And the song goes on

And the song goes on

In 1944, the Manitoba Musical Competition Festival (the forerunner to the Winnipeg Music Festival), marked its 25th anniversary. The annual event, now in its 101st year and still going strong, was founded by the Men’s Music Club in 1918. The first festival took place in May 1919.

These photos were taken by Milton Meade in May 1944 at the Winnipeg Civic Auditorium.

Man accused of nurse sex assault released from jail days earlier

A homeless Winnipeg man accused of sexually assaulting a nurse in a hospital parkade was released from custody just days earlier in a case that highlights the continuing challenges of dealing with mentally ill repeat offenders.

Twenty-seven-year-old Ermiyas Isaac Dangerfield was arrested Nov. 8 after a nurse was trapped between two cars in the parkade off St. Boniface Hospital and sexually assaulted.

Four days earlier, Dangerfield pleaded guilty to theft and robbery in connection to a series of supermarket shoplifting offences and was sentenced to just under six months time served, six months less than the sentence recommended by the Crown.

“It’s a difficult sentencing,” said provincial court Judge Cynthia Devine. “I’m looking at the time of year, and frankly getting him out — because he’s likely to be in a shelter tonight — before the snow flies and it’s too cold.”

A development infused with personal memory

I haven’t written here in a while. Early this summer, my mom was unfairly taken from us — from me. Healing, as much as it’s possible, takes time.

I’ve been writing for the Free Press for 16 years — 250 columns in all. I always felt like I was writing to her. But this will be the first one she doesn’t read.

I won’t be waiting for our midnight text conversation about it tonight. She passed on her night-owl gene, and those late-night exchanges had become our quiet ritual. I won’t be comforted knowing she’s patrolling Twitter or letters to the editor, looking for dissenters to protect me from.

I very rarely write in the first person or talk about my work as an architect, but this feels like the right time to do both.

Rivard captures Canada's first gold in Tokyo

In all the solo swimming workouts she did over the past year-and-a-half, Aurelie Rivard pictured her rivals pushing the pace in the lanes on either side.

"Kind of like ghosts," Rivard said, with a laugh.

Like their Olympic counterparts had done so eloquently a month before them, Canada's Paralympians are writing their own stories of resilience in Tokyo amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

And on Saturday, Rivard, who arrived at the Games with zero chances to race over the last two years, swam to Canada's first Paralympic gold in spectacular fashion, smashing her own world record in both her heat and the final of the women's 100-metre freestyle.