Keeping a lid on parental ‘secret’ not so simple

Sally Ann kettle campaign takes hit in wake of liquor store thefts

The Salvation Army's annual kettle campaign is almost $190,000 short of its $385,000 goal for Winnipeg, making it an unexpected victim of this year's rise in theft and violence at Liquor Marts.

The Army pulled its kettles from Liquor Marts after last month's violent attack at the Tyndall Park outlet where three employees were injured, including one requiring hospitalization.

“We pulled out of them because of the crime and violence,” James Randss, who directs public relations for the Army’s Prairie division, said, noting the Army usually gets 15 per cent to 20 per cent of its donations at liquor stores. “We didn’t want to put our volunteers in danger. It didn’t seem smart to be sitting with a kettle of cash at the front door.”

The Army was hesitant earlier in November to set up outside Liquor Marts because of the spike in crime, but initially decided to continue with the longstanding tradition.

Faces of the aboriginal community

MatonabbeeBorn in 1737 at the Prince of Wales fort, he was taken in by the chief factor to live there after his father died. He became a "leading Indian" of Churchill and became the middleman between the Hudson's Bay Co. traders and the aboriginal people. He guided Samuel Hearne to the Coppermine River in the Northwest Territories from 1770 to 1772 and was credited with making the expedition a success because he helped the explorers live off the land. He committed suicide in 1782 after he witnessed the French destroy the fort.

Chief PeguisHe was born in 1774 near present-day Sault Ste. Marie before leading his people west to settle at Netley Creek. He was a friend to the Selkirk Settlers and warned Governor Semple about plans by the Nor'westers to destroy the Red River Settlement, advice that Semple ignored, costing him and 20 others their lives at the Battle of Seven Oaks. Peguis later helped Lord Selkirk make treaties with the Cree and Saulteaux and was presented with a treaty medal for his help. He later was given an annual pension from the Hudson's Bay Co. A missionary persuaded Peguis and some of his people to settle in the St. Peter's area north of present-day Selkirk. After being baptized into the Anglican Church, he took the name William King, and his children used the last name Prince. He died in 1864.

Carney’s ‘counterweight’ summit strategy

Modern summit diplomacy had very inauspicious beginnings. Winston Churchill is widely credited with coining the phrase “summit” in 1950 to describe a conference of global leaders. But it was another British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who initiated the first actual summit meeting 12 years earlier — with Adolf Hitler, no less.

It didn’t go well.

Over a one-month period, the two leaders met three times over the fate of Czechoslovakia. Hitler threatened war. Chamberlain threatened appeasement. Guess who won?

Chamberlain was so desperate for a peace deal and so convinced he alone could convince Hitler, that he swallowed his inhibitions and flew in an airplane for the very first time in his life. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” he told reporters, explaining his tenacious summit activity. Skeptical of the spectacle, British Foreign Office wags quietly amended it to, “If at first you don’t concede, fly, fly again.”

Health ministers meeting ends without long-term funding commitment from Ottawa

Canada’s health minister failed to deliver the promises of long-term funding increases that her provincial and territorial counterparts, who were gathered in Winnipeg this week, had been seeking.

Instead, Marjorie Michel reiterated the federal government’s commitment to working collaboratively towards renewing bilateral funding agreements and to meet again before the end of the year to discuss long-term funding.

“The decision we all agreed on is to have our public service… start the work on what will be the next step for the next negotiation on Canada Health Transfer and other agreements,” Michel said Friday at a news conference after meeting with the other health ministers.

When asked why the federal government couldn’t commit to maintaining funding levels geared, at a minimum, to the rate of inflation over the long term, Michel said that it’s time to update agreements signed a decade ago.

There's worse ways to go than dying while doing what you love

All comedians dream of leaving them laughing — and that’s exactly what Ian Cognito did.

The British comedian made headlines around the world earlier this month when he dropped dead onstage minutes after joking with the audience about dying.

Cognito, 60, a British comedy veteran whose real name was Paul Barbieri, died during his stand-up show at the Atic bar in Bicester, an English town north of Oxford.

The show’s host, Andrew Bird, told the BBC that Cognito was not feeling well before going onstage, but insisted on performing. He said the comic even joked onstage: “Imagine if I died in front of you lot here.”