Latest news with #McGillivray
The Citizen
03-07-2025
- Sport
- The Citizen
Thompson and McGillivray lead South African Ballito Pro charge
Durban's Luke Thompson and Jeffrey's Bay local Matt McGillivray will suit up for the Ballito Pro Round of 16 as the only South Africans left in the field. Both surfers made it through their men's Round of 32 heats at Willard Beach this morning (July 3), while Cape Town's Adin Masencamp was unfortunately knocked out. Local hopeful Thompson surfed the first heat of the day, but had to wait until 9.35am to get underway as organisers chose to wait for improved wave conditions. Facing a packed heat against Hawaii's Eli Hanneman, Portugal's Frederico Morais and Australia's Jackson Baker – all of whom have Championship Tour experience – one may have expected a nervy start from the 21-year-old talent. But Thompson looked calm from the get go, opening with a solid 6.67 on his first wave of the day, later finding a 6.90 to win the heat ahead of Hanneman. Thompson's previous best Challenger Series finish is 9th, in Ballito in 2022 and Brazil in 2023, and he will be hoping to set a new career best later this week. He will face Brazil's Mateus Herdy in the Round of 16. McGillivray (28) has spent more time at the top-level, including five years of Championship Tour experience and a berth in last year's Olympics. It has been an up-and-down 2025 for him so far however, and a second-place finish in El Salvador was not enough to avoid the mid-season cut, which is why he is surfing the Ballito Pro. He has not been at his absolute best in the competition so far, needing a late wave to make it through the Round of 64 earlier this week. It was much the same in the first two-thirds of his heat this morning, where he was unable to score above 3.30 in his first five attempts. But as the remaining time dipped under 10 minutes, McGillivray came alive with two back-to-back waves that catapulted him into heat contention. He landed an aerial move with about eight minutes to go that scored him 6.83, which he followed up with a quickfire double turn adjudged at 5.03. That was enough to make it through an enthralling heat in second position behind Hawaii's Shion Crawford, while Brazil's Deivid Silva – a former winner in Ballito – and Japan's Hiroto Ohhara were knocked out. McGillivray will face Australia's Oscar Berry in the Round of 16. Elsewhere, Masencamp could not get it going in the following heat and he finished third behind Berry and New Zealand's Billy Stairmand. Meanwhile, the first perfect-10 wave of this year's Ballito Pro was registered by Mexico's Lucas Cassity (16), who landed a massive aerial spin in Heat 2. Competition surfing is finished for the day, with the first call being made at 7am tomorrow. Stay in the loop with The North Coast Courier on Facebook, X, Instagram & YouTube for the latest news. Mobile users can join our WhatsApp Broadcast Service here or if you're on desktop, scan the QR code below. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
The Citizen
01-07-2025
- Sport
- The Citizen
Four South Africans remain in Ballito Pro title charge
All four seeded South African surfers remain in the hunt for the Ballito Pro Challenger Series title. Jeffrey's Bay's Matt McGillivray, Cape Town's Adin Masencamp and Luke Thompson and Sarah Baum from Durban are carrying the hopes of the host nation as they compete for glory over the next few days. McGillivray, Masencamp and Thompson all made it through the Round of 64 on Tuesday (July 1). There was some concern that McGillivray, a Championship Tour regular and recent Olympian, was going to be left behind in his heat after struggling to find a decent wave to couple with his opening 5.0 score. He showed up with three big turns on his final wave however, catapulting him into the safety of second place behind Australian Oscar Berry. Masencamp found the going easier in his earlier surf, delivering two rock solid scores of 7.67 and 6.47 to win the heat ahead of Japan's Hiroto Ohhara. Local hopeful Thompson, who was celebrating his birthday, could not have asked for a better present than a mostly stress-free heat win ahead of American Dimitri Poulos. All three men will be back in the Round of 32. South Coast surfer Luc Lepront was the only unseeded South African to make it through the initial men's Round of 80, but he was unfortunately knocked out at the next stage. Baum was given a bye through the women's Round of 64 by way of her seeding and will compete for the first time in the Round of 32. Follow the action live at Willard Beach or via Stay in the loop with The North Coast Courier on Facebook, X, Instagram & YouTube for the latest news. Mobile users can join our WhatsApp Broadcast Service here or if you're on desktop, scan the QR code below. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Hamilton Spectator
23-06-2025
- Climate
- Hamilton Spectator
They say Muskoka won't burn. But climate has changed the calculus
