It was early August 2022, when Michelle Wigmore was on her way back from leading a crew of wildland firefighters near Grande Prairie, Alta. They stopped for a coffee in Fox Creek, about 230 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

"There was a 'help wanted' sign up and the wage that they were offering at the Tim Hortons was higher than all our crew members," said Wigmore in an interview with CBC's What On Earth.

While they made a joke of it at the time, Wigmore — who has about three decades of experience fighting wildfires in Ontario and Alberta — says it felt unfair when she considered the amount of training and work involved in the job.

Low wages are one of the reasons Wigmore and others say wildland firefighters in Alberta are not returning to the seasonal jobs, resulting in a dwindling number of experienced firefighters and creating potential safety risks to personnel and the public.

Other reasons include "lack of benefits [and] lack of potential opportunity in the organization," said a former wildland firefighter, whom CBC News has agreed to call by one of his initials, D, because of concerns speaking out could harm his livelihood.

Some Canadian provinces have logged a jump in unclaimed dead bodies in recent years, with next of kin citing funeral costs as a growing reason for not collecting loved ones' remains.

The phenomenon has prompted at least one province to build a new storage facility. Demand for memorial fundraisers has surged. The overall cost of a funeral in Canada at the top end has increased to about $8,800 from about $6,000 in 1998, according to industry trade group estimates.

Now, in the wake of an uproar over unclaimed bodies kept in freezers outside the (Health Sciences Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador), the province is constructing a permanent storage unit to hold remains.

"People weren't claiming bodies because they realized they couldn't afford to bury them," said Jim Dinn, leader of the province's opposition New Democratic Party. "It's not about building a bigger storage unit: It's about addressing the underlying cause causing the accumulation of bodies and removing the barriers so people can have a dignified burial."

A child under five years old has died of measles in Ontario, according to the province's public health agency, the first such death in more than a decade.

In a report published Thursday, Public Health Ontario said the child was not vaccinated against the highly infectious respiratory virus. It did not indicate when or where the child died, or their age.

The report shows there were no other measles-related deaths recorded in the province between Jan. 1, 2013 and this week.

Measles has been on the rise in both Ontario and elsewhere in Canada as cases increase globally, particularly in Europe, which has seen tens of thousands of infections over the last year.

The Cannes Film Festival opened Tuesday with the unveiling of Greta Gerwig's jury selection and the presentation of an honorary Palme d'Or — the festival's most prestigious prize — for Meryl Streep as the French Riviera spectacular kicked off its 77th edition.

But along with buzzy films from Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, to Kevin Costner's American Horizon and Yargos Lanthimos's Kinds of Kindness, Cannes is looking particularly Canadian this year. In the largest showing since 2012 — which saw three features and a short film from the country in the official selection — this year's festival is largely bolstered by productions and artists from the Great White North.

After his 2022 Crimes of the Future inspired Cannes walkouts and a seven-minute standing ovation (somewhat obligatory at the festival), body horror specialist David Cronenberg is headed back to the French film showcase. This time he is debuting The Shrouds, a Guy Pearce, Vincent Cassell, Diane Kruger and Sandrine Holt-led horror about a recently bereaved husband who invents a way to observe, and commune with, the dead.

Susan Dennison recently had an unsettling experience at her local grocery store, a Loblaw-owned Fortinos in Burlington, Ont.

Just as she was leaving, the wheels on her shopping cart locked up — making it immobile.

She said a store employee rushed over and demanded to see her receipt.

"I felt like I was ambushed," said Dennison, who scrambled to find her bill. "She's badgering me, like, 'Is it in your wallet? Is it in your pocket?'"

She said she was finally cleared when the employee found the receipt — in one of her shopping bags.

A man from Assiniboia, Sask., who was already in custody charged with sex crimes against children, is now facing 60 more charges after further investigation into alleged sexual assaults of minors over an 18-year time span, RCMP say.

Police arrested Richard John Dyke, now 47, whose home was a licensed daycare, in November 2023.

He was charged with 13 total sex offences after police said investigators had determined three boys younger than 12 were sexually assaulted in the mid-2010s.

In a news conference Tuesday, RCMP said they have identified 29 additional victims, all youth between the ages of 18 months and 17 years of age when the offences occurred, with the majority being male.

