Don’t stall on having serious talk before big night

COVID running up the score on some U.S. NHL teams

Boy, how about the thrilling, non-stop NHL action Thursday night? Let’s roll the highlights:

Down in Denver, you had the high-flying Colorado Avalanche hosting the Arizona Coyotes. Well, on paper, anyways. The actual on-ice product was postponed. OK, let’s head to the State of Hockey to see how our old Central Division friends fared, as Minnesota entertained St. Louis. What’s that? Scrapped as well. Huh.

Surely things are a bit better on the East Coast. Were the Buffalo Sabres able to contain Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals? Turns out their inability to contain something else meant this one was also shelved. At least there’s that Flyers-Devils clash in Philly, right? Wrong.

Oh, for Pete’s sake.

‘There’s another Kamloops coming’: Here are some Canadian sites believed to hold more unmarked graves of Indigenous children

A network of more than 130 institutions would eventually spread across the country. The last shut its doors in the mid-1990s.

Crop storage headaches loom on horizon

A sense of calm descends over Prairie fields this time of year — at least on the surface.

Activities become more limited in the weeks leading up to harvest. There’s not much farmers can do now to support this year’s crop, other than monitor and protect it from diseases such as sclerotinia in canola and leaf stripe and fusarium head blight in wheat and barley.

July is when you might see farmers wading into a thick stand of canola, conducting a so-called “wet pants test” to get a low-tech read on how much disease-inducing moisture is lurking in the canopy.

Disease pressure is high in a humid, hot summer like this one and it’s kept aerial applicators busy applying fungicides. Sclerotinia spores live on plant residues in the soil and blossom into a mould that destroys the canola stem, starving the maturing pods.

Winnipeg actor Djouliet Amara has always known she’d follow a creative path

The first thing Djouliet Amara does when she gets home to Winnipeg is go for a walk.

She puts on her headphones and heads out for a stroll around the St. Vital neighbourhood she grew up in.

“I liked to go to my favourite swing set and just swing,” she says, laughing.

“There’s a comforting sense of belonging when I come back... I kind of miss how homey Winnipeg feels; I miss the Prairie vibes.”

School funding increase called skimpy in light of escalating expenses

Annual operational funding for public school divisions that are strapped for cash, owing to expenses related to COVID-19, staff wage settlements, and a surge in the cost of living, will not keep up with inflation in 2022-23 — for another consecutive year.

Kindergarten to Grade 12 schools will receive $120 million in provincial funding next year to undertake regular operations and address new cost pressures, Manitoba Education announced Friday.

That sum includes base funding of $20.2 million for public and independent schools, a one-time $77-million allotment to address current financial strains, and a $23.2-million grant (the equivalent of a two per cent tax hike) to make up for a mandated freeze of education property taxes, as the province works toward phasing out the tax.

Education Minister Wayne Ewasko touted the commitment as one that will both ensure divisions have the resources required so that all students can succeed, no matter where they live in the province, and reduce the tax burden on residents.