That dry, hot weather will not be constant, however, and is expected to be split up by several cool fronts.

This will likely come as a relief to many, with Accuweather Lead Forecaster Brett Anderson saying it won’t be as sweltering as last year.

“We’re going to see much more changeable weather, yes we’ll have heat, we’ll have spells of dry weather, but we don’t expect patterns where it’s going to lock in for weeks on end,” Anderson said.

The summer is still expected to rank among the 10 warmest on record, but that’s largely due to overall warmer-than-normal temperatures especially in Canada’s north.

Specifically, the weather in southern Ontario is expected to be pleasant, with hot periods broken up by what’s expected to be welcome cooler days, although some thunderstorms are expected earlier in the season.

“Overall the humidity, the temperature, is going to be fairly pleasant across much of southern Ontario this summer,” said Anderson.

Residents living in Montreal through to Quebec City can also expect the mercury to rise.

The high temperatures in Quebec will be a continuation of a warm, dry spring, which has resulted in less water evaporating from the ground – a process that has a cooling effect.

Officials tell the CBC they have found either human or animal remains on the same property where the charred body of Ancaster man Tim Bosma was located.

A forensics team has been brought in to determine whether the remains are those of a person or animal.

Millard has been charged with first-degree murder, amongst other charges, in the disappearance of Bosma, who never returned after taking two men out on a test drive of a truck he was selling.

A memorial for Bosma is planned for later this week in the Hamilton area.

Police are still looking for at least two other suspects in the disappearance, which has led them to search various locations across the province.

Among those locations is Millard’s farm, where an incinerator was also discovered.

Designed to cremate livestock, ‘The Eliminator’ was purchased by Millard last summer. Police say Millard did not own any animals.

Police are still looking into possible connections to missing persons cases possible associated to Millard.

Topping the list is Laura Babcock, a 23-year-old girl who went missing last summer. Her ex-boyfriend has indicated that she knew and was associated with Millard.

Anarchopanda, the unofficial mascot of the Quebec student strikes, has completed a fundraising campaign to contest fines levied against protesters in recent months.

More than $31,000 has been raised according to Anarchopanda — whose real identity is Julien Villeneuve, a philosophy professor at the College de Maisonneuve.

He became a local celebrity during the student strikes where, clad as the bamboo-munching bear, he peacefully marched with students, offered hugs to police, and spread the authority-resisting gospel of anarchism.

Although the strikes ended last year, the most committed core of protesters carried on this spring. First they fought the smaller tuition hikes introduced by the Parti Quebecois and, lately, have been contesting an alleged crackdown on civil liberties.

Villeneuve was detained last month and fined $637 for not respecting a Montreal bylaw that has become the focus of the civil-liberties dispute.

He is now fighting that local bylaw, P-6 — which bans masks at protests, and requires that an itinerary be submitted before any demonstration in Montreal.

The case challenging the constitutionality of the bylaw is set to resume in October before Quebec Superior Court.

Villeneuve says he has been pleasantly surprised by the amount collected in less than a month. That offers him some hope that he might be able to cover the legal bills if the case persists.

“Initially, I expected (to raise) $10,000,” he said. “But we will need more than that, especially if the city appeals.”

The most controversial provisions of P-6 came into existence in May 2012, at the height of the student strikes.

However, the Montreal police only started applying them systematically this spring. A motion to strike down the bylaw, introduced last month by an opposition party at city hall, failed.

Villeneuve said the bylaw gives too much arbitrary power to the police. That suspicion of power is consistent with the anarchist credo that inspired the name of Villeneuve’s mascot alter-ego.

“The executive (municipal body) and the (police) can declare any gathering of three or more people illegal,” he said.

“They apply it like they want — and that’s a problem.”

He said masks provide protection for people who, for whatever reason, might fear reprisals. The bylaw takes away their ability to demonstrate anonymously, he said.

Villeneuve also criticized the fines, which range from $500 to $1,000 for a first offence.

“How fast do you have to speed on the road to get that kind of fine?” Villeneuve asked, rhetorically.

He also criticized the police methods and the long hours protesters have had to wait before being processed, handcuffed and without access to water, food, or bathrooms.

The practice known as kettling — where police encircle protesters to limit their movement — has been widely used by the Montreal police.