The alleged offences date from as far back as 2005 to November 2023.

A wildfire that's threatening the northwestern Manitoba community of Cranberry Portage hasn't gotten bigger, but first responders could still be fighting it weeks from now, a provincial wildfire official said.

The entire population of Cranberry Portage evacuated Saturday as a massive blaze marched toward the community, devouring trees on thousands of hectares of land.

Earl Simmons, the director of the Manitoba Wildfire Service, said the fire hasn't moved or gotten smaller. Though the province said Sunday it was about 35,000 hectares in size, it is actually about 31,500 hectares (or 77,838 acres), after subtracting the space that bodies of water take up.

The fire was moving at "unbelievable" speed, Simmons said — it was swallowing up land at a rate of about two kilometres an hour at the front of the fire, and about one kilometre an hour on the sides. At times, flames were travelling against the wind, but the fire still raged.

In his 40 years of experience with wildfires, Simmons has "never seen a fire move like this fire moved," thanks to high winds and extremely dry conditions in the area.

More than two decades after her body was found at the side of a road, the RCMP has agreed to apologize to an Indigenous woman's family for failing to properly investigate her death.

The apology follows a probe by the Mounties' watchdog body — the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC) — which pointed to gaps in two separate investigations into the woman's disappearance.

The CRCC, an independent agency that handles complaints about RCMP members' conduct, said the investigations were unreasonable and the officers' conclusion that there was no evidence of foul play was premature.

"Any death is tragic, but a death replete with unanswered questions is undoubtedly even more painful," wrote CRCC chair Michelaine Lahaie in her final report, obtained by CBC News through an access to information report

"A more thorough investigation may have been able to answer some or most of these questions."

Families Minister Jenna Sudds said Monday some Ontario daycare centres have pulled out of the federal government's national early learning and child care program because the province hasn't stepped up with enough cash.

Asked about some daycares either rejecting or bailing out of the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program, Sudds said it's a "consequence, unfortunately, of a delay with respect to the province of Ontario coming forward with a sustainable and long-term funding formula for providers."

Sudds said the province is "responsible for fostering those relationships" so that providers have the money they need to "confidently continue to provide high-quality services."

Martin Rehak isn't quite sure what to make of it yet, as he sees some of the houseboats around him on Yellowknife Bay sitting on ground that's normally underwater.

His own home is still afloat.

"I don't know if it's supposed to be concerning or not," he said. "I mean, it's different — but I don't know if it is good or bad."

"There's at least two or three [houseboats] right now, I could think of off the top of my head, who normally would be floating but are sitting on the floor of the lake."

According to the latest water monitoring report, issued by the territorial government last week, Great Slave Lake is the lowest it's ever been recorded at this time of year. The low water means there are vast areas of exposed land in Yellowknife Bay that are typically underwater.

Quebec's labour tribunal has given union accreditation to workers at an Amazon warehouse in Laval, Que., a first in Canada.

Workers at the DXT4 warehouse, located in Laval, a suburb north of Montreal, had been working toward unionizing with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) for two years.

The CSN filed an application with Quebec's Administrative Labour Tribunal on April 19 to represent some 200 employees. The decision came down Friday.

Caroline Senneville, the CSN's president, said employees were dissatisfied with what they described as a hectic work pace, low wages, and inadequate health and safety measures.

Guanghu Cui was poring over his TD Bank statements in March, preparing to pay taxes for his small immigration consulting firm in Oakville, Ont., when he noticed a $1.50 fee for sending an e-transfer.

It was surprising, because when he'd opened his business account three years ago, his financial adviser told him the plan included five free transactions a month and he'd never exceeded that number.

Cui complained and eventually TD said it would reimburse him for the fees and compensate him for his "frustration and inconvenience."

But when the paperwork arrived for Cui to sign, it included a condition saying he must "keep it confidential." While he could speak about the dispute, he would not be allowed to tell anyone that TD had offered compensation.

Cui emailed TD to say he wouldn't take the offer if the bank didn't drop the gag order.

"I was told the offer is final and there's no room for negotiation… take it or leave it," said Cui. "That is just unfair. And that is unethical."