Two Jeopardy! contestants stumped by a question about Ottawa, municipal employees won't be allowed to log in from Jamaica and a councillor wants to eliminate red reverts at intersections.
CTVNewsOttawa.ca looks at the top five stories on our website this week.
A final Jeopardy! question about Ottawa stumped two contestants on the popular television show this week.
Tuesday night's Final Jeopardy category was world capitals.
The clue, as read by host Ken Jennings: "An annual event called Winterlude includes skating on the Rideau Canal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in this city."
Both contestants in Final Jeopardy were stumped. Genesis Whitlock said Paris. Then five-time champion Amy Schneider said Amsterdam.
While the two contestants didn't get the final answer right, both will receive a grand prize from Ottawa Tourism. The agency is inviting Whitlock and Schneider to experience Ottawa with an all-expenses paid trip to the capital for three nights during Winterlude.
“We want to show them what they might have missed,” Michael Crockatt, Ottawa Tourism’s president and CEO, said in a news release.
The city of Ottawa will adopt a 'hybrid' work model for its municipal employees, but the city manager says that doesn't mean they can log in from the Caribbean.
Steve Kanellakos told reporters that municipal workers will be expected to come into the office when their bosses ask them to.
“I certainly don’t support that there be this permanency of...you never have to show up, or you can go down to Jamaica and work out of Jamaica and never have to come back to the office,” Kanellakos said Wednesday. “I don’t think that’s the way to run a city.”
More than 4,000 municipal employees work out of the city's three main administrative buildings – City Hall, 100 Constellation Drive and Ben Franklin Place.
“Hybrid means that you’ll be required to come into the office when your boss needs you to come in … and that you will also be permitted to work from home when required,” Kanellakos said.
Ottawa City Hall. (File photo)
The head of Ontario's COVID-19 Science Table suggests it will be the spring before Ontario can begin to lift COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
The province's roadmap for gradual reopening suggests proof of vaccination requirements for places like restaurants and sports facilities could begin to be lifted in mid-January. The government said lifting the requirements would be based on pandemic trends following Christmas.
However, Dr. Peter Juni told Newstalk 580 CFRA's Ottawa Now with Kristy Cameron that he doesn't believe that's a realistic timeline.
"When I look at what's happening right now and when I see what's happening in Europe, the probability that we drop them in mid-January is next to zero per cent," Juni said. "We'll have just experienced the Christmas bump. We will be challenged a bit. Things hopefully go better with the third dose rollout … so, taken together, this just means the certificates are here to stay for longer than January."
Juni says the vaccine passport requirements will likely be phased out in the spring.
"Vaccine certificates plus masks in spring. I would bet on that," he said.
File image. (Jeremie Charron/CTV News Ottawa)
An Ottawa councillor wants to end red reverts at intersections for cyclists.
Coun. Jeff Leiper will ask the Transportation Committee to get rid of the red light technology that some say is dangerous for cyclists.
"If you’re a pedestrian or you’re a driver you have some expectations about how a traffic light is going to behave. If you see that the traffic that’s crosswise gets an amber or a yellow light you have a really strong expectation that you’re about to get a green," Leiper says.
"If an intersection detects that there is a cyclist at it that cyclist should get a green light no matter whether they’ve left the dots or not. The number of times there is a false detection of some sort has got to be minuscule in the grand scheme of, however, millions of vehicle movements we have in the city every year."
A red revert occurs when a vehicle trips a sensor at an intersection, leading to a traffic light change.
Before the light changes, the sensor does a final check to ensure there’s still a car or bike on the sensor.
If there is, the light turns green. But if not, the light stays red and the crossing street returns to a green light after five seconds.
A sensor at a traffic light on Carling Avenue and Maple Drive in Ottawa. (Tyler Fleming/CTV News Ottawa)
The fight over the Kanata Golf and Country Club could be going to Canada's highest court.
The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled Friday that the owner of the golf course in Kanata Lakes has the right to build a housing development on the land.
In October 2019, ClubLink formally applied to the city to bulldoze the golf course and build more homes. ClubLink and its developers, Minto Communities and Richcraft Homes, promised a new community of more than 1,500 homes with a minimum 25 per cent greenspace.
At issue was the so-called ’40 per cent agreement,’ a 1981 agreement signed between the then-city of Kanata and developers that said at least 40 per cent of the property must be kept as green space.
The Ontario Court of Appeal said the agreement was important, but not an ironclad protection of green space forever.
Mayor Jim Watson says the city will be seeking leave to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.
ClubLink wants to redevelop the Kanata Golf and Country Club lands to build homes, but the City of Ottawa says the company must uphold a 40% greenspace agreement. (Leah Larocque / CTV News Ottawa)
The World Health Organization says nearly 200 cases of monkeypox have been reported in more than 20 countries not usually known to have outbreaks of the unusual disease, but described the epidemic as 'containable' and proposed creating a stockpile to equitably share the limited vaccines and drugs available worldwide.
Fourth-grade teacher Irma Garcia was killed in her Texas classroom on Tuesday, massacred along with her co-teacher and 19 students. Two days later, a family member says her brokenhearted husband died.
In the wake of a horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has signalled that the Canadian government will be moving ahead on new gun-control measures 'in the coming weeks.' In previous Parliaments, the Liberals have made changes to Canada's gun laws, but in the 2021 federal election, Trudeau promised to go further.
