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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
While much of the country groans at the thought of major snowfalls, huge dumps of the white stuff are good news for those who enjoy winter sports. But if you’re going skiing and snowboarding this season, make sure you have a plan to keep track of friends and family on the slopes.
And regardless of whether you make it out to the hills, it’s important to remember winter driving tips and avoid snow-shovelling aches and pains.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Coal: Saskatchewan looks to run conventional coal for power well beyond Ottawa’s 2030 phase-out deadline
- Oil and gas: B.C. company cancels plans to build oil refinery for fuel exports to Asia
- Science: Physicists wowed by record-shattering neutrino detection
- Travel Canadian: Looking for a made-in-Canada travel experience? Here are some ideas
- Drive: Green gains from EVs, more fuel-efficient engines curtailed by demand for trucks and SUVs, study shows
- Wildfires: After losing his home in L.A. wildfires, a Canadian trumpet virtuoso finds comfort in music
- Sports: A win for teams and their venues as they cut their carbon footprints
- Analysis from The Narwhal: Power to the people? How energy is shaping the Ontario election
A deeper dive
William Larkham, Jr. , the winner of Alone, on the History channel.HISTORY channel/Supplied
Advice from the man who endured 84 days in the Canadian wilderness
Erin Anderssen is the happiness reporter for The Globe. For this week’s deeper dive, we share a shortened and edited version of her story about how to make it through difficult times.
William Larkham Jr. is not a mental-health expert. He’s never read a self-help book. But he demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of hardship and uncertainty, all while retaining his wits and optimism. What wisdom might he share with his fellow Canadians?
Larkham became a folk hero in Newfoundland last year when he won Season 11 of Alone, the reality TV show that scatters individuals in the wilderness without outside assistance to see who can endure the longest. After 84 solitary days in Canada’s Far North, he outlasted his mostly American competitors to win the US$500,000 prize.
He spoke with Erin Anderssen, who wrote that he’s too humble to brag. But as he reflected on lessons learned from his adventure, he can’t hide the silver-lining attitude that earned admiration from so many viewers.
Certainly, Larkham went into the Arctic highly skilled. He’d grown up in an isolated northern community, fishing and hunting with his family. From the books about northern explorers he read as a boy, he knew to undercook his food and save an animal’s blood for nutrients. Remembering the lessons of his Inuit relatives, he ate the raw liver from every catch, and drank hot birch tea to preheat his body before a nap.
Fishing for a living has taught him to stay calm; on the ocean, nothing’s constant, engines break down, the wind comes up quickly. “Getting mad slows you down,” he says. “You focus on what actually needs to be done.”
When an audacious pine marten pilfered his food, he named her Sassy, and figured out new ways to hide his stash. He spent more time trying to solve the puzzle of what happened to it than cursing the loss.
His son’s 12th birthday fell in the last month of the competition. It was the first one he would miss, and a hard reminder of how long he’d been away. What else to do, he decided, but celebrate with the best meal he could – the white, fleshy head of his most prized fish, cooked in a pot over the fire.
Adjusting back to the hurry and noise of modern life took longer.
Slow down, he wants to say. Grieve the beaver tail that’s gone for good, and move on. Plan ahead for a fish on the line. Spend your time where it matters. Pay attention to the pine martens. Share your food. (And crack open a Canadian-caught snow crab.)
That’s his advice for surviving a hard winter. And if spring comes late, he says, there’s always a silver lining: so do the mosquitoes.
William Larkham Jr. cuddles his new dog, Sassy. She shares the name with a pine marten he met on Alone, a History Channel competition show he won.William Larkham Jr.,/Supplied
What else you missed
- Colder Quebec winter gives ice fishing aficionados reason to celebrate
- Trump administration funding freeze halts U.S. wildfire prevention work
- As Donald Trump hits delete, the race is on to save LGBTQ+ and climate data
- Finland’s first green hydrogen plant starts commercial production
- Clean energy investors brace for U.S. policy changes with an eye on the long term
- Britain’s Thames Water faces investigation over failing environmental promises
Opinion and analysis
Tony Keller: Does Mark Carney want a trade war with Trump over carbon emissions?
Green Investing
Despite hostility in the U.S., ESG investing is still living a quiet life in Canada
Canadian investors and corporations are sticking with the principles of environmental, social and governance investing in the face of an intensifying backlash in the United States, but they are being far less vocal about it. A survey of ESG sentiment released shows major investors remain committed to targets for reducing carbon emissions, diversity in the workplace and other sustainability-related measures as parts of their risk-management programs.
- EPA chief says he will seek return of $20-billion in clean-energy grants awarded by Biden
The Climate Exchange
We’ve launched the next chapter of The Climate Exchange, an interactive, digital hub where The Globe answers your most pressing questions about climate change. More than 300 questions were submitted as of September. The first batch of answers tackles 30 of them. They can be found with the help of a search tool developed by The Globe that makes use of artificial intelligence to match readers’ questions with the closest answer drafted. We plan to answer a total of 75 questions.
Photo of the week
Bernardo Sarmento and three-year-old Rafael sled down a residential street during a snowstorm in Ottawa on Feb. 13, 2025. The city declared a significant weather event after Environment Canada predicted total snowfall amounts ranging from 30 to 40 centimetres with near zero visibility at times.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
Guides and Explainers
- Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
- We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP29 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
- We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.
Catch up on Globe Climate
- Canadian clean tech versus U.S. politics
- Tariffs, blueberries and groundhogs
- Canadian environmental policy, meet Trump
- Does 2 Billion Trees ring a bell?
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