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The Mackenzie River region in the Northwest Territories is worth 10 times more in its natural state than the value industrial development would bring, says a Canadian Boreal Initiative study released in Ottawa on Wednesday. Entitled The Real Wealth of the Mackenzie Region, the study calculated the region's ecological goods and services to be worth $448 billion if left undisturbed. In comparison, it estimated the wealth generated by industrial development such as the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline and related resource extraction to be $41 billion. The report is the first watershed-based natural capital review ever conducted in Canada. Canadian Boreal Initiative spokesman Larry Innes said federal politicians need to take the region's natural assets into account when making decisions about the region's future. "Let's also consider the value of what's there now," Innes said. "It truly is one of the most important areas of the planet, globally, as a large, intact natural system." The Mackenzie River watershed feeds the boreal forest, which stores carbon and is critical in the fight against global warming, he said. N.W.T. resident Morris Neyelle, 55, who travelled to Ottawa for the report's release, said clean land and water and abundant wildlife are more important to him than the short-term jobs that would come with the proposed gas pipeline. "If the animals, the fish are all there, then I can survive without anything," he said. "But if they are gone, then I'm gone."

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Managers have suspended visiting hours at a St. John's hospital struck by an outbreak of the Norwalk virus. The Eastern Health regional authority has temporarily halted all visits to in-patient rooms at St. Clare's Mercy Hospital. Clinic visits, blood work and diagnostic testing will continue as usual. Patients, the authority advised, should be visited only in extreme circumstances. Eastern Health said there are a high number of people suffering from gastrointestinal symptoms in the St. John's area. It said residents should not visit any hospital or long-term care facility unless absolutely necessary, especially if they've experienced symptoms in the past 48 hours. Norwalk virus the best-known of the norovirus group of viruses has been prompting similar restrictions at several hospitals and healthcare centres across Canada this winter.

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More cases of deadly chronic wasting disease in wild deer are showing up in Saskatchewan and Alberta. So far 30 deer shot by hunters last fall in Saskatchewan have tested positive for the fatal brain malady, which is similar in some ways to mad cow disease but poses no threat to human health. More test results are pending. In Alberta, there have been four cases since the fall in areas located just across the Saskatchewan boundary. Officials in both provinces report that some of these cases are located in new areas - a finding that suggests that the disease may be spreading or that animals with CWD are on the move. "We are finding it in places where we haven't found it before," Marv Hlady of Saskatchewan Environment said Monday. "It is outside of the traditional CWD infected area." Scientists and wildlife officials are working hard to contain chronic wasting disease, which affects white-tailed deer, mule deer and elk and has also been found in black-tailed deer and moose. There are concerns that over time the disease could spread to other provinces and ravage the deer population or jump to related species such as caribou. Saskatchewan and Alberta, the only provinces where CWD has appeared, have tried culling deer from areas where infected animals have been found, but with limited success.

Last year the governments turned to sports hunters to thin the wild deer population. Monday was the deadline for hunters to turn the heads of harvested deer in for testing - about 5,000 animals from Saskatchewan and about 2,800 in Alberta. While that will provide researchers with more information, it is far from a solution, said Stephen Moore, executive director of the Alberta Prion Institute. "This doesn't seem to really be a viable long-term proposition, but that is all that we have at the moment," said Moore. "Until we know how it is spread, how the disease moves from one animal to the other, we are going to be in a difficult situation." Unlike mad cow disease, which is spread by animals eating contaminated material, scientists believe CWD may be spread in soil or even by two animals just nuzzling each other. Moore said more research into the disease is vital. If it is determined that CWD can jump to other species or is in danger of spreading to other parts of Canada, a national strategy will be needed to contain it or at least slow it down.

Some provinces such as Ontario are already testing their wild animal population for the disease as a precaution. Of 450 white-tailed dear tested for chronic wasting disease in northwestern Ontario last fall, all came back negative. Wildlife experts and provincial and federal officials hammered out the genesis of a national strategy for controlling chronic wasting disease in October 2005. The plan's goals include preventing new cases of CWD, finding ways to detect it early, and responding to and managing new outbreaks. Ted Leighton, executive director of the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre, said much of the plan has languished on the shelf due to a lack of federal funding and a reluctance by Ottawa to take action. "Saskatchewan and Alberta have been left basically to their own devices to go about trying to control the disease in the wild as best they can," Leighton said from Saskatoon. "There is nothing to prevent this disease from spreading coast to coast to coast."

