Here’s another story of a music festival gone horribly, horribly wrong.

I take you back to June 1970, for the Celebration of Life Festival, which was held on a farm in Louisiana. Promoters called it the South’s answer to Woodstock, which had happened a year earlier. The lineup included Pink Floyd, Ike & Tina Turner, the Beach Boys, and BB King. Local authorities wanted none of this, and two days before the show was supposed to start, cops moved in and shut everything down.

This left thousands of people with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Some sat in the field in the blistering heat and humidity. Others found abandoned farmhouses. There was no food, water, sanitary facilities, or medical care. Two people drowned while escaping the heat in the South Louisiana River, while others were injured in fights with police.

The Celebration of Life Festival of 1970 was a total disaster but has been largely forgotten. Good.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Whenever you get a bunch of music fans into a field and introduce alcohol, drugs, and dodgy weather, things can and will go wrong. The Powder Ridge Rock Festival, held at a ski resort in Middlefield, Connecticut, was one such event.

Local authorities tried to stop it, but 30,000 people showed up anyway. There was no music because everything had been cancelled. The promoter, the owner of the ski resort, was arrested for allowing people onto the property. Meanwhile, everyone had to deal with no music, no food, no water, no sanitary facilities, and some very bad drugs, especially the cheap dollar-a-tab acid.

The only artist to show up was Melanie, the folksinger, who performed an impromptu set powered by a couple of ice cream trucks that had been commandeered.

One more horror show festival next time.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

We’ve evolved when it comes to being able to stage music festivals. In the 70s, though, people were still learning, often with disastrous results.

Let’s go back to Labour Day 1972 for the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival in Illinois. There was a solid line-up: Black Sabbath, Allman Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Joe Cocker, and more. About 50,000 people were expected, but the actual number of people who tried to get in might have been close to 300,000.

The result was a 30-kilometre traffic jam. Vendors ran out of food and water and you don’t want to know about the porta-potties. And then it started to rain. Hard. The crowd went crazy, burning a food truck. And get this: A cow from a nearby farm was stolen and butchered for its meat. By the end of the weekend, the main stage was set on fire and hundreds were injured.

The story of another disaster next time.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Many of the worst musical festivals have been blissfully forgotten, which is not a good thing because promoters and fans should learn from past mistakes.

Take the Ozark Music Festival of 1974. Although it featured a killer line-up that included the Eagles and Lynyrd Skynyrd, the promoters had promised it would be a country music event that would attract 30,000 people. Instead, 160,000 people showed up, half of whom were not allowed in because there was no space.

But I’ll tell you who DID get in: Several biker gangs armed with long steel bars. The drugs were bad, with a thousand people requiring emergency treatment. Another 2,000 were treated for heat stroke. Three hundred people ended up in hospital, including a guy who had his face gouged by someone with a prosthetic hook for a hand. More horror stories next time.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

As the Bald Ridge wildfire near Summerland, B.C., continues to burn, many Canadians may be wondering how the devastating blaze has been able to spread so quickly.

Starting about 15 km northwest of Summerland last Friday, the Bald Ridge wildfire quickly grew to 50 square kilometres in just three hours after it was first detected, according to local authorities.

The entire Summerland district was forced to evacuate in the early hours of Saturday morning just after midnight, with more than 10,000 more homes under alert. Nearly 22,000 people total had to evacuate from their homes, with a provincial state of emergency being declared on Saturday.

As of Monday, the fire has grown to 156 square kilometres, with most parts of southern B.C. being under yellow and orange air quality warnings as smoke permeates in the air.

“It was absolutely shocking to see that fire in Summerland go from an ignition and then spread to a thousand hectares within an hour or so, 5,000 overnight and 10,000 within 24 hours,” Lori Daniels, Kerner Chair at the Centre for Wildfire Coexistence at the University of British Columbia said.

“I think that’s most rapid fire spread that we’ve ever witnessed in the southern interior of B.C., for sure.”

Cliff Chapman with the B.C. Wildfire Service said on Saturday that the conditions in that region of British Columbia right now “are explosive.”

“When we see a fire start, when we see the smoke lift, we are going to be challenged and we may see fires do what we saw on this fire last night,” he said at the time.

“I cannot stress enough that the conditions we are facing right now are conditions that we have never seen before.”

Daniels stated that the trajectory of the wildfires’ spread has not followed a typical path.

“It started up on the hill and we typically would expect fire to burn upslope; the heat rises, it warms and heats the forest adjacent […] more on the upslope side than the downslope or downhill side, so you’d expect fire to move upslope,” she said.

“But the winds in this case were coming very strongly from the west and it pushed that fire down the hill and through the valley, and because of the shapes of the mountains there, it’s kind of channelled that wind and the fire. So, it came down through the valley and then it kind of exploded out as it got closer to Okanagan Lake.” 

As a result, Daniels said that the winds are “approaching kind of a low-grade hurricane-style winds that are pushing these fires.”

Environment Canada states that wind is currently blowing north in B.C. at 20 km/h, gusting to 40km/h into the afternoon and overnight.

In addition, the elevated heat in the area can play a role in how fast winds pick up.

“When there is a heated surface, what happens is the wind speed rises. If there is a forest area where the initial wind is 20 to 30 km/h, but immediately when the fire spreads and the surface becomes warmer and warmer, this wind can reach as high as 40 to 50 km/h with dust,” said Tanzina Mohsin, an associate professor of climate technology at the University of Toronto.

“This could be one of the causes of the Summerland fires spreading so quickly.” 

The fires across B.C. are occurring at a time when “fires are coming on the shield of prolonged droughts,” according to Daniels.

The province of B.C. defines a drought as “a naturally reoccurring period of abnormally dry conditions that may result in water scarcity or other adverse impacts on people, aquatic ecosystems, wildlife or vegetation.”

“The last 10 summers, we’ve had these extremely long droughts, multi-year droughts really drying out these ecosystems,” Daniels explained.

“When you get the heat domes, we’ve seen them in different parts of Canada and it’s a pattern all across Canada. You get a heat dome, record-breaking temperatures, very dry conditions, and then what happens is when that heat dome and that weather system breaks down, it brings with it very windy, turbulent conditions that create the thunderstorms and the lightning.”

Daniels added, “If you don’t get a bunch of rain, but you get thunder and lightning on top of drought, you have the prime conditions for literally tens to hundreds of fires to be ignited simultaneously.”

In addition, Katrina Eyvindson, associate professor and departmental chair of geography and environment at Western University, told Global News that the snowpack in B.C. was “low,” which played a role in the development of the wildfires in the province.

“Temperatures are high and there has been little rain making fuels particularly dry. Dry fuels make it easy for fires to start easily and spread quickly,” she said.

While the specific causes of the Bald Ridge wildfire are still unclear, Eyvindson said the key lesson of the last few years of challenging wildfires is “that climate change is here and will affect all of us.”

“Directly — for example, losing a home or being evacuated — or indirectly, in areas far from the fire where air quality has been reduced by smoke, to me the effects of fires should be a reminder that climate change will affect all of us, and therefore we all need to work together to find solutions,” she said.

Mohsin also said climate change is “changing the environmental background in which Canadian fires offer these days.”

“High temperatures increase evaporation and contributes to fuel drying and then while Canadian fire season become longer, we can see that all these contributing.” 

Across Canada, there have been 620 wildfires in 2026, according to Natural Resources Canada.

Natural Resources Canada has linked escalating wildfires to “record high temperatures and widespread drought conditions across the country.”

The challenges demonstrated in the latest fire carry lessons for Canadians across the country, experts say.

“The situation in northwestern Ontario or Nova Scotia or Quebec is different, but all these areas are warming and they have different types of forest practices, different types of forests and things, but I think it’s just a warning that our climate is changing and that means that things that were quite rare before, like wildfires are becoming more common,” said Kent Moore, atmospheric physics professor at the University of Toronto.

Daniels believes that, “if we have forest and trees near us now in Canada,” people in the country are “susceptible” to evacuations and wildfire effects.

“It’s really having people understand how vulnerable we are and really choose to make those changes,” she said.

“We really need to approach this as an all of society problem and an all-of-society solution.”

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

A multi-million-pound power line built between the U.K. and Ireland had to change course after Harry Potter fans revolted against its planned route, which would have destroyed the location of the grave of the fictional house-elf Dobby, an expert who spearheaded the project revealed in a recent interview.

Dobby, adored by fans for his loyalty, bravery and touching pursuit of freedom, died in Harry’s arms during Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after he was stabbed with a knife thrown by Bellatrix Lestrange.

The site of his fictional grave, which is marked by a sign that reads “Here lies Dobby, a free elf,” is on Freshwater West beach in Wales, where the scene was filmed. The location is regularly visited by followers of the iconic book and film series, who often leave trinkets in memory of the creature.

