Weinstein juror: #MeToo movement was not a factor in trial

From Kidd to Ligety, unique World Pro Ski Tour carries on

Most afternoons, Billy Kidd can be found gliding along the “Heavenly Daze” ski trail as he offers a free clinic with the guarantee — he always kids — that it will get them closer to the Olympics or their money back.

This weekend, the 1964 Olympic slalom silver medallist will be cruising down memory lane when a pro circuit that once featured him makes a regular stop on his home snow in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Fifty-some years ago, the charismatic Kidd added pizzazz to an up-and-coming World Pro Ski Tour, along with Jean-Claude Killy and later the Mahre brothers. It's a tour that took root in the late 1960s, thrived for years before disbanding in 1999 and returning in 2017.

Kidd, who's easy to spot in his distinctive cowboy hat, will definitely feel a little nostalgic when the circuit's first races of the season — first in a year due to the global pandemic — take place Saturday and Monday.

Ex-nurses blame red tape for holding up return to workplace

Former nurses who want to go back to work are calling out the regulatory red tape that’s in their way, even as hospitals across the province struggle to fill nursing shifts.

Local high school, collegiate athletes trying to focus on future, not dwell on season past

Nobody can relate to what today’s young athletes are going through.

Imagine entering your final year of high school and being told at the last minute that you can’t compete for a provincial championship. Or what it feels like to be the kid who made sacrifices their entire life to one day earn a scholarship and when that time comes, they’re informed the next season might not happen and their university experience will consist of them sitting behind a computer screen, taking online classes.

The realities in today’s pandemic world are unprecedented. No coach or parent can look at these athletes and say, ‘I know what you’re going through.’ Neither can Adrienne Leslie-Toogood, the director of sport psychology for the Canadian Sport Centre Manitoba. But the former University of Manitoba Bisons shooting guard said it’s important for athletes to not pretend that everything is fine during these challenging times.

“I think that bitter ends up resulting down the road if you don’t allow yourself to feel deeply. That’s the one thing we know in sport for sure, that we feel deeply. We celebrate, we work hard, we invest our heart and soul, so things can hurt pretty bad, too,” Leslie-Toogood says.

‘We belong… and we are giving back”: Sikh celebration enlivens downtown Winnipeg

Downtown Winnipeg came alive with vibrant sights, sounds, and scents on Sunday, as Manitoba’s Sikh community flocked to Memorial Park to celebrate its annual Nagar Kirtan procession and festival.

This year marked the 422nd anniversary of the completion of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture central to the Sikh faith. Shortly after 1 p.m., a palanquin bearing a copy of the scripture was led in parade through downtown Winnipeg, with musical accompaniment.

“This is a chance to tell the public and the whole community where we come from and who we are,” said volunteer Prabh Grewal shortly before the procession got underway. “In a community there are people from every race and every country, and our main objective is to have everybody live in peace and harmony together.”

Before, during, and after the procession, the park hummed with life. As many as 55,000 people converged on the site, with the majority dressed in festive traditional attire. Near the height of the day’s 30 C heat, families relaxed in patches of shade, enjoying plates of Punjabi cuisine dished out for free at dozens of tents sponsored by local businesses.

New borders open up St. James race

St. James is shaping up to be a battle between the New Democrats and Progressive Conservatives in a constituency that tends to elect the candidate from the winning party.

There is no incumbent in the contest, as Scott Johnston, the PC MLA who won the seat in 2016, has opted to run in the neighbouring constituency of Assiniboia.

The NDP and the PCs are each fielding a strong first-time candidate in this bellwether constituency — one of several to watch Tuesday on election night.

Michelle Richard, 50, an urban planner and small-business owner, is running under the Tory banner against 39-year-old New Democrat Adrien Sala, director of strategy and operations for Assiniboine Credit Union.

Heavy hearts, happy hearts

The marchers arrive at St. John's Park at almost exactly the minute predicted. They arrive in a great orange wave, all wearing shirts the same colour. They arrive led by the drum, and the riders on horseback, and the tendrils of smudge that curl over Main Street, cleansing the path to the park where the powwow is underway.

"Are we all going to fit into the park, guys?" one young woman gasps, laughing as she surveys the scene.

In a way they do, in a way they don't. For hours, the people flow into the park from all directions. They flow by the hundreds, and then the thousands. They flow until the fields show less green than orange, until lines for the porta-potties stretch into the dozens, until the whole park is alive with laughter and conversation.

The crowd looks like Manitoba. It contains faces of all ages, all races. Most of the people here are Indigenous, but on this day they are joined in solidarity by people of all nations; a movement, generations in the making, to call for a way forward, to call for action on reconciliation, to call for justice for Indigenous people.