They say Muskoka won't burn. The complex computer models that analyze fuel load in the forest and project wind, temperature and humidity say it is impossible. But over the past few years, forest fires have started to do things no one thought were possible. In 2018, the town of Paradise, Calif. , was engulfed in flames after a wildfire jumped a 500-metre-wide canyon that models had considered an unbreachable firebreak. To witness how Ontario's Fire Rangers prepare to tackle wildfires, the Star headed to West Nipissing, near Temagami, as a prescribed burn at Sinton Creek was carried out. The same state's Dixie Fire in 2021 sent flying embers 16 kilometres ahead of the main blaze, starting new fires farther away than any model considered feasible. The Jasper, Alta., wildfire last summer advanced eight kilometres in only four hours, fuelled by 100 km/h winds called 'unimaginable' by Parks Canada, 'driving the flames beyond any possible predictions.' A forest fire risk map for the Muskoka Region, where red shows higher risk and yellow lower risk areas. A 2009 analysis found the region — broken up by roads, cottages and Ontario's signature lakes — was a relatively low risk for wildfires. In 2009, the Western University-based Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction asked a researcher to push the wildfire model as far as it would go to see what conditions would be needed for Muskoka to go up in flames. The response: it can't happen. Muskoka has too many big lakes, which cut up the forest and prevent a fire from growing too big, while the winds aren't strong enough to carry embers across them. 'He couldn't do it. No matter how absurdly hard he pushed the model, it just wouldn't go,' said Glenn McGillivray, managing director of the institute and a professor of emergency disaster management at York University. But having seen wildfires repeatedly do things they weren't supposed to be able to do, McGillivray isn't so sure anymore. 'In all those cases, the models didn't allow it. But it happened,' he said. Fifteen years ago, it was an accepted truth that Southern Ontario was safe from forest fires. We're now not so sure. Supercharged by climate change , wildfires are getting bigger, hotter and harder to put out . The number and size of forest fires are breaking records virtually every year, making historical data increasingly irrelevant. In 2023 , more than 15 million hectares of forest burned across Canada — an area larger than the Maritime provinces — more than double the previous record and six times more than an average season. Nearly a quarter of a million people were forced to flee their homes for safety. Wildfire season is starting earlier and ending later, if it even ends at all. Reports of fire s burning through the winter — once considered an impossibility — are becoming more frequent, especially in B.C. where they can smoulder in the ground, under the snow, and emerge when warmer, drier weather returns. 'It's insane what's happening,' said Sudbury Fire Ranger Crew Leader James Paluch. 'We were fighting fires in November last year — big ones. That never happens. Out west, fires are kicking up that have been dormant for two years.' This spring, the wildfire season has been fierce — and it's only just begun. More than 1,900 wildfires have broken out, burning an area larger than 3.5 million hectares. States of emergency have already been declared in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where more than 40,000 people have been evacuated from their homes as flames encroach. Two people were killed in May while attempting to flee a wildfire in Lac du Bonnet, near Winnipeg. Speaking earlier this month, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew laid out the stakes for Canadians: 'As a nation, we're going to have to contend with future fire seasons being more and more like this, which means scaling up our firefighting capability.' Ontario, for the time being, has escaped relatively unscathed. The destruction wrought by wildfires has been concentrated in the West. But Ontario's vast boreal forest has all the characteristics needed to produce a monster wildfire, one that could sweep out of the forest and into a community this summer. Videos of the iconic yellow-and-red Canadian waterbombers have coursed through social media as With previously inconceivable fires now happening every year, it's important to understand just how many more places are at risk, said John Vaillant, the author of ' Fire Weather ,' a Pulitzer Prize finalist book that looked at the way climate change has fundamentally changed the characteristics of wildfires. 'We have to believe that Toronto can burn like L.A. We have to wrap our minds around that possibility,' he said. 