Henderson says. “That used to be a separate market, that nostalgia market. Now it’s what big venues like the Rogers Centre are going to have to look for.”

Sentimental millennials, he says, now have deeper pockets and a willingness to splurge on premium tickets.

“That’s your guaranteed audience.”

For Vanessa Capozi, a 39-year-old Montreal-area mother of two, the Backstreet Boys offer something priceless: a break from adulthood.

“Life has taken over right now,” says the special education technician. “Rarely do people my age take time for themselves.”

But when her favourite boy band hits the stage, she gets to be 15 again.

“For those two hours, nothing else exists. I’m just there as me, that teenager, watching the Backstreet Boys.”

© 2026 The Canadian Press

Stellantis workers in Canada begin voting today on whether to give their union a strike mandate as collective bargaining negotiations remain stalled.

The two-day votes will wrap up tomorrow, with Unifor set to announce results on Monday.

Unifor says potential strike action remains its last resort as it still hopes to reach a negotiated deal with the company.

However, the union remains at loggerheads with the automaker after Stellantis announced plans to sell its idled Brampton, Ont., assembly plant to defence contractor Roshel.

Stellantis says market and trade conditions have hurt the business case for keeping the plant, but that the move to sell could support future jobs there.

More than 2,000 workers were laid off from the Brampton plant when it halted operations in 2023, as Stellantis later moved production of its Jeep Compass from the site to Illinois.

© 2026 The Canadian Press