World champion Chen to begin Olympic quest at Skate America

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.

A community brought the Trident Press home

A truck pulled up outside Oseredok a few weeks ago carrying more than an exhibition.

Inside were the panels of Ukrainian Voice: A Legacy Mosaic, a monumental artwork built from the printing blocks once used to reproduce the photographs and illustrations in one of Canada’s longest-running Ukrainian newspapers.

A dozen people gathered to unload it. Some were longtime members of Winnipeg’s Ukrainian community; others were newcomers who had arrived since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Together, they lifted, unpacked and carried the panels through Oseredok’s doors.

It was an ordinary act of volunteer labour, but also a fitting final stage in an extraordinary journey. More than a century ago, Ukrainian newcomers created the newspaper whose printing blocks form the mosaic. Now another generation of newcomers was helping bring that history home.

Bell network problem behind 90-minute overnight 911 outage in Manitoba, five other provinces

A 911 outage that lasted about 90 minutes in Manitoba and other provinces Thursday morning was caused by a problem with Bell’s next-generation network amid concerns about recurring disruptions.

It’s not yet known how many Manitobans were unable to get through to 911 after the outage was detected at about 2:10 a.m. Service was restored at 3:40 a.m., Bell spokeswoman Elise von Scheel said.

“We continue to investigate the root cause of the issue,” she wrote in an email.

Von Scheel said the “vast majority” of calls from Bell customers were immediately picked up by software and rerouted to 911 communications centres, or public safety answering points.

A distant island and a European border

It’s at roughly 80°49′35″ North latitude and 66°27′30″West longitude.

Or, you might also know it as being in the Kennedy Channel of the Nares Strait in the high Arctic.

It’s Hans Island, an island that’s split between the Kingdom of Denmark and Canada.

The border was a bone of contention between the two nations for years, but not one that sired threats of annexation. Each simply claimed it as their own.

‘Hellebuyck’s part of our family until he isn’t part of our family’

Connor Hellebuyck and his family were subject to so much post-Olympic vitriol that both the Winnipeg Jets security team and even police had to get involved.

General manager Kevin Cheveldayoff revealed new details about the situation when asked about it Thursday by the Free Press, acknowledging it may have played a role in the star goaltender now refusing to report to training camp while he awaits word of a trade he’s demanded.

“That’s the dangers of being on social media today,” said Cheveldayoff, who took aim at the trolls.

“You open yourself up, obviously to the fans and you want to make that connection, but some of the fans aren’t true blue fans. There’s a lot of things that probably get said that have nothing to do with anybody in our market. They might not even be from a Canadian market.”

CBC series digs into Cold War hockey showdown

Fifty years ago today, Winnipeg played a part in one of Canada’s greatest cultural touchstones.