Unpublished Newswire

Wildfires across Western Canada have forced thousands of people from their homes, as dry, warm and windy temperatures intensified new flares Friday, causing Manitoba to ask for international help. Manitoba and Saskatchewan are under provincewide states of emergency for the next month, while evacuations have also been ordered in large parts of Alberta and British Columbia.

Rasmus Astrup has a promise about Ookwemin Minising, the island that will be Toronto’s next waterfront neighbourhood. It will be weird. “This island is a place like nowhere else,” the Danish landscape architect said this week. “The design has to be special; it has to be a little quirky.”Quirkiness isn’t Toronto’s default setting, but Mr. Astrup and his practice SLA will get to bring some. They’ve been hired on a team to rework Ookwemin (formerly Villiers Island), the 40-hectare new district on Toronto’s port lands framed by the Don River. This year they’ll deliver a design for the...