Marriage was set to self-destruct this way, so cope

World Indigenous Business Forum comes home to Winnipeg for first time, ponders questions for future prosperity

When Nicola Shirley-Phillips imagines what the Indigenous economy in her country might look like 100 years from now, she doesn’t mention social media or artificial intelligence. Instead, she envisions a holistic way of life where people work alongside each other in a way that cares for the planet.

“I see community (and) I see us being more respectful of all the energies around us — our water energy, our climate (and) the soil,” she said. “In all of that, there are opportunities for us to create businesses and opportunities to provide our services.”

Shirley-Phillips, a serial entrepreneur, organic farmer and community economic development specialist from Jamaica, shared her vision Tuesday morning during a panel discussion focused on Indigenous women and prosperity.

The discussion was one of the first items on the schedule during the first full day of the World Indigenous Business Forum at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg.

The landscape that taught us to see

The white pine stood at the edge of the lake, leaning out over the water, its branches bent by years of wind and weather. Beyond it stretched an expanse of blue water beneath a clear sky, a distant tree line and other pines rising along the rocky shoreline. From the deck above, the landscape seemed both expansive and remarkably still.

I had been looking at it for only a few moments when Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven entered the picture. Not literally, of course. But once the association appeared, I could not unsee it. The pine became The Jack Pine and The West Wind. The surrounding rocks, water and sky called up A.Y. Jackson, Arthur Lismer, Franklin Carmichael and Lawren Harris. A landscape I had been looking at all weekend suddenly became part of a visual history Canadians have carried with them for more than a century.

Perhaps that is the Group of Seven’s greatest achievement. They did not simply paint the Canadian landscape. They changed the way we see it.

I was at the lake for a quiet weekend, reflecting on the cultural, community and development projects that occupy much of my work through Civic Muse. Increasingly, I see these pursuits as part of the same conversation — place and identity, how we understand it, care for it and decide what is worth carrying forward.

Cab driver dies in suspected hit and run

An official with a Winnipeg cab company said one of its drivers died in a collision on Salter Street Wednesday morning.

“It looks like it was a T-bone accident,” said Ram Valluru, general manager of Duffy’s Taxi, about the 6:30 a.m. collision between the cabbie and another vehicle. Traffic was redirected between Aberdeen and Redwood streets for several hours as police investigated.