“They could just take our addresses and mail us the fines,” he said. “Essentially, it’s repression to take away people’s desire to demonstrate.”

The bylaw was passed at a time that Montreal was on edge, with daily demonstrations occasionally devolving into street scuffles, blocked downtown traffic, smashed commercial windows, and transit interruptions.

Marvin Rotrand, a city councillor who voted in favour of the bylaw said he believes the public generally supports the bylaw and only a minority are fighting it.

“The people who are contesting are really taking an extreme position,” Rotrand said. “They (want to) have absolute rights and they don’t care how those absolute rights affect the rest of society.”

For Montreal councillor Alan DeSousa, one of the goals of the local bylaw was to leave police with an alternative to applying the Criminal Code and leaving people with a permanent record.

In the federal Parliament, the Senate is one vote away from passing Bill C-309 which would make it a criminal offence to wear a mask while taking part in a riot or an unlawful assembly while wearing a mask. The law would carry a maximum 10-year prison term in the case of a riot.

“In the absence of P-6, young people who wish to demonstrate would likely be subject to the Criminal Code, and as a result we would be criminalizing our youth,” he said.

Rotrand says other Canadian cities have similar bylaws. Police from Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto told The Canadian Press, however, that to the best of their knowledge they were unaware of any bylaw requiring a demonstration itinerary to be submitted beforehand.

A city spokesman later clarified that cities elsewhere in the world have similar bylaws.

The funds raised by “Anarchopanda” will be used to pay legal costs in two simultaneous cases: the constitutional fight against the bylaw, and the battle against the more than 1,000 tickets handed out.

Both of Villeneuve’s lawyers are working as volunteers on the constitutional case.

The money will help pay for assorted court costs such as service and interrogation fees, in that case, as well as the lawyer fees in the cases fighting the individual tickets.

“We will need to pay the lawyers’ salaries because these trials are going to last for a very long time,” Villeneuve said.

The fundraising campaign is just one of the many actions protesters have taken to oppose the bylaw. Last week, students and activists staged a mock preemptive arrest as a means of heaping scorn on the Montreal police’s recent use of mass detentions.

Police have moved in quickly at the start of protests lately and rounded up large groups to detain, process and fine them.

The protesters last week separated into two groups — with some dressed up as police, and others demonstrating — in an effort to mimic the actions of authorities.

Before the event began, some wondered: would the police kettle the kettle?

“The (Montreal police) doesn’t give away its strategies for each demonstration,” said Jean-Bruno Latour, a spokesman for the force, before the demonstration.

In the end, the demonstration remained peaceful and saw no intervention from the police.

Meteorologists at AccuWeather.com say the majority of Canadians can look forward to a more “typical” summer this year, when hot spells will be interspersed with cooler periods.

“The biggest takeaway from this forecast is it’s not going to resemble last year’s summer, which was the warmest summer on record for Canada,” Brett Anderson, lead forecaster for Canada, told The Canadian Press.

“We’re going to see much more changeable weather. Yes, we will have spells of heat, we will have spells of very dry weather but we do not expect patterns where it’s going to lock in for weeks on end of hot dry weather.”

The season is still going to rank among the top-10 warmest summers on record though, but that’s largely due to recurring warmer-than-normal temperatures in the country’s far north.

A warmer than average summer predicted for much of Atlantic Canada has turned up as one of the surprises in the forecast, said Anderson.

“This summer is going to shape up to one they’re going to like,” he said, adding that a persistent high pressure system over the region and warmer-than-normal temperatures in the waters of the North Atlantic were expected to help keep temperatures fairly high.

“There’s going to be days when it cools down, it’s not going to be super persistent, but overall I think it ends up warmer than normal.”

Residents living in Montreal through to Quebec City can also expect the mercury to rise.

The high temperatures in Quebec will be a continuation of a warm, dry spring, which has resulted in less water evaporating from the ground — a process that has a cooling effect.

Meanwhile, the weather in southern Ontario is expected to be pleasant, with hot periods broken up by what’s expected to be welcome cooler days, although some thunderstorms are expected earlier in the season.

“Overall the humidity, the temperature, is going to be fairly pleasant across much of southern Ontario this summer,” said Anderson.”

“It looks like a comfortable summer coming up in that region.”