'It's scary. It's sad. It totally undermines our sense of confidence in the future. And that's what climate change is really challenging us with. We really have to revise all that and it's really painful and difficult.' Ontario fire rangers carry out a prescribed burn a typical Ontario forest in West Nipissing. Officially, the populated areas of Ontario are low risk for forest fires. Most fires that break out each summer are concentrated in the remote northwest of the province. But close calls, where fires were held back at the doorstep of population centres like Timmins , aren't uncommon, and the risk of a fire breaking through into a city or town — or even cottage country — is widely ignored by folks in the south. 'The idea of Muskoka disappearing in a conflagration … you just don't want to go there,' said Vaillant. 'You could totally lose the whole thing. All you would need is a heat dome and a wind and a fire. But all that is totally possible. These are not unlikely events.' The Muskoka Lakes Fire Department has not seen any wildfires escape containment, but is acutely aware of the risk, said local Fire Prevention Officer Douglas Holland. 'We've had a few fires get into the bush, but we've been able to stop them there,' he told the Star. 'We're lucky. Because we have such a mix of trees, a lot of our fires haven't gotten up into the canopy. They've stayed on the ground.' 'But that's not to say this isn't going to change in the future.' The Muskoka fire department is conscious of the fact that climate change brings the risk of bigger wildfires and has placed an emphasis on communicating FireSmart practices to residents. This involves everything from clearing bush around homes to installing metal roofs to prevent house fires escaping into the bush and bush fires igniting homes. And so far, this has worked. But the researcher who deemed Muskoka safe back in 2009 now says climate has changed his calculus. 'If you get a good solid, dry summer like we've had, you dry everything out and then you get a little bit of dry lightning into that area. Then all bets are off,' said John Braun, a professor of statistics at the University of British Columbia, who has published more than a dozen peer-reviewed papers on forest fires. Braun has disowned the model he used, saying it had fundamental flaws in how it calculates fuel load in the forest and the potential weather patterns it envisions. 'After 15 years, I would have to say I don't think (the model) is trustworthy,' he said. The problem not only with the old model but even newer, updated ones, he explained, is that they're based on historical weather data, which is becoming increasingly obsolete. Longer periods of drought, higher temperatures and more precipitation coming all at once during big storms produce conditions in the forest that no longer resemble the past. 'What that means is you don't include the unthinkable in your possibilities. And frankly, some of these fires that we've seen in the recent past and including the California fires and things you see in Europe and Australia, these really, I think, are classified as unthinkable,' he said. 'These models are actually incapable of capturing the events that actually are possible but that just haven't happened yet.' This story is Part 3 in The Coming Firestorm, a three-part series on the growing risk of wildfires fuelled by human-induced climate change. In Part 1: The next big wildfires are coming — but Ontario doesn't have nearly enough firefighters . In Part 2: A Star reporter learns to be an Ontario fire ranger — the province's front line against the next uncontrollable blaze.
Winnipeg Free Press
01-06-2025
- General
- Winnipeg Free Press
Free Press journalists nationally recognized for child-care investigation
Their investigative series on Manitoba's child-care system has earned two Free Press journalists top honours. Reporters Jeff Hamilton and Katrina Clarke received national recognition at the Canadian Association of Journalists awards this weekend, taking home this year's McGillivray Award for investigative journalism as well as gold in the written news category. They were chosen as winners by a panel of current and former journalists out of a record number of entries — 540 — from news publications and broadcast stations across the country for work produced in 2024. 'The McGillivray jury concluded that Hamilton and Clarke's exposé of the many cracks in Manitoba's child-care system bore all the hallmarks of excellent investigative work — it brought clarity to complex subjects and used vivid personal examples to convey systemic flaws,' the Canadian Association of Journalists stated in a news release Sunday. Clarke and Hamilton worked on the six-part series for months. It highlighted opportunities for change at the provincial level to make Manitoba's child-care system more accessible, transparent and safe. Wednesdays A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future. 'The Free Press greatly appreciates the national recognition for Jeff and Katrina's journalism and our commitment to investigative reporting,' Free Press Editor Paul Samyn said. See the full list of Canadian Association of Journalists award winners here.