In the past, the National Trust, a U.K. non-profit that protects historic buildings, ecologically sensitive areas, and cultural heritage sites for public use, has had to ask fans to stop leaving socks and other painted items at Dobby’s grave as they posed a risk to marine life.

Socks came to symbolize freedom among the franchise’s fanbase after Harry used one to trick Lucius Malfoy into freeing the house-elf from perpetual servitude.

The £430 million ($CAD 809 million) Greenlink interconnector, which led to a public outcry, has been operational since early last year, according to the New York Times, but not without overcoming this otherworldly hurdle.

The cable hooks the U.K.’s National Grid to Ireland and was supposed to pass underground through Dobby’s grave site, the project’s manager Simon Ludlam told the Energy Revolution podcast in a recent interview.

When Ludlam first announced the cable during a BBC Wales segment in 2019, he was met with heavy pushback from fans.

“After it aired, we began to get calls. Many, many, many calls,” Ludlam, now a managing partner at Etchea Energy, said on the podcast Monday, adding that he had no idea who Dobby was or why people were up in arms about the death of an imaginary being who, in the book, dies in Cornwall.

“The whole thing is fictitious,” Ludlam recalled telling a colleague back in 2019, during his interview Monday.

“No it’s very, very serious,” his said his colleague told him at the time.

Despite the world of Harry Potter being entirely imagined, Ludlam said the problem was impossible to ignore, and the cable was rerouted away from Dobby’s grave.

“We didn’t disturb the beach or the dunes or Dobby’s grave in any way,” James O’Reilly, Greenlink’s chief executive, told the New York Times. Instead, the cables run close to real Bronze Age remains, including urns associated with human burial, The Guardian reported.

Dobby remains free at the beach in Wales.

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

Louisiana health officials are urging beachgoers to take precautions during a summertime surge of infections from a flesh-eating bacteria found in coastal waters.

Louisiana has confirmed nine cases of vibrio vulnificus infections this year, which can be severe and life-threatening, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a news release from the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH), the organization said that all nine patients were hospitalized and five have died.

“During the same period over the previous 10 years, Louisiana reported an average of seven cases and one death. All nine cases reported this year were associated with wounds exposed to seawater, and all patients had underlying health conditions,” the LDH said.

Vibrio bacteria occur naturally in warm coastal waters and are found in higher numbers from May to October, when water temperatures are warmer, according to the LDH.

“Infection can occur when an open wound is exposed to brackish or salt water or when a person eats raw or undercooked seafood, particularly oysters. Vibrio infection can result in gastrointestinal illness, wound infection, or blood poisoning (bloodstream infection),” the Department of Health added.

About one in five people with a vibrio vulnificus infection dies, sometimes within a day or two of becoming ill, the  LDH noted.

Anyone can get a vibrio infection but the risk of severe complications is highest among people who have liver disease, cancer, diabetes, HIV or thalassemia, according to the Department of Health.

Vibrio vulnificus can enter the body through unhealed cuts and scrapes, recent piercings and tattoos and recent surgical incisions.

People who receive immune-suppressing treatment, take medicine that reduces stomach acid or have recently undergone stomach surgery also have a risk of severe complications.

Signs of vibrio wound infection include fever, redness, pain, swelling, warmth around the wound, skin discolouration, drainage or discharge.

The LDH advises people to seek medical care immediately if a wound exposed to salt water becomes red, swollen, painful, warm or discoloured.

In order to reduce the risk of the flesh-eating bacteria, it’s advised to stay out of brackish or salt water if you have an open wound, cover wounds with waterproof bandages if they come in contact with water and wash wounds thoroughly.

It’s also advised to cook seafood thoroughly, wash your hands with soap and water after handling raw shellfish — particularly oysters — and keep cooked seafood separate from raw seafood.

Florida, which tends to have more infections than other states, has reported 14 vibrio vulnificus cases and two deaths so far this year, compared with 33 cases and five deaths for all of last year. Records show more cases in years when Florida is hit by tropical storms and hurricanes.

Louisiana saw a similar spike in vibrio infection last year, with the LHD confirming the fifth death from the infection last September and 26 cases reported among Louisiana residents.

“Nationally, 150 to 200 cases of Vibrio vulnificus are reported annually in the U.S., with approximately 50% of cases occurring in Gulf States (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida). To date, in the U.S., Louisiana and Florida have seen the greatest number of cases and deaths,” zthe LDH said in a news release.