Moving west, regions from southern Saskatchewan to southern Alberta are expected to sweat it out for much of the season.

“We’re going to see some record heat there in the month of July,” said Anderson. “Areas south of Calgary I think are going to see some spells of very hot weather, perhaps record breaking temperatures.”

Residents living in areas between Edmonton, Winnipeg and the U.S. border should brace for a higher-than-normal amount of severe thunderstorms this summer, as well as some very warm spells.

Drier conditions are expected in much of southeastern British Columbia while the most balanced temperatures are predicted for Vancouver and southwestern parts of the province.

The soggiest spots this summer are likely to be the northern Prairies and areas of northwestern Ontario particularly around Lake Superior, including Thunder Bay and Sault Ste Marie.

“Folks in that region are going to be cooler, more stormier this summer. I don’t think they’ll be too happy,” said Anderson.

Areas of the northern coast of British Columbia are also expected to get a fair amount of rainfall this summer.

Despite this predictions that this year’s summer will be less of a boiler than last season, Anderson said Canadian summers in general have been getting hotter over time.

“Overall Canadian summers are getting warmer. We’ve seen an increase of 1.4 Celsius since records began in 1948,” he said. “Canadian summers are also getting a little bit wetter…part of that reason is also the warming of the far North.”

Born: May 30, 1977

Age: 35

Education: Honours degree in political science from the University of Western Ontario, master’s degree in political science from the University of Calgary.

Private career: Worked as a researcher for the right-leaning National Citizens Coalition when it was led by Harper.

Political career: Active in student politics at the University of Western Ontario. Interned in former Reform leader Preston Manning’s office and later for then-Reform MP Rob Anders. Finalist in Magna’s “If I Were Prime Minister” essay contest in 2000. Became Harper’s executive assistant when he returned to federal politics in 2001 to lead the Canadian Alliance party. Named principal secretary in 2008. The longest-serving member of Harper’s inner circle.

Personal: Known as a monarchist. Once lived in a one-bedroom apartment over the garage at Stornoway when Harper was Opposition leader.

For the record: “Ray is really good, and trusted. He’s quiet and handles lots of tough issues. And yes, he stays out of the limelight.” — Jason Lietaer, former head of the Conservative Resource Group

The group — which includes author Margaret Atwood, Green Party leader Elizabeth May, and actor Gordon Pinsent — has signed an online petition to rename this Monday’s public holiday “Victoria and First Peoples Day.”

Peter Keleghan, an actor and spokesman for the group, says the name would provide a chance to honour both the Crown and the indigenous peoples of Canada.

He says it would help create a better understanding of the various peoples who helped shape Canada.

National Aboriginal Day is celebrated every year on June 21 but it’s not recognized as a national holiday.

Victoria Day marks the birthday of Queen Victoria and is celebrated every year on the last Monday before May 25.

Quebec celebrates National Patriots’ Day on the same day, to honour the rebellion against the British in 1837.

A survey of almost 600 dealerships across the country found that the labels were attached to only 63 per cent of the new vehicles on outdoor lots.

And vehicles displayed in dealer showrooms had the labels affixed just 43 per cent of the time. Some high-end models — BMW and Rolls-Royce, for example — had a zero compliance rate.

The poor showing comes as Natural Resources Canada conducts a review of the voluntary label program for new vehicles, under the brand EnerGuide, including a proposal that it be made mandatory.

The survey of 592 new-car dealerships in 33 large cities was carried out earlier this year by Posterity Group Consulting Inc. under a $113,000 government contract.

The EnerGuide label program for vehicles was launched in 1998 to help consumers make informed choices about the fuel efficiency of new passenger cars, vans and light-duty trucks.

The labels are attached by manufacturers, indicating the number of litres of fuel needed to travel 100 kilometres, and showing the difference between city and highway driving.

The program requires manufacturers to test fuel efficiency of various models under government-approved procedures and standards.

Posterity’s final report, delivered in late March, was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

Posterity found that some dealers removed the manufacturers’ EnerGuide labels because they also included the retail price. Others tore them off because of “aesthetics,” while some said the labels affixed to the windshield were “impeding” drivers’ vision during test drives.

Many others who pulled them off claimed the labels gave inaccurate or misleading information about fuel-efficiency.

