Canada was thrust into a trade war again this weekend. After the US reportedly tried to change deal terms at the last minute, Canada backed out of a proposed trade agreement. The US then imposed a broad set of tariffs on $28 billion of goods on Saturday, with Canada announcing dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs set to…
Following its historic satellite launch earlier this year, Kepler Communications says it has brought online the first commercial space data relay service, effectively creating orbital data centres. The news: The Toronto-based company announced on Monday that its satellite constellation is now delivering real-time, space-based computing to its commercial and government customers. With this, Kepler said…
Anyone who has shared a vehicle knows it involves a little compromise. One driver shifts the seat up, while the other moves the mirrors and drops the steering wheel. It can get frustrating, fast. For engineers at GM Canada, easing that handoff was a technological challenge worth taking on. Within weeks, the Ontario-based team developed…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In 2022, a group of high schoolers designed 150 LEGO-inspired airplane kits, 3D-printed them one by one, assembled them by hand, and shipped them to a school in Kenya. How is that for a nonprofit origin story? Student Makers was founded in California in 2019 and got its 501(c)(3)…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In 1983, an Australian agricultural adviser named Tony Rinaudo was working in the Sahel when he noticed something that didn’t fit the picture everyone had of the region. The land looked barren. But beneath the depleted soil, root systems were still alive. When farmers eased the pressure of overgrazing,…
A group of students at the University of Waterloo broke a world record for their amateur liquid rocket launch. The news: At the 2026 Launch Canada Challenge in Timmins, Ont. last week, the University of Waterloo Rocketry Team—which has roughly 100 student members—successfully launched its liquid bi-propellant rocket Polaris to an altitude of 63,497 feet,…
Osedea has acquired fellow Québec-based tech consultancy Ventriloc to add capabilities that can help it take on larger competitors. The news: Osedea announced on Monday morning that it had acquired Ventriloc for an undisclosed amount, but told BetaKit in an email that the deal was financed entirely through its own capital and resources. Osedea specializes…
There’s a wildfire moving toward your home. It’s blocked your usual highway route out of town. Do you know your back roads well enough to get to safety? “We like to say in our organization that an unpaved road is one bad storm and 10 logging trucks away from looking completely different than it did…
Episode Description: Many of the long-time listeners of The Optimist Daily’s podcast will recognize Kristy Jansen’s voice. She’s the former co-host and Executive Director of this show, and she’s back, joining Arielle and Karissa from Mérida, México, to catch them up on what happened in between: the clean energy industry from the inside, and what…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Good news! In the UK, only 63 infants were admitted to intensive care with RSV infection last winter, which is down from 131 the year before. Same 20 hospitals, same surveillance system. The UK Health Security Agency published its first full-year results on the maternal RSV vaccination program on…