— with files from The Associated Press

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

At just three years old, Gurmoh Gill is facing a disease with no cure.

He has hereditary spastic paraplegia, or HSP, a rare genetic condition that causes progressive stiffness and weakness, particularly in the legs, but he can also end up losing the abilities in his arms, speech, and mental capacity.

His parents say when they first heard the diagnosis, they were overwhelmed.

“From that moment when you are told that there is no hope — not a single medicine you can give to your child, and your child is going to go backwards — all those milestones that you once celebrated, the first walk, their speech, they’re going to lose everything,” said Navpreet Gill, Gurmoh’s mother.

After the diagnosis, the Gills say they started contacting hospitals and different levels of government for help.

In January, they reached out to Montreal’s Neuro and finally got an answer.

“It was incredible; it’s hard to explain it in words,” said Gill “This hope is what gives you that power to go on, to look for the answers and to fight for your child.”

Researchers at the Neuro are now working with Gurmoh’s genetic information, looking for a way to target the mutation responsible for his disease.

The goal isn’t to reverse the damage already done, but to develop treatment that could potentially slow the progression.

“If we can fix the problem at the source, fix the DNA, fix the mutation that causes the disease, that’s the best-case scenario,” said Ziv Gan-Or, director of clinical research at the Neuro. “That would be the biggest hope.”

For the Gills, being told researchers were willing to work with their son was an emotional turning point.

They’ve since turned that hope into a much bigger mission.

They’re travelling across Canada on what they’re calling a Journey of Hope, fundraising, raising awareness and collecting letters from others living with rare diseases. Their plan is to deliver them to the prime minister’s office, calling for more resources for families like theirs.

“You can’t have inequality in terms of who should get medicine and who shouldn’t,” said Stalin Gill, Gurmoh’s father.

“Medicine should be the right of each and every Canadian.”

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

The future of U.S. booze in Canada is being seen by many as a key bargaining chip ahead of critical trade negotiations in Washington focused on U.S. tariffs, after boycotts that have kept American booze off most Canadian store shelves for over a year.

That leverage, experts say, isn’t just about finances, but also political pressure.

“There seems to be some political angst in the United States from those senators and members of Congress hearing from their local businesses that these sales are down significantly. Canadians are the number one customer,” says Andrew DiCapua, principal economist at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

“So that is a point of leverage, for sure, and at the end of the day, this is a political decision.”

Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a fresh round of 50 per cent tariffs in response to “discriminatory” measures by Canada. Trump signed three executive orders to justify the tariffs, including for the provincial and territorial boycotts on American alcohol products.

Those tariffs are scheduled to go into effect on Aug. 19.

As Prime Minister Mark Carney works ahead of that deadline, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre this week criticized Carney, saying he “backed down” to multiple American demands, including splitting of net revenues from the Gordie Howe Bridge, which Canada paid to build.

Poilievre urged Carney not to give any more concessions to the U.S., including pushing provinces and territories to put American booze back on store shelves.

The majority of Canadians have supported keeping U.S. alcohol off Canadian store shelves, according to the latest survey data.

“If you are an absolute devotee of Kentucky bourbon or wines from the Willamette Valley in Oregon, then you might be a bit grumpy about it,” says Karl Littler, senior vice-president of public affairs at the Retail Council of Canada.

“I think most Canadians understand that this is a pretty existential set of negotiations for the Canadian economy, at least for the near term. And so I broadly get a sense that there’s public backing for .”

But how much money is at stake if Canada were to make further concessions on U.S. alcohol in these trade negotiations?

In early 2025, virtually all alcohol retailers regulated by individual provinces and territories were told to remove those U.S. products from store shelves, as the “buy Canadian” movement saw Canadians prioritize locally made options in response to Trump’s tariff policies and repeated suggestions that Canada should become the “51st state.”

At first, this led to many empty shelves, and millions of dollars in products not available for sale, though Alberta and Saskatchewan have since reversed those measures.

The specific executive order Trump signed on U.S. alcohol products said, “comparing the period from March 2025 through February 2026 to the same period in 2024-2025, Canadian imports of U.S. alcoholic beverages decreased by approximately 81 percent (from approximately US$718 million to approximately $137 million).”

“We’re talking a total value from a U.S. exporter’s perspective of about a billion dollars Canadian that’s dropped to more like a couple of hundred million. So those are big numbers,” says Littler.

A statement from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) in March 2025 said “LCBO is the importer of record for all U.S. alcohol products into Ontario, with annual sales of up to $965 million.”