Elective surgeries at a hospital in central Newfoundland have been cancelled because of a recurrence of Norwalk virus. The Central Newfoundland Regional Health Centre in Grand Falls-Windsor has one confirmed case of Norwalk virus, and is monitoring about 20 other patients and 16 employees who have reported symptoms. Norwalk, also known as norovirus, is a fast-moving disease that attacks the gastrointestinal system. It causes severe diarrhea, putting many patients at risk. It can also be easily spread. For now, only urgent and emergency surgeries are being done at the hospital, officials said Wednesday. As well, a visitor ban has been implemented. In November, a Norwalk outbreak prompted a visitation ban at the hospital and an adjacent seniors' home that lasted about a week.

The wet and windy weather was to blame when part of the roof of the world's largest air-supported stadium, the Place Stadium in Vancouver, Canada, collapsed Friday. Officials say no one was injured when the stadium's inflated roof partially collapsed at about 12:40 p.m. Friday local time. "It's an air-supported roof, or the 'Big Pillow' as people call it, and it developed a rip in the corner over the G-Gate entrance," a Canadian Television reporter said from Vancouver. Because the roof was slowly collapsing, all staff inside were relocated in time, an official said, adding 16 firefighters were dispatched to the scene. Officials say the collapse may have resulted from inclement weather and high winds. Clouds have dumped huge amounts of rain and snow on the region in recent days. The roof is made from about 10 acres of fiberglass-woven fabric, consisting of two layers. Hot air can be pumped between the layers to melt more than 15 centimeters of snow every hour. Built 21 years ago for the Expo '86 World's Fair, the building is known as "the world's largest air supported domed stadium." It will be the future home of the 2010 Winter Olympics, where both the opening and closing ceremonies will be held, the first time the events will be seen indoors.

The storm closed the Trans-Canada Highway for several hours Sunday east of Winnipeg to the Ontario border due to poor visibility and bad road conditions. Dozens of church services were cancelled and the Winnipeg Meals on Wheels cancelled meal deliveries for local seniors because many streets were impassable. Manitoba's Transportation Department issued an advisory Sunday that several rural highways were in poor driving condition and some Winnipeg emergency crews pleaded with motorists to stay off city streets so fire trucks and ambulances could get through, if needed. An army of snow plows headed out onto Winnipeg streets during the storm to tackle the large drifts of snow that mired vehicles and forced city transit buses to drop some routes and run at least 20 minutes behind schedule. "All our neighbours are out with their snowblowers," laughed Christine Alongi, a spokeswoman for the Winnipeg Airports Authority who was snowed-in like many of her neighbours.

"They've cleared the street and the driveways so we're able to move around. And a lot of people have four-wheel drives," she said. With the help of specially-designed snow clearing equipment, Alongi said crews at the airport managed to keep up with the heavy snowfall, and all runways remained open. But she said extra time for de-icing aircraft resulted in a few delays for the airlines. "Our guys are snow experts and they've got some pretty exclusive equipment there that allows them to get out and clear everything throughout the storm, so we're really proud of that," Alongi said. The system was expected to drop up to 10 centimetres of snow mixed with rain Sunday as it moved through northern Ontario, but wasn't expected to affect other regions of Canada, according to weather data on Environment Canada's website. The latest blast of winter to hit southern Manitoba was actually spawned by a giant system that forced the rescue of hundreds of motorists in the U.S. Midwest, said Environment Canada forecasters. "It came up from the Midwest U.S., actually, and nipped through eastern Montana, through North Dakota and then mostly into southeastern Manitoba," said Environment Canada meteorologist John McIntyre. The storm in southern Manitoba put a premium on tow truck drivers, and at least one agency cancelled vacations and asked over 40 tow truck drivers to put in extra overtime to help stranded vehicles.

"We are finding that 90 per cent of the emergency road service calls that are coming in, are for vehicles that are stuck, and they're stuck everywhere whether it's a back lane, in front of their house or on our major roads and highways," said Jeanie Dalman, spokeswoman for the Manitoba branch of the Canadian Automobile Association. She estimated that some motorists would have to wait up to five hours for a tow. Dalman said a similar storm around New Year's Eve three years ago walloped southern Manitoba, but this one ground everything to a halt, she said. "There must be something about Manitoba and New Year's Eve," she joked. While crews struggled with the storm's aftermath in Manitoba, in the U.S. Midwest efforts were still underway to help stranded motorists. National Guard troops continued searching eastern Colorado Sunday for people who may have been trapped on the roads by a fierce winter storm. Hundreds stranded by the region's second blizzard of the holiday travel season had to be rescued. The snow and ice storm moved out of Colorado and into the Plains, where power went out and roads were closed in many areas.