Cloe Logan

Splash Pads in Canada | Created with Datawrapper Create interactive, responsive & beautiful charts — no code required.

The story has visuals on where splash pads are in cities, how many each ones has. The experts I spoke with said building and maintaining public cooling infrastructure is important – we can't ask people to stay in their homes all summer even if it's air conditioned, but especially if it isn't.

We found Canada's best splash pad — an urban cooling underdog Hotter summers prompted us to consider the ways people interact with their urban environments in an age of extreme heat. Our research brought us to an oft-overlooked solution: splash pads.

I wrote a fun (yet serious) article that narrows in on splash pads as cooling infrastructure. Includes: a panel that found the best splash pad in Canada + info about the increase of extreme heat in cities. It also features one of my best interviews of late-with a 7 year old splash pad connoisseur.

We're on the hunt for Canada's best splash pad Canada’s National Observer is digging into splash pads in the age of unbearably hot summers and wants to hear from you about your local splash pad. Is there one keeping you and your family cooler? Wha...

It's going to be another hot weekend across Canada. If you hit up your local splash pad to keep cool, snap some pictures and tell us why you like it — and aside from contributing to civic pride, you could also win prizes!

We're on the hunt for Canada's best splash pad Canada’s National Observer is digging into splash pads in the age of unbearably hot summers and wants to hear from you about your local splash pad. Is there one keeping you and your family cooler? Wha...

Want to win a @nationalobserver.com water bottle + a free one-year subscription? We are digging into splash pads in the age of unbearably hot summers + want to hear from you about your local pad – we're on the hunt for the best one. Send your submissions: splashpad@nationalobserver.com by July 11.

Nova Scotia pushes to develop offshore natural gas The call for exploration bids includes 13 parcels along the central Scotian Shelf and Slope, one of the most fished areas of the Atlantic Ocean known for its abundance of marine life.

The Nova Scotia government is renewing push for fossil fuels off the coast. The call for exploration bids includes 13 parcels along the central Scotian Shelf and Slope, one of the most fished areas of the Atlantic Ocean. Today for @nationalobserver.com

We're on the hunt for Canada's best splash pad Canada’s National Observer is digging into splash pads in the age of unbearably hot summers and wants to hear from you about your local splash pad. Is there one keeping you and your family cooler? Wha...

Enter splash pads, which serve primarily as a place for kids to play around during the hot summer months. But as those hot months get even hotter, they also serve as refuges for people in cities without air conditioning. Please share this link around, we're excited to see what you submit!

We are putting together an expert panel to review submissions while using this as an opportunity to dig into the way our urban environments do and don’t serve people during extreme heat.

We're on the hunt for Canada's best splash pad Canada’s National Observer is digging into splash pads in the age of unbearably hot summers and wants to hear from you about your local splash pad. Is there one keeping you and your family cooler? Wha...

Want to win a @nationalobserver.com water bottle + a free one-year subscription? We are digging into splash pads in the age of unbearably hot summers + want to hear from you about your local pad – we're on the hunt for the best one. Send your submissions: splashpad@nationalobserver.com by July 11.

Thank you to @metcalfuri.bsky.social for highlighting my recent series on ice roads! Being a fellow with the Metcalf Institute in 2023 was *such* an amazing experience. You can find the full series at the link below on @nationalobserver.com.

Misinformation-laden website almost convinces Alberta town to abandon climate program The town of Cochrane, Alberta, came within minutes of withdrawing from a national net-zero framework based on arguments from an AI-powered misinformation campaign uncovered by Canada's National Observ...

“This website I’m quoting from, I don’t know a whole lot about… but I just thought their words were better than mine.” — Alberta councillor, citing a website with an AI chatbot pushing towns to quit net-zero programs.

Latest from @rorywh.bsky.social
www.nationalobserver.com/2025/06/27/n...

Note to freelancers: I'm open to pitches for @nationalobserver.com! We pay pretty well, and we're flexible with timelines for assigned stories. I don't need a long pitch — think 2 paragraphs — but please give an idea of what your story is.

Some recently published freelance pieces:

Working on a story for @nationalobserver.com about municipally-owned utilities. Quite a few here in the Atlantic but am searching for ones in other parts of Canada - please send any good examples my way!

Conservatives vote with Carney government to rush Bill C-5 The federal Conservatives voted with the Liberals on a special order to push a massive piece of legislation on major project approvals through the House of Commons before the week’s end.

This article from @natashabulowski.bsky.social for @nationalobserver.com is a must read! It lays out what's happened so far with Bill C-5, and gives good background on what's at stake. Stay tuned – fed Committee on Transport, Infrastructure + Communities is set to report back to the House on Fri.

"We’re just getting started’: from Alberta to Montana, Blackfeet guardians hope to bring back the buffalo jump" by @jameswsthomson.com from ‪@thenarwhal.ca‬ is our second place winner for the #DPA25 category Best Feature Article

🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

NDP grassroots buck against 'top-down' leadership race With the NDP reduced to seven seats, Former MP Charlie Angus and party activists want to scrap data-driven or social media strategies and return to old-school organizing.