“At some dealerships, EnerGuide labels were missing due to the errors discovered in the mileage estimates claimed by these manufacturers,” says the report.

“Ten makes had compliance rates of zero per cent, including Aston Martin, Bentley, BMW, Ferrari, Jaguar, Land Rover, Maserati, Mini and Rolls-Royce.”

A spokesman for the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association, representing 3,250 dealerships selling 22 brands, said the poor compliance rate across the country was no surprise.

“These things are less and less relevant,” chief economist Michael Hatch said in an interview. “The paper label is decreasingly relevant for consumers.”

Apart from price, the most important specification for new-vehicle buyers today is fuel efficiency, Hatch said. And most consumers walking into a showroom have done extensive homework online, unlike in 1998 when there were fewer options for obtaining timely data.

“The world has changed,” Hatch said.

Natural Resources plans to radically revamp the label program, with a label redesign, new information on carbon dioxide and smog emissions, and special labels for electric vehicles.

The current fuel-consumption label “does not provide Canadians with the information they need to compare the energy, environmental, and financial costs and benefits of different vehicle choices,” the department says.

A new fuel-efficiency testing regime would also expand to include air-conditioner usage, cold temperature operation and higher speeds with faster acceleration.

“For most vehicles, consumption will increase by about 15 per cent,” spokesman Guillaume Berube said in an email.

The department is also considering making the new EnerGuide label regime mandatory for the 2016 model year.

Hatch says his group is opposed to mandatory labelling, given that consumers have many other ways to acquire relevant information about new vehicles.

“It’s kind of an old-school solution to a problem that in our view doesn’t exist,” he said. “It’s just another layer of red tape.”

Hatch’s group has no objection to retaining an improved paper label, but does not want regulations requiring them.

Berube says the department has received 168 submissions on the proposed changes, including a requirement to colour them blue.

He said he could not provide a timeline for eventual changes, but the department’s regulatory notice says a voluntary system would have to be in place by December this year to catch the 2016 model year.

If a mandatory system is chosen, proposed regulations would be published next year, says the notice.

   In a statement issued Sunday morning, Nigel Wright says Stephen Harper has accepted his resignation.
The Prime Minister’s Office said earlier this week that Wright personally paid off $90,000 in inappropriately claimed housing expenses for Duffy, who later stepped down from Conservative caucus.
Wright says his actions were intended “solely to secure the repayment of funds,” which he considered to be in the public interest.
He says he did not tell Harper how Duffy’s expenses were repaid, either before or after the fact.
Wright says he regrets the impact the matter has had on the government, the Tory caucus and all his colleagues.
In a separate statement Harper said he accepted Wright’s resignation with “great regret.”
Harper says he accepts that Wright believed he was acting in the public interest but understands his decision to resign.

A vessel with three men aboard hit a sandbar in rough seas early yesterday morning and started taking on water.

The body of a 23-year-old man from Tracadie-Sheila was later found near where the boat ran into trouble off of Tabusintac (ta-BOO’-sihn-ak).

The RCMP say a 35-year-old man from Tabusintac and a 32-year-old man from Brantville are still missing.

A military search for the two was called off Saturday afternoon about 10 hours after the boat issued a distress call.

The Rescue Centre in Halifax said two Coast Guard vessels and a Cormorant helicopter did all they could to find the two, and the matter was now in the hands of the R-C-M-P.

Mounties, along with search teams from Miramichi and Restigouche and local residents were expected to continue combing the shoreline today for any sign of the two men.

The Transportation Safety Board is also sending a team to investigate the tragedy.

—

ScH

As things begin to warm up, many people take out their tools and start digging, trimming and planting, all of which can be hard work.

Before going for a run or hitting the gym you likely stretch and warm up, but how about before starting gardening?

Dr. Stacy Irvine, a chiropractor at Totum Life Science, says it’s important to do that, and also to break up your work.

“Try to spend approximately fifteen minutes doing each task, which means that you’re going to be changing your body position while gardening,” Irvine said. “People get in trouble when they stay in one position for too long.”

Improper techniques can lead to back injuries as well as repetitive strain injuries to joints and muscles.

Beyond warming up and alternating tasks, it’s also important to lift right – bending your knees and keeping a straight back – as well as kneeling to plant.