Cision Canada
06-05-2025
- Business
- Cision Canada
HGTV Star Scott McGillivray Joins Bath Fitter to Champion Stress-Free Bathroom Makeovers This National Home Remodeling Month
From One-Day Installs to Lasting Comfort, Bath Fitter Delivers an Emotional Return on Bathtub and Shower Renovations with Custom Solutions SPRINGFIELD, Tenn., May 6, 2025 /CNW/ -- With rising costs affecting nearly every aspect of daily life, homeowners are thinking differently about how and where to improve their homes. Today, renovations are done with more intention and thoughtfulness. It's not just about style – it's about comfort, ease, and finding smart ways to make everyday life a little better. That's exactly what Bath Fitter delivers. This National Home Remodeling Month, whether you're looking to turn your bathroom into your own private sanctuary or adapt your space to fit your needs and lifestyle, Bath Fitter bathtubs and showers deliver results that feel as good as they look, offering enhanced comfort, renewed pride in your home, and a lasting emotional return that resonates long after the renovation is complete. For over 40 years, Bath Fitter has offered a smarter way to remodel your bathroom with its custom-made tubs and showers. Their seamless, grout-free acrylic walls are expertly crafted for watertight performance and are designed to fit perfectly over your existing unit. This innovative process includes a personalized consultation, and a one-day installation making it possible to revamp your shower or tub without the typical cost, mess, or stress of traditional renovations. Trusted by homeowners and real estate experts alike, Bath Fitter is known for its high-quality materials, low-maintenance finishes and personalized approach. Renowned for his expertise in smart, value-conscious renovations, HGTV and Home Network star Scott McGillivray has teamed up with Bath Fitter to help consumers reimagine their bathrooms: "In my many years working in real estate and renovations, I've seen firsthand how the right shower and bathtub update can completely change how someone feels on a day-to-day basis," said McGillivray. "Bath Fitter makes this transformation fast, affordable, durable and truly impactful – which is why I've come to rely on them for hundreds of my own projects. It's one of the smartest investments you can make in your home." Bath Fitter is a valuable upgrade, especially as it relates to enhancing the aesthetic appeal of your space. With a wide range of customizable styles, Bath Fitter makes it easy to renovate your bathtub or shower to align with your personal aesthetic. From contemporary chic walls to traditional tub styles, experience the latest design-forward innovations from Bath Fitter: Lucca – A sophisticated textured Chevron seamless and grout-free tile pattern, the perfect blend of modern design and classic charm Sorrento – A large scale 12 x 24 tile featuring a seamless and grout-free textured design, durable, and easy-to-clean surface Ovation – A sleek and stylish skirted tub perfect for minimalist designs and traditional bathrooms alike Brushed gold accessories – A full line of brushed gold accessories. From trim kits and shower rods to doors and grab bars, safety has never looked so sophisticated "Every bathroom tells a story, and Bath Fitter is here to help homeowners achieve their ideal bath or shower without the complexity of a traditional remodel," says David Luebke, VP of Marketing at Bath Fitter. "With our innovative tub-over-tub solution, we empower people to create a space they love – a personalized and functional space, reflective of their design aesthetic, that will bring comfort, style, and durability for years to come. And with our transferable lifetime warranty, that transformation is built to last." With Bath Fitter, you get a better product, a better process, and a better value out of your bath or shower renovation. To learn more about Bath Fitter or to schedule a free consultation, visit About Bath Fitter Founded in 1984 in Montreal, Canada, Bath Fitter was conceived by three brothers who sought to find a demolition-free remodeling solution for bathrooms. Today, 40 years later, Bath Fitter has transformed over two million bathrooms with their unique tub-over-tub installation process and has become a household name and respected leader in bathroom remodeling. Bath Fitter is the market leader in manufacturing and installation of premium-quality acrylic bathtubs, bathtub liners, showers, shower liners and one-piece seamless walls with two production facilities, one in Quebec and one in Tennessee and retail locations serving over 250 markets across the United States, Canada and Ireland. Bath Fitter is committed to providing homeowners and commercial customers with high-quality products and superior service. For more information, visit:
