Rocky royals

Une nouvelle oeuvre pour raconter l’histoire autrement

Pendant des décennies, le parc La Vérendrye, situé sur l’avenue Taché, au cœur de Saint-Boniface, a raconté l’histoire de l’explorateur français du même nom à travers une seule statue. La Compagnie de La Vérendrye, un groupe de reconstitution historique, a piloté un projet de conception d’une nouvelle œuvre d’art qui pourrait raconter une autre partie de l’histoire.

Family account spiced with magic realism, geopolitical intrigue and a ghost story

Tom Lin’s second novel Babylon, South Dakota moves beyond a historical account of an immigrant family’s struggle, delightfully blending and bending genres.

Lin is a Chinese-born novelist whose family emigrated to the U.S. when he was four years old. His debut novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, making him the youngest ever recipient of that award. He earned a PhD in English from the University of California Davis and is currently an assistant professor of English and creative writing at the University of Iowa.

Babylon, South Dakota takes place in an unspecified time period that can be understood to be during the Mao era — likely the 1950s or ’60s. A young Chinese couple, the Hsuis, immigrate to the rural community that gives the book its title. They take the names Saul and Mei and settle on a 160-acre homestead left to them by a distant relative.

Saul’s dream is to breed and sell chrysanthemums from seeds he brought from China, while Mei wants to raise livestock. They speak no English, know nothing of life in the United States, are unprepared for the harshness of winter and the isolation of the farm and bring nothing with them except some gold, which Mei hides around the house for emergencies. Their only link to the outside world is a discarded and marginally functioning TV set, which Saul rescues and rigs up.

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: After 12:15 a.m., there are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions today. The moon is in Capricorn.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

This is a tricky day. Don’t be too ambitious. It’s totally OK to kick back and relax. But be aware that communications with parents and authority figures might be confused, vague or subject to misunderstandings. Nevertheless, romance is sweet and cosy!

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Safety review calls for improved security at Siloam Mission

A safety review of Winnipeg’s largest homeless shelter is recommending improvements to security for staff, volunteers and community members after what its leadership acknowledged has been a challenging year.

The Siloam Mission report, which has not been made public, was discussed during a town hall Thursday night at the Millennium Centre on Main Street, where shelter leaders laid out what they described as a road forward for the organization.

Interim CEO Lisa Cefali, who was brought in at the end of May following the departure of Sonia Prevost-Derbecker after three tumultuous months in the job, said she could see the toll turmoil had taken when she arrived.

Employees alleged Prevost-Derbecker made derogatory remarks about Indigenous people, people struggling with substance use and the downtown neighbourhood surrounding the mission’s Princess Street headquarters.

Windsor sisters' contentious relationship recalled in Morton's latest bio

To say that Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has had a rough winter would be a serious understatement.

Fissures within the walls of Elizabeth’s royal family resurfaced last fall, as reports of rifts and tiffs between the Wales brothers, her grandsons Prince William and Prince Harry, dominated the news. Then came concerns about the sketchy health of her 99-year-old spouse, Prince Philip, who passed away April 9, and the ongoing impact of the global pandemic on her subjects. And how about all that sour chirping from those California-based Sussexes, Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle, after she stripped them of their royal patronages.

But the most recent family dust-up involves the serious but snarky fallout from this month’s TV interview with Oprah Winfrey, where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle shared their view of life in the royal fishbowl with millions on the telly. Call it tosh* or truth, one thing’s certain: the tell-all tsunami, starring the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, will reverberate for reigns to come.

Blimey. The Hillbilly Elegy clan has nothing on this dysfunctional pod.

Sunny summer songs beg to be played at high volume

Summer begins Saturday at precisely 4:44 p.m., Winnipeg time, says the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Every summer since the birth of rock ‘n’ roll seems to have been punctuated by great summer songs. They’ve mostly been happy, up-tempo numbers that rarely spark a political debate.

Exactly what is the philosophy behind the baby-boomer anthem Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets, besides the need to get out of your seat and “rock, rock, rock till broad daylight?”

Our most memorable songs often come from the year we finish high school or the year we leave home. Those are big moments.