Cruel, ungrateful kinfolk don’t deserve your time

Remembering when, where we were when Putin invaded Ukraine

As a child, I learned history through books and movies but lived it vicariously through the eyes of my father, gathering up all his where-were-you-whens with an insatiable hunger. Every time I learned about an event that had shaped the course of the world, my young mind did a hasty calculation and, having verified he’d been alive at the time, I’d ask him the question.

Where was he on May 8, 1945, when news broke that Germany had made an unconditional surrender? He was young, almost too young to remember, except in fragmented pictures: the kitchen of his little house in small-town Michigan, the hem of his mother’s dress, newscasters declaring victory on the radio, people running down the street in jubilation.

Where was he on Nov. 22, 1963, when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? In a classroom at the American university where he was teaching, finishing up a lecture. He went home through stunned streets and yelled at the dog; my mother, seeing this, snapped back that the dog didn’t do it, so he sat and wept and felt the world he knew fall apart.

By the time I was eight years old, I had committed most of these stories to memory. None were dramatic. None of them had my father at the heart of what was the most violent or important or transforming. He was, like many folks in North America and all of those who are lucky, only a second-hand witness to the greatest machinations of geopolitical trauma.

Racist ingredients baked into Manitoba's 150th birthday cake

The steeple’s cross-tipped spire stabbed the sky, rising high above the domed architecture of old St. Boniface College like the outstretched fingers of the faithful grasping for heaven.

The flames worked quickly, their appetite for destruction insatiable as they licked their way up walls and down halls, shattered stained-glass windows and sucked up oxygen like kindling until the small blaze transmogrified into an inferno.

It was 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 25, 1922.

A Jesuit brother awoke in a flash, startled by what he thought was the sound of an explosion. Instead, he found a fire ripping through the oldest post-secondary institution in Western Canada, which had stood on the grounds of Winnipeg’s Provencher Park since 1880.

Pandemic has seen a record number of adults taking music lessons

For some people, it’s called six-string therapy. For others, it has become 88 keys to coping with 2020.

It seems learning to play a musical instrument has struck a chord for adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Since the whole COVID outbreak, a lot of people are starting to turn toward in-home lessons or online lessons,” says Mike Fondse, operations manager at Quest Musique’s Portage Avenue location. “As far as music lessons, home recording, anything regarding playing music at home has skyrocketed recently.”

It’s no surprise, really. In the spring, when lockdown protocols to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus kept people at home, they took up baking, tried learning a new language, or planted their first gardens, among other activities.

Virus testing the new normal as China sticks to 'zero-COVID'

BEIJING (AP) — Thousands of coronavirus testing sites have popped up on sidewalks across Beijing and other Chinese cities in the latest development in the country's “zero-COVID” strategy.

Lines form every day, rain or shine, even where the spread of the virus has largely stopped. Some people need to go to work. Others want to shop. All are effectively compelled to get tested by a requirement to show a negative test result to enter office buildings, malls and other public places.

Liu Lele, who works for a live-streaming company, has no problem getting tested regularly but said the daytime operating hours don't always fit his schedule.

“Sometimes I get held up at work," he said after finishing a test Thursday near Beijing's historic Bell and Drum towers. "I wish there were sites open 24 hours or not closing until 7 or 8 p.m.”

‘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.

French tandem cements place among greatest ice dance duos with Olympic gold medal

Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron stayed for another four years after being edged out by Canada’s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir at 2018 Games.