The view from here: Phyllis Green. Boob Tree, 1975

Staycation: The Art of Being Here feautres more than 100 Manitoba-related artworks from the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq collection, spanning the past 50 years. These pieces reveal how the places around us are layered with memory, story and lived experience. Over the coming weeks, the Free Press will spotlight works from this eclectic exhibition, each one offering a new way of seeing home. Experience it in person and enjoy some staycation time at the gallery, on view until December.

Phyllis Green. Boob Tree, 1975

(Yarn, wood. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Acquired with funds from the Estate of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Naylor, funds administered by The Winnipeg Foundation, 2014-128. Photo: Ernest Mayer.)

The year 1975 was designated International Women’s Year by the United Nations, and in celebration, the WAG staged the show Images of Women, which explored how women had historically been depicted, an impressive selection but by mostly male artists. Amid pushback from the community, Sharron Zenith Corne and Marian Yeo organized a second exhibition, Woman as Viewer, which challenged those portrayals by only featuring works by women. It was called the first Canadian exhibition of feminist art. American artist Phyllis Green’s Boob Tree, a four-foot-tall crochet sculpture of a cluster of breasts, adorned the exhibit posters, which were so popular they were snatched by passersby! The sculpture is playful and unsettling, re-appropriating the objectification of women’s bodies.

Graham Avenue street art gets a refresh

After a year of weather, wear and foot traffic, the colourful murals that brightened Graham Avenue have been given a refresh — but the artists behind them say the fading was not necessarily a failure.

The Graham Avenue murals were installed as part of the city’s pedestrian plaza pilot project, funded through Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Asphalt Art Initiative. The city said the murals created a temporary pedestrian plaza to test how people would use the downtown space.

Shortly after the street art was completed in July 2025, paint began chipping away from the designs between Carlton and Garry streets.

At the time, Cool Streets Winnipeg organizer Stéphane Dorge told the Free Press that the wear appeared sooner than expected, and cited challenges including the condition of the street, oil embedded in the pavement from decades of bus traffic and the quick timeline for completing the project.

Shovels hit the dirt in North Kildonan

They donned high-vis vests and brandished shovels with gold-coloured blades Friday morning at the ceremonial groundbreaking for a multi-family residential development in northeast Winnipeg.

Concord Projects has started construction of Harbourview Terrace, the inaugural development by two-year-old real estate company Foxhill Properties. Located in North Kildonan at 1820 De Vries Ave., the $60-million, six-storey apartment building will contain 179 units.

Founder and president Frank Koch-Schulte, who runs the company with his wife Alisha, said Foxhill wants to develop and manage properties with integrity.

“This is kind of like my opportunity to try to do things our way, which I feel is a way that keeps tenants in mind,” Koch-Schulte said. “We live in this neighbourhood. We’re very much invested in seeing quality housing go here.”

Best of the West in Conference final clash

It had been a while for Isiah Osborne.

The man known affectionately by his Winnipeg Sea Bears teammates as the “Silent Assassin” had been quiet in more ways than one for a while.

After arriving in Winnipeg with some flair, eclipsing 20 points in three of his first four games and hitting two game-winners over that stretch, the Windsor, Ont., product had cooled off significantly in recent weeks.

Osborne reached double digits just once in the last eight games of the regular season while firing at a 32.8 per cent clip, and he was pushed down the pecking order once Xavier Moon jumped into the lineup.

Province allows pharmacists to prescribe birth control; more services coming, Asagwara says

Manitoba pharmacists have new powers to assess for, prescribe and administer birth control.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara announced an expanded scope of practice — although limitations on the profession remain the strictest in Canada — during a news conference Friday.

“This means that people will be able to access contraception more quickly, more conveniently and closer to home,” Asagwara told reporters inside the legislature.

The minister touted the regulatory changes, which came into effect Tuesday, as an expansion of the province’s free birth control initiative.

No critical incidents, adverse public safety events resulted from July 911 outage, Bell says in report to CRTC

The telecommunications outage that prevented Manitobans outside Winnipeg from contacting 911 for several hours last month did not result in “critical incidents or adverse public safety outcomes,” Bell Canada says.

Bell, which runs Manitoba’s 911 network, issued its post-incident report on the July 22 outage to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Thursday.

In total, calls to 911 made by 84 people from 11:40 a.m. to 3:25 p.m. could not be routed to the public safety call centre in Brandon. That facility answers 911 calls for most of the province outside Winnipeg.

Officials at the 911 call centre in Brandon advised Bell that, as of Thursday, there had been no reported critical incidents or public-safety issues as a result of the missed calls, the telecom company said in its report.

Word test

TESTING

Premier Wab Kinew is an imported Manitoban, born in Kenora and raised on Onigaming First Nation in Treaty Three (in northwestern Ontario) before his family moved to Winnipeg. He’s the son of well-known Anishinaabe leader and traditional knowledge keeper Tobasonakwut Kinew and Kathi Kinew.

These are the words we provided feedback on: Boniface, Cockburn, Dauphin, Dene, Hellebuyck, Iafallo, Íslendingadagurinn, Kinew, Kildonan, Malak Abas, Métis, Newfoundland, Orlikow, Pembina, Portage la Prairie, Premier, Regina, St. Vital, Samyn, Schiefele, vínarterta, Wiebe, Generation Z.

They’re not horsing around in Brandon

BRANDON — Contestants from across the continent are trotting into Brandon’s Keystone Centre for Canada’s National Arabian Championship.

The championship is reserved for Arabian and Arabian-derived horse breeds and involves more than 300 horses as well as riders and trainers.

While the competition began Thursday and runs until Aug. 15, the event really ramps up on Monday when it expands into the main arena.

Taryn Weiss, a youth rider from Michigan who won a judged exhibition Thursday morning on a horse from Silver Sands Performance Horses, said the annual event tests skills that have implications for her future.