Toronto going ahead with Canada Day fireworks despite air quality concerns
Posted July 1, 2023 7:36 am.
Last Updated July 1, 2023 3:47 pm.
The City of Toronto is planning to go ahead with Canada Day celebrations despite poor air quality concerns.
Environment Canada cancelled a special air quality statement due to smoke from forest fires and while conditions are expected to improve from west to east, the national weather agency warns air quality and visibility can vary considerably from hour to hour.
As of 11 a.m., the Air Quality Health Index for the city was between a 4 and a 5, which is a moderate risk and those levels were expected to remain consistent throughout the day.
“People with lung disease (such as asthma) or heart disease, older adults, children, pregnant people, and people who work outdoors are at higher risk of experiencing health effects caused by wildfire smoke,” the national weather service said on Saturday.
“If you must spend time outdoors, a well-fitted respirator type mask that does not allow air to pass through small openings between the mask and face, can help reduce your exposure to the fine particles in smoke.”
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Isolated thunderstorms and scattered showers on Saturday could be more of a factor as to whether or not evening fireworks displays take place.
“We have the threat of thunderstorms pretty much all day,” says CityNews 680 weather specialist Denise Andreacchi. “We are expecting a few strong storms to pop up across the GTA and Golden Horseshoe this afternoon and evening.”
“There are no alerts for these storms at this point but we are expecting to see some activity today.”
Annual fireworks displays are scheduled to take place at Centennial Park, Milliken Park, Stan Wadlow Park and Ashbridges Bay Park. All those are scheduled to start around 10 p.m., weather permitting. There will be no fireworks displays at Nathan Phillips Square and, Mel Lastman Square had previously paused their Canada Day programming due to the weather, but it has now resumed.
Toronto police will implement their safety plan for this weekend in hopes of avoiding bad and violent behaviour seen at one of the city’s largest displays last year.
After cancelling fireworks displays for the last two days, Niagara Falls says its nine-minute extended fireworks show will proceed as scheduled on Canada Day and American Independence Day on July 4th.
Montreal and Quebec City have cancelled firework shows to stand in solidarity with northern regions of the province where wildfires are still raging out of control and fire bans remain in place.
Files from The Canadian Press were used in this report