One man is dead after being shot by police near a Toronto elementary school on Thursday afternoon. The incident sent hundreds of students into lockdown.
Former Canadian gymnast Abby Pearson Spadafora said on Thursday she had suffered years of abuse at the hands of Olympic coach Dave Brubaker and his wife Elizabeth and called for an independent investigation of the sport.
Four decades after the Swedish pop supergroup last performed live, audiences can once again see ABBA onstage in an innovative digital concert where past and future collide.
The National Rifle Association begins its annual convention in Houston on Friday, and leaders of the powerful gun-rights lobbying group are gearing up to "reflect on" -- and deflect any blame for -- the deadly shooting earlier this week of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
A massive Russian plane that was grounded at Toronto Pearson International Airport back in February is racking up a substantial parking bill.
Twitter shareholders have filed a lawsuit accusing Elon Musk of engaged in 'unlawful conduct' aimed at sowing doubt about his bid to buy the social media company.
A retired senior Mountie has described to an inquiry his dismay that it took five hours before anyone told him about eyewitnesses who had encountered a mass killer while fleeing the 2020 shootings in Nova Scotia.
A retired Canadian naval lieutenant and his family are up against red tape and the Taliban as they race to bring his Afghan interpreter family to Nova Scotia.
A Nova Scotia family may be forced to leave the province due to the lack of affordable housing units on the market today.
On this week's episode of Ballot Box, the team breakdowns down the highlights from the fourth week of the election campaign.
One man is dead after being shot by police near a Toronto elementary school on Thursday afternoon. The incident sent hundreds of students into lockdown.
Hamilton police say they have charged a 33-year-old woman with trespassing after a protest against Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford.
Quebec Premier François Legault may not have expected quite this type of fallout from Bill 96, but he found himself hammered by questions on Thursday -- about Quebec independence.
Quebec says it is ready to vaccinate people who have come into close contact with monkeypox as soon as Friday.
There are about 30 SIDS deaths per year in Quebec, occurring during a child's first year of life. About two-thirds are not only unexpected but are also unexplained. A recent study published in The Lancet, however, has yielded some important and 'interesting' clues about one possible cause of SIDS.
A woman from Hamilton, Ont. is now a multimillionaire after she won the $60-million Lotto Max jackpot.
A massive Russian plane that was grounded at Toronto Pearson International Airport back in February is racking up a substantial parking bill.
One man is dead after being shot by police near a Toronto elementary school on Thursday afternoon. The incident sent hundreds of students into lockdown.
An arrest has been made in connection with a homicide investigation in Lambton County,
A team of investigators from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada were deployed to London Thursday in regards to a plane crash involving a small aircraft.
One man is dead after being shot by police near a Toronto elementary school on Thursday afternoon. The incident sent hundreds of students into lockdown.
A man told court Thursday he was ready to accept punishment after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of his three-year-old daughter.
Fourth-grade teacher Irma Garcia was killed in her Texas classroom on Tuesday, massacred along with her co-teacher and 19 students. Two days later, a family member says her brokenhearted husband died.
While his job was to keep the school's hallways clean, his impact went far beyond that – touching the lives of the students who walked within them.
Basketball and hip hop collided in the Royal City Thursday night.
A Kitchener family has raised concerns about a recent act of vandalism and they're frustrated with the response they received from the Waterloo Regional Police Service.
Waterloo regional police are asking for the public’s help to find a missing 11-year-old girl.
The Edmonton Oilers defeated their Alberta rival Calgary Flames 5-4 in overtime in Game 5 of their second-round NHL playoff series Thursday night to advance to the Western Conference final.
Alberta Parks has closed a section of Fish Creek Provincial Park in the city's southeast after aggressive coyotes attacked a dog and its owner.
A Calgary judge has sentenced a young man who shot and killed another man to life in prison with no chance of parole for 12 years.
Outcry over the planned location of public washrooms caused Tuesday's city council meeting to stretch late into the evening.
A Saskatchewan woman’s granddaughter is being recognized for helping save her life and minimizing the effects of stroke after she called 911.
PGA Tour Canada is getting back into the swing of things this weekend after more than 990 days since the last shot, and the third stop on the tour is in Waskesiu at Elk Ridge Resort.
Captain Connor McDavid secured the Edmonton Oilers' ticket into the Western Conference Final with an overtime goal.
Violet Soosay's search for her missing aunt began four decades ago.
A Calgary judge has sentenced a young man who shot and killed another man to life in prison with no chance of parole for 12 years.
Would you pay nearly $14 million to share a wall with your neighbours?
The Fraser Valley Regional District is urging those living in low-lying areas to have "go kits" ready and important documents easily accessible should homes have to be quickly evacuated.
Data released Thursday by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control provides some insight into just how much overcounting of COVID-19 deaths the switch to "30-day, all-cause mortality" has created.
A 57-year-old man from the R.M. of Lajord is dead after the road maintenance vehicle he was driving collided with a train on Thursday afternoon.
A Saskatchewan woman’s granddaughter is being recognized for helping save her life and minimizing the effects of stroke after she called 911.
Another tentative deal between the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the Canadian Football League Players’ Association (CFLPA) has been reached.
