
Troops conduct 21-gun salute at Government House Park for Canada Day
Booms echoed from Government House through the Edmonton core and across the river around lunch time as soldiers conducted a 21-gun salute in honour of Canada Day.
A 21-gun salute is typically done on Remembrance Day, but it is tradition for the 20th Field Artillery Regiment to do so on July 1 in Edmonton.
GUNSALUTE
Troops are seen conducting a 21-gun salute at Government House Park in Edmonton on July 1, 2025. (CTV News Edmonton/Sean McClune)
Capt. Zachary Caterini of the 61st battery said they primarily do the salute for historical purposes.
'(We also) show the community that we're here and practice the skills of the troops as well,' said Caterini following the salute. 'We want to keep the skills of our troops currently honed and ready for operational demands.'
GUNSALUTE
Capt. Zachary Caterini of the 61st battery is seen at a 21-gun salute ceremony at Government House Park in Edmonton on July 1, 2025. (CTV News Edmonton/Sean McClune)
All of the troops are qualified on howitzers, an artillery weapon that falls between a cannon and a mortar, which were used during the salute. The howitzers use 105 millimetre shells with blank rounds.
While normally done at the Alberta legislature, the salute has been executed at Government House Park by the former Royal Alberta Museum location in Glenora.
With files from CTV News Edmonton's Sean McClune.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
Former Hydro boss paid $880K for working 1½ months in 2024 until her ouster
Social Sharing The former boss of Manitoba Hydro was paid nearly $900,000 in compensation in 2024, despite only working 1½ months before her dismissal from the Crown corporation. The high pay earned by Jay Grewal, revealed to be $881,177.94 according to Hydro's annual compensation disclosures this week, suggests the utility bought out the remainder of her contract, according to a University of Manitoba business instructor who teaches a compensation course. Grewal's pay in 2024 — more than doubling the compensation of any other Hydro employee — is a 61 per cent increase from the $546,698.12 she earned in 2023 for a full year as president and chief executive officer. "My speculation is that she got every cent owed on the contract," Sean MacDonald said. For senior managers, specifically those running major energy companies, "the market dictates that if you want someone of considerable ability," the compensation must reflect that. MacDonald said he understands the high pay of departed taxpayer-funded executives can spark public outrage, but it is a necessary price to pay that accounts for their risk in assuming a job they could lose at the government's whim instead of matters related to conduct or performance. Public must pay for top CEOs "The public really needs to understand that to attract and retain quality people, to ensure our institutions and our major organizations funded by the taxpayer are well-managed, you're going to have to pay a lot for it." Hefty buyouts are part of that equation, he said. "There's nothing scandalous here." Manitoba Hydro dismissed Grewal on Feb. 13, 2024, two weeks after the NDP cabinet minister in charge of the corporation slammed her desire to purchase wind power from private sources. At the time, Hydro's board chair used the term "parting ways" to describe Grewal's departure. A former executive with Capstone Mining, B.C. Hydro and CIBC World Markets, Grewal took over Manitoba Hydro in February 2019 after a national hiring search. The NDP government was elected in the fall of 2023. There were no signs of rancour between the government and Grewal until Jan. 30, 2024, when she said in a speech that Hydro may need new sources of power by 2029 — and repeated the corporation's plans, first made in 2023 under the former PC government, to buy that electricity from private wind-energy companies. Nonetheless, Adrien Sala, the NDP government's minister responsible for Hydro, criticized Grewal's statements in the days that followed and rejected the notion Hydro would purchase power from private sources. He later disputed that this disagreement resulted in the termination of Grewal's contract. Since then, Allan Danroth has been tapped as Hydro's new CEO, and the province has announced plans to build new wind farms — but with Indigenous partners rather than private ones. Danroth started his position in August 2024. The utility's compensation report says he pocketed $192,454.60 for the year. Under Manitoba's Public Sector Compensation Disclosure Act, government entities must each year disclose the salary of every public sector employee making more than $85,000. The total pay includes overtime, retirement/severance pay, lump sum payments, vacation payouts and benefits. Hydro didn't provide a breakdown of Grewal's compensation or reveal the duration of her contract, but said she was "paid out in accordance with the terms of the contract she had signed with the board at that time." She didn't receive any severance, Hydro spokesperson Peter Chura added. Grewal didn't respond to a request for comment Tuesday through LinkedIn. Troy Craig, the head of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2034, the union representing Hydro's electrical workers, said in a text message he suspects the payout terms of Grewal's contract would be similar to previous executives. He added he's happy with the working relationship he currently has with Danroth and Hydro's chief operating officer, Hal Turner, who served as interim CEO after Grewal's departure. MacDonald said the compensation for Manitoba Hydro's CEO is significantly less than what the head of a major privately-run energy company would earn. They'd likely make "millions and millions" of dollars annually, alongside a suite of benefits ranging from bonuses to stocks and retirement options. Ex-Hydro CEO made $880k for 1½ months in 2024 4 minutes ago Duration 1:37 Former Manitoba Hydro CEO Jay Grewal was dismissed early in 2024, yet she still earned more than $880,000 in pay. A University of Manitoba business instructor says her contract was likely bought out.


