Good morning, Greater Sudbury! Here are a few stories to start your day on this Friday morning.
Residents slated to oppose Sunrise Ridge nine-story builds
The Sunrise Ridge Estates expansion east of the water tower, located on a hill overlooking The Kingsway, has continued inching forward, despite the concerns of area residents. Most recently, a mailout indicating the plan has changed to include three nine-storey buildings instead of 66 single-family detached dwellings has raised eyebrows. However, during this week’s planning committee meeting of city council, the city’s elected officials didn’t look at the proposed changes. Tabled for the meeting was an application to extend the existing draft plan of subdivision by three years to Oct. 29, 2026, which they unanimously approved with minor changes to the previously approved plan. “There’s a lot of history here,” Ward 12 Coun
Hwy 144 crash claims the life of Cartier resident
Maintaining its reputation as a deadly roadway, yesterday’s two-vehicle crash on Highway 144 claimed the life of a Cartier resident. Nipissing West Ontario Provincial Police, Cartier Fire Department and Manitoulin-Sudbury Paramedic Services were dispatched to the scene, just south of the town of Cartier, just before 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 14. This morning, a OPP news release stated the crash occurred between a transport truck and a sport utility vehicle, and was fatal. “The driver of the SUV, a 55-year-old-person from Cartier, was pronounced deceased at the scene, while the driver of the CMV (commercial motor vehicle) was transported to the local hospital with serious, but non-life-threatening injuries,” OPP said. Highway 144 was closed in both directions for more than 13 hours during the investigation, removal and clean up of the vehicles.
Downtown rally for Palestinian freedom organized ‘in desperation’
A group of Sudburians came together downtown Feb. 14 to call for an end to hostilities in the Gaza Strip in Israel. Gathering in front of Sudbury MP Viviane Lapointe’s Cedar Street office, approximately 20 rally participants held signs and called out “Free Palestine.” Ongoing since Oct. 7, the overall Palestinian death toll from the war in Gaza has surpassed 28,000 people, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. The Associated Press is reporting that a quarter of Gaza's residents are starving. A raid took place on Feb. 12 in Rafah, a city on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where 1.4 million Palestinians have fled to escape fighting elsewhere in the Israel-Hamas war. Women and children were among those killed in the airstrikes, Palestinian officials said. It is news like this, all of it shown on screens around the world, that drew participants to rally in front of the federal politicians office, organizers said.
Women & Girls: Nickel City Sound a place for music and friendship
If you identify as a woman and have a song in your heart, then you might be interested in Sudbury’s Nickel City Sound, a fixture in the community and a place to sing your heart out. And not even a pandemic can get in the way. Instead of staying cooped up, the group safely put together nine videos, held meetings by Zoom, and took their rehearsals to a parking lot. “We had parking lot rehearsals where everybody was in their cars and singing into microphones to keep their distance,” said Jennifer Huss, interim director, who’s been a member since 2013. “It seems unreal now, but it's that we had to go to that extreme, but oh my gosh, the days that we did, everyone was dancing around on cloud nine.” The chorus is about fun, expression and improving your craft, and while there are competitions, they are based on points, so singers aren’t competing against others, they are competing to better themselves.
Meet the Cochrane farmer with a robotic dairy farm
Robots have invaded Adrian Struyk’s dairy farm, and he couldn’t be happier. Struyk runs the 1,250-acre farm, just north of Cochrane, alongside his wife Margaret and two sons, producing milk, haylage, canola, oats and wheat. The family also does custom work on an additional 2,000 acres. Since they took over the original 450-acre farm in the mid-1990s, the family has grown their land holdings, making several upgrades along the way, adding tile drainage, installing a grain-handling facility, and building a free-stall barn for its young stock. But, as their enterprise grew, the aging dairy barn, in particular, needed some attention. “It took a great deal of manual labour and the majority of our family workforce to care for the cows morning and night,” Struyk said during the 2024 Northern Ontario Ag Conference in Sudbury on Feb. 13.
Weather forces annual tradition off the ice and into Bell Park
Four wooden structures have been erected at Bell Park by first-year students from the McEwen School of Architecture, each one carrying context students hope will come across to passersby. The creations are part of an annual effort that has students create shelters for skaters on the Ramsey Lake skating path. With unseasonably mild weather preventing the path from opening, the structures were installed this year on the frozen main beach and surrounding area. “The fact that we’re not on the ice this year is undesirable, but unique,” McEwen School of Architecture master lecturer Jean-Philippe Saucier told Sudbury.com during the outdoor exhibit’s unveiling on Wednesday evening.