British Columbia’s annual sales of U.S. booze was about $220 million in 2024, according to a statement from the Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch in response to a Global News request sent Monday.

The Nova Scotia Liquor Commission and New Brunswick Liquor each confirmed to Global News Monday that their annual sales from U.S. alcohol totalled roughly $42 and $40 million respectively in the fiscal year leading up to U.S. tariffs being imposed in 2025, while the Prince Edward Island Liquor Control Commission confirmed sales of U.S. alcohol topped about $10 million for the fiscal year 2024-25.

The Newfoundland and Labrador Liquor Corporation said Monday in response to Global News that their annual sales of U.S. booze totalled roughly $26 million before being removed from store shelves, and the Yukon Liquor Corporation sold approximately $2.3 million in U.S. alcohol products during the 2024 calendar year.

Dale Nally, minister of Service Alberta and red tape reduction in the province, said in a statement responding to Global News that “wholesale sales of U.S. liquor (across all categories) for fiscal 2025-2026 (April 1, 2025-March 31, 2026) was approximately $201 million.”

Other provinces and territories either did not respond to requests from Global News by publication or were not able to provide figures.

But these quoted dollar amounts, although representative of sales lost from U.S. alcohol products, are not necessarily losses to Canada’s economy and local retailers. That’s because, in many cases, those empty shelves have been filled with other products.

In its 2025 annual report, the Societe d’alcool du Quebec said that after it removed U.S. alcohol from store shelves in March 2025, “we took advantage of this opportunity to feature Quebec products in the freed-up spaces.”

Quebec has since said the province is open to allowing U.S. alcohol back, but only if there are trade concessions from the U.S. such as reductions in tariffs for key sectors such as forestry, aluminum, and manufacturing.

“It definitely is a boon to Canadian winemakers and Canadian spirits distillers as well and even some of it may spill over to Canadian brewers as people make sort of substitutional choices,” says Littler.

Although this means Canadian retailers likely aren’t feeling the financial hit as much as producers in the U.S., the longer those products are kept off stores shelves on this side of the border, the more tense negotiations may become with the U.S.

“The longer that the Canadian and provincial governments can sort of put up with these restrictions politically with the United States, the more impact that they will have. But of course, this seems to be a significant irritant,” says DiCapua.

“If it doesn’t mean securing a new trade agreement, which would be very important to the Canadian economy in terms of reducing or lifting uncertainty, allowing the investment to come in as well as getting tariff-free or at least low tariff access to the United States, then maybe that is a decision that might need to be considered, for sure.”

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

The B.C. government announced on Monday that as of noon, all off-road vehicles will be banned on Crown land in many areas of the province.

The ban applies to the Kamloops Fire Centre, the Southeast Fire Centre, the Coastal Fire Centre and the Cariboo Fire Centre.

“Given the scope and scale of fires currently burning in B.C., and the elevated danger ratings in many southern regions of the province, this prohibition is being put into place to further protect public safety,” the government said in a release.

“The operation of any off-road vehicle for recreational purposes on Crown land will be prohibited and all on-highway vehicles must remain on road surfaces as defined in the Forest Planning and Practices Regulation.”

The prohibition applies to off-road vehicles including all-terrain vehicles, motorcycles and off-road side-by-side vehicles.

“This is to prevent the potential for unintentional ignitions of wildfires that can be caused by backcountry activity and to mitigate the risk of being in the backcountry, where it can be more challenging and complex to receive support for evacuation if a fire started,” the government said in a release.

This prohibition does not apply to private lands or national parks. It also does not apply to emergency response, agriculture or commercial/industrial users who operate off-road vehicles for farming or business purposes.

The Kamloops Fire Centre spans from the northern border of Wells Gray Provincial Park to the U.S. border in the south, and from the Bridge River in the west to the Monashee Mountains in the east, including the Southern Okanagan and the Lytton and Lillooet areas.

The Southeast Fire Centre spans from the Mica Dam in the north to the U.S. border in the south, and from the Okanagan Highlands and Monashee Mountains in the west to the Alberta border in the east.

The Coastal Fire Centre covers the Lower Mainland, the Sea-to-Sky corridor, Vancouver Island, the Central Coast and Haida Gwaii.

The Cariboo Fire Centre spans from the Cottonwood River in the north to Clinton in the south, and from Tweedsmuir Provincial Park in the west to Wells Gray Provincial Park in the east.

This prohibition will remain in place until noon PDT on Oct. 9, or until the order is rescinded.

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