Niagara Regional Police

An Arctic wolf that escaped its enclosure and was roaming free around Port Colborne, Ont. has been shot and killed, according to Niagara Regional Police.

The wolf, a female named Boo, had been rescued from Northern Ontario and brought to Port Colborne where she was residing in an enclosure near Main Street West and Cement Road in a private citizen’s backyard.

At approximately 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Boo dug her way out of the enclosure and escaped. Six police officers and one officer from the Niagara Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) arrived on scene around 11 a.m. after members of the public reported sightings of the wolf. The officers tracked Boo back to the area where she escaped and then lost her.

On Wednesday night around 7 p.m., police received a call from a farmer on the west side of Port Colborne saying that the wolf was on their property, getting close to their livestock. Six officers arrived at the farm and attempted to capture Boo, but were unsuccessful. Police did contact the Niagara SPCA for assistance but they had yet to arrive on the scene.

“Given the close proximity of the wolf to the farm animals and out of concern for the safety of those animals an officer discharged a firearm and fatally shot the wolf,” Niagara police say.

Boo’s remains are currently being held by the Niagara SPCA.

Niagara police say that the individual who’d been in possession of Boo has been unclear about why Boo was rescued and how she was transported to Port Colborne.

The city’s bylaw department in conjunction with the Niagara SPCA, police, and Ministry of Natural Resources has launched an investigation into the housing of Boo.

Around 7:40 p.m. on the evening of July 31, emergency services were contacted about a man who had gone missing in Lake Ontario off of Port Dalhousie near St. Catharines, Ont.

The man, a 37-year-old from Mississauga, had been tubing behind a motorboat when the tube flipped and the man was launched into the water. He did not resurface.

The St. Catharines Fire Service and the Canadian Coast Guard were brought in to search the area, along with officers from the Niagara Regional Police Service Marine/Under Water Search and Recovery Unit. Emergency personnel set off illumination flares throughout the night to help provide light.

At approximately 12:05 a.m., divers from the Under Water Search and Recovery Unit found the man not far from the area where he’d fallen off the tube. The coroner pronounced him dead at the scene.

A postmortem has been ordered, but the death is not being treated as suspicious.

At the moment, it’s unclear what safety precautions were in place when the man was tubing. Discover Boating, a boating resource operated by the National Marine Manufacturers Association advises that for any watersport towed behind a motorboat you should always:

Wear a personal flotation device
Use a spotter to indicate when riders have fallen
Know the capabilities of your rider
Know the limits of the equipment you’re using
And drive responsibly