National Post
an hour ago
- National Post
Lisa Sygutek: Canadians have the power to fight back against Big Tech
Recently, I was a panellist at the Canadian Association of Journalists conference in Calgary. The session was titled, 'Local Journalism in the Age of Cutbacks.' A great headline, sure, but that's not why I was there. I was there to talk about our $8-billion class-action lawsuit against digital advertising giants Google and Facebook. Article content Alongside Sotos LLP, I launched a national class-action lawsuit in 2022. I'm the representative plaintiff in a case filed in the Federal Court of Canada on behalf of all Canadian newspaper publishers, big and small, independent and chain owned. We allege that Google and Facebook have engaged in anti-competitive practices in digital advertising and siphoned billions in ad revenue from Canadian journalism. Article content Article content If we really want to talk about cutbacks, then let's talk about what's causing them. The bleed of advertising dollars away from Canadian newsrooms and straight into the pockets of two unregulated tech giants is the reason we are all hurting. We can't stop the drain without getting to the root of the problem. That's what this lawsuit is about. Article content Article content Our case is one of the first of its kind in the world. Countries like Australia, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have also picked up the cause, some with their own legal action, others with groundbreaking legislation forcing Big Tech to pay for journalism. Article content On that panel in Calgary, I listened to a lot of 'woe is me.' Stories of shrinking newsrooms. Struggles to retain talent. Frustrations over government ad policy. It was the same old tune. The media in this country has become far too comfortable living with a victim mentality. Well, I am nobody's victim. I'm a fighter. And it's time our industry remembered how to fight, too. What I didn't hear on that stage was resolve. What I didn't hear was fire. We've become so used to decline that we've forgotten how to push back and stand tall. Article content Article content We forgot that newspapers aren't just businesses. We're institutions. We are the watchdogs. The check and balance. The public record. And somewhere along the way, we let Silicon Valley billionaires convince us we didn't matter anymore. Article content Article content Well, I haven't forgotten. And I haven't given up.


CTV News
2 hours ago
- CTV News
Montreal's move to biweekly trash pick up proving to be a slow process
Garbage, which was put out for pickup on the incorrect day, lays on the ground next to recycling bins that were collected by sanitation workers in Montreal on Wednesday, June 18, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov MONTREAL — The garbage may be piling up and causing some disgruntlement on the sidewalks of a few Montreal streets, but municipal officials say it's all part of a plan to become a zero-waste city by the year 2030. And they say their plan is working. 'People are making progress in their thinking, realizing that when they participate in the recycling collection, the organic waste collection, that there is not much waste left,' Marie-Andrée Mauger said. As a member of the city's executive committee in charge of ecological transition in Mayor Valérie Plante's Projet Montréal party, Mauger is the point person overseeing a switch that has reduced the frequency of garbage collection in some neighbourhoods to a biweekly pickup. Three boroughs —St-Laurent, Verdun and Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve — have started implementing the plan, which is also a part of Plante's pledge to 'make Montreal the greenest city in North America.' But residents in Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve are not thrilled with the stench. Jonathan Haiun, a spokesman for Ligue 33, a community group in eastern Montreal that advocates for quality of life issues, said spacing out the collection hasn't had the desired effect since it was brought in late last year. 'The problem seems to be some people who just aren't composting or at least not doing it properly, and then a lot of the stuff that we do find in the garbage is just a mix of everything,' Haiun said. 'What we have been asking for since the beginning is that they go back to collecting garbage every week because we don't feel that that's actually an ecological measure.' According to most recent survey results conducted for the city and obtained by Ensemble Montreal, the opposition party at city hall, some 54 per cent of residents polled consider switching to trash pickup every two weeks 'unacceptable.' Meanwhile, other major Canadian cities have had biweekly pickup for years: Toronto since 2008, Halifax in 1999 and Vancouver in 2013. In each case, there were growing pains but all happened hand-in-hand with organic waste collection. Mauger said she expects once composting extends to 100 per cent of the city by the end of 2025, things will begin to shift. According to the Leger city survey, less than half of Montrealers use the so-called brown bin to dispose of organic waste and their knowledge of what goes in the bin has only risen by one per cent, to 41 per cent, since 2021. The survey results aren't surprising and transition rarely comes without complaint, said Karel Ménard, a Montreal environmentalist. 'I think it's a shared responsibility between the citizens, and the municipality, which has an obligation to have a clean and healthy city,' said Ménard, head of Front commun québécois pour une gestion écologique des déchets, an organization that promotes ecological waste management. 'Also, I would even say, the producers, because what we often see in the alleys are short-lived, disposable items, so there's also a problem of overconsumption.' Many municipalities in the Greater Montreal area and elsewhere in Quebec, have switched to biweekly pickup, if not every three weeks or monthly in some cases. But Greater Montreal is mainly suburbs with single-family homes, which isn't the case in the city's boroughs. 'There are 900,000 doors in Montreal, plus 40,000 businesses, industries, and institutions that have municipal collection,' Mauger said. 'We estimate that eighty per cent of the buildings in Montreal don't have their own driveway, so it's not really one size fits all.' The zero waste plan places an emphasis on reducing food waste, more composting and recycling. The city has also prohibited the use of single-use plastic items, like cups, utensils and straws. Opposition Coun. Stephanie Valenzuela of Ensemble Montréal said the polling results suggest Projet Montréal has a lot of work to do. 'The results really speak to the amount of energy and investment the city has been putting into informing residents on the goals that we're trying to achieve,' Valenzuela said. Valenzuela said the public reaction also contrasts with how the administration has portrayed itself as being innovative and avant-garde when it comes to the environment. 'We've seen that when it comes to their big promises, when it comes to the environment, they're actually missing the mark,' Valenzuela said. But Mauger is confident the city will be able to extend biweekly pickup to all 19 Montreal boroughs by 2029. 'What we see in this poll, it's also that three-quarters of the population are aware of the problem of sending too much waste to the landfill that's filling up at a very high pace,' Mauger said. 'And they want to do more to be part of the solution … so that's really promising too.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 2, 2025. Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press