Ontarians on vacation ‘flabbergasted’ as tensions in Mexico escalate
CBC
Ontarians staying in Mexico are in disbelief after tensions between cartels and the military began to escalate Sunday morning.
Puerto Vallarta, in the Mexican state of Jalisco, is under a shelter in place. Criminal groups have set up roadblocks, lit local businesses on fire and gunshots have been heard in several cities across southwestern Mexico. The violence was triggered after 'El Mencho,' the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, was killed during a clash with military special forces.
Port Stanley, Ont., resident Susan Merucci, who is staying at a hotel in Puerto Vallarta, says she was “flabbergasted” by the situation, especially as she’s been visiting Mexico with her husband for more than 32 years.
“It was just unbelievable,” she told CBC Toronto Sunday. “We've never had a problem in all of the time that we've been coming down here.”
The Government of Canada issued regional advisories for parts of Mexico Sunday and advised that travellers “exercise a high level of caution.” The federal government is “closely monitoring the situation,” Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said in a statement.
Merucci has been in Mexico since December and will remain there until April, when she’s supposed to fly back after avoiding the Canadian winter.
“It's definitely eerie and scary, because normally you see people on the street and the streets are full of buses, cars and taxis,” she said. “[Now] it's just like a ghost town.”
Merucci says grocery stores a few blocks down from their hotel have been targeted.
“It is pretty scary here, especially when we don't even know what's going to happen.”
For Robert McBride, who is a Torontonian staying at a hotel in Puerto Vallarta, there’s some anxiety and uncertainty.
“I heard a bit of an explosion. And then I see really thick black smoke just billowing all over the place. So that set off an alarm bell for sure,” he told CBC Toronto Sunday.
McBride was supposed to come back to Toronto Sunday, after a three-week vacation, but his flight was one of many cancelled. He was rebooked to fly back on March 8, but McBride said that wasn’t going to work.
“I actually had to cancel my flight and get a refund. And now I [have] to try and find a way out of here,” he said. “It was an arduous process that really resulted in nothing.”
“There’s nothing that can’t be resolved.”
Five months ago, Dr. Anne Herdman Royal began a new job in Canada. Driven out of the United States by a shifting political landscape and a mass shooting at the hospital where she worked in Tulsa, Okla., it had become a country she no longer wanted to call home.
Alberta's government — along with the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, and the province’s energy regulator — say they want to crack down on oil and gas companies that don’t pay their property taxes.
Ottawa will now allow rural businesses to employ more temporary foreign workers to help supplement the local workforce, a move Restaurants Canada says will help some restaurants on P.E.I. keep their doors open.
The City of Calgary is reminding people to save water after a recent spike in usage.
The number of visitors to food banks in Mississauga has nearly doubled since the height of the pandemic, says the city's largest food security organization.
After three weeks on the road in Yellowknife doing Inuvialuktun translation for the Northwest Territories legislative assembly, Lillian Elias says she's tired and ready to go home to Inuvik.
Metrolinx is reporting "significant" delays to several GO train lines late Monday afternoon due to a police investigation.
The federal government is spending $14.3 million to support over two dozen Yukon organizations and First Nations governments with arts, culture and language programming.
The war in the Middle East, the fear that it could escalate and the economic consequences were top of mind as Prime Minister Mark Carney met his British counterpart Monday in the United Kingdom at the tail of a whirlwind trip to Europe.
Alberta and Czechia will host the fourth edition of the World Cup of Hockey, a country-versus-country hockey tournament set to hit the ice in February 2028, the NHL announced Monday.
The Ontario government has confirmed it is cutting provincial funding for seven supervised drug consumption sites, days after harm reduction advocates said they were notified of the decision.
In the sprawling labyrinth of shops and showrooms in the Chinese city of Yiwu, parts of what’s widely known as the "world’s supermarket" are beginning to look more like a world-class warehouse.
The lawyer representing Umar Zameer, a man cleared in the death of a Toronto police officer two years ago, says he has "serious misgivings" about an upcoming report into the conduct of several officers involved in the case.