The question of how to rebuild has become existential: the NDP is down to seven MPs and lost official party status for the first time since 1993. @natashabulowski.bsky.social + @rochellebaker1.bsky.social on the future of the NDP for @nationalobserver.com

Newfoundland and Labrador's big offshore gas bet clashes with climate reality Last week, the province announced findings from its natural gas resource assessment, which looked at the recoverable volume of natural gas from previously discovered deposits in the Jeanne d’Arc Basin...

Offshore natural gas is Newfoundland and Labrador’s latest pitch for development that it claims will be “part of the solution to the global path toward-net zero emissions” despite ample evidence that fossil fuels like oil and gas must be phased out to reach climate targets. For @nationalobserver.com

"Our previous five-year deal provided a total of a three per cent general wage increase. We've fallen significantly behind, as inflation was almost seven times higher."

I'm the president of the CP branch of the Canadian Media Guild and we believe The Canadian Press can do better for its employees.

We @cdnpress.bsky.social take great pride in our work; at the same time, we are asking for fair pay in light of significant inflation since our last general wage increase of 3% starting in 2020. #canlab #cdnpoli #cdnmedia

Cold days are coming too late, cutting off northerners Ice road seasons are already getting squeezed due to warming temperatures, but climate science says the seasons only stand to shorten under current warming projections.

Sorry for the delay! It's up now: www.nationalobserver.com/2025/06/02/n...

When it comes to the ‘national interest,’ everyone has an opinion As Mark Carney's Liberal government prepares to table its criteria for nation-building projects, many competing visions are coalescing — and the spectre of pipelines past looms large.

Atlantic Premiers are on the edge of their seats, waiting to see what the feds will come back with following the meeting, where many projects in the "national interest" were pitched. @natashabulowski.bsky.social for @nationalobserver.com on that criteria.

Driving the ice road: a journey along a community’s disappearing lifeline People call ice roads “lifelines” for a reason – without them, entire communities are cut off from goods and services that those in places connected by permanent roads take for granted. Climate change...

And this is the first story of the series which details the drive between Moosonee and Fort Albany FN. 🧊

As ice road melts, a First Nation eyes solid ground First Nations across Ontario are feeling the impact of the shortening ice road season – an already narrow window that will continue to shrink. With that knowledge, many are considering building all se...

And ICYMI, this last story for the series narrows in on one solution for the shrinking ice road season: all season roads. Specifically, Fort Albany First Nation's vision for one. 🧊

Cold days are coming too late, cutting off northerners Ice road seasons are already getting squeezed due to warming temperatures, but climate science says the seasons only stand to shorten under current warming projections.

More climate context here! Along with great photos from Jesse Winter from our time in Moosonee and Moose Cree FN and important context from Stan Kapashesit, associate executive director of Moose Cree FN. 🧊

Average -30 degrees Celsius days | Created with Datawrapper Create interactive, responsive & beautiful charts — no code required.

I also chart federal data from 5 weather stations in ON, and found that there has been a significant reduction in -30 degrees Celsius days. These very cold days are vital for winter road building. 🧊

Ice roads open by February 21 | Created with Datawrapper Create interactive, responsive & beautiful charts — no code required.

Even more revealing is when roads are open to full loads. Since ice roads are built to connect communities + make goods cheaper, roads not freezing thick enough for big transport trucks is a big prob. This year on Feb. 21 (the thick of the season) 7/33 stretches of roads in ON were open to full. 🧊

There are a few ways to measure how ice roads seasons are shortening due to climate change. One obvious way is open/close dates: In Neskantaga First Nation, its road opened a month earlier between 2008 and 2018: on Dec. 22 compared to Jan. 22. This year it opened around the same day, on Jan. 19. 🧊

Cold days are coming too late, cutting off northerners Ice road seasons are already getting squeezed due to warming temperatures, but climate science says the seasons only stand to shorten under current warming projections.

The latest from me for my series on ice roads for @nationalobserver.com. This story focuses on how climate change is already impacting ice roads and what future projections are saying about their futures. 🧊

New Brunswick and Nova Scotia put forward a unified front with the feds to transition off coal by 2030 Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston and New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs were in Ottawa on Monday for an announcement, where Wilkinson said the federal government has finalized a joint policy statement ...

NS and NB had both given up on the loop as of 2023 – they said they were instead focusing on local renewable energy and an intertie between the two provinces, as supported by the federal government. This was a few months after the federal government cut Newfoundland and Labrador out of the project.

And ~yes~ this sure sounds like the Atlantic Loop! NB Premier Susan Holt told Power & Politics that the newly proposed energy corridor is “very similar” to the Atlantic Loop, but will have slightly different connection points.