Police west of Toronto on Wednesday warned drivers to keep their car windows closed after a truck spilled crates carrying five million bees onto a road.
Halton Regional Police said they received a call around 6:15 a.m. reporting the bee crates had come loose from a truck and spilled onto Guelph Line, north of Dundas Street, in Burlington, Ontario, just west of Toronto.
It was “quite the scene,” Constable Ryan Anderson said.
“Crates were literally on the road and swarms of bees were flying around,” he said. “The initial beekeeper that was on scene was apparently stung a few times.”
The scene prompted police to warn drivers to close their windows as they passed by and for pedestrians to avoid the area.
About an hour after police put out a notice on social media, several beekeepers were in touch with police offering to help. Six or seven beekeepers eventually arrived at the scene, Anderson said.
On Friday, an Indian national from Brampton, Ontario, pleaded guilty in a federal court in the United States to human smuggling as part of a network that could have smuggled hundreds of individuals from India across the Canada-United States border.
Simranjit (Shally) Singh, 41, pleaded guilty to six charges of alien smuggling and three counts of conspiracy to commit alien smuggling before Judge Mae A. D’Agostino in Albany, New York.
Singh wore a short-sleeved orange jumpsuit with the words ACCF Inmate (Albany County Correctional Facility) inscribed on the back. He wore black-rimmed glasses with salt and pepper stubble down his face and chin. A little tattoo was hidden behind his left ear, while another was inked along his left forearm.
Krishan Dev, a farmer who runs a small dairy, said he came to know about his son’s fate only after his wife — after learning of the death — died by suicide on Thursday.
Narinder Devi and her son Gurvinder Nath. (Express File Photo)
On July 27, 2021, Gurvinder Nath left his home in Punjab to study in Canada. A little over two years to the day, the body of the 24-year-old was brought back to his village of Aima Chahal — where his distraught mother had died by suicide.
On Saturday, Gurvinder and his mother, Narinder Devi (50), were cremated together in the village in Punjab’s Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district.
Gurvinder was pursuing a business course at Toronto’s Loyalist College. He also worked delivering pizzas on the side. During a late night delivery on July 9 in Mississauga city, near Toronto, he was robbed of his car and brutally assaulted. He succumbed to his injuries at a hospital on July 14.
Back home, his brothers — one older than him and the other a twin — tried to keep the news from their parents, even disabling the internet on the phone of their father, Krishan Dev Nath.
Krishan Dev, a farmer who runs a small dairy, said he came to know about his son’s fate only after his wife — after learning of the death — died by suicide on Thursday.
“I have lost everything today,” said Krishan Dev. “My wife somehow felt that all was not well with Gurvinder and forced me five or six days ago to call him. When I couldn’t make a WhatsApp call, as my internet was not working, she got restless. She used to tell the other village women that if something happens to Gurvinder, she wouldn’t let him go alone.”
Then, on Wednesday, Narinder Devi finally found out. “While drying clothes in the verandah, she probably overheard from some passers-by that Gurvinder’s body was arriving. She became restless from then on but didn’t tell anyone in the home what she was going through.”
Gurvinder’s grandmother, 75-year-old Vidya Devi, said: “My daughter-in-law first attempted to electrocute herself but after we got to know, my grandsons Kamal and Balwinder did not let her be alone even for a minute. The next morning, Thursday, she was not home. We thought she had gone to the temple as usual. But she didn’t return for some time. My eldest grandson, Kamal, found her lying on the street just outside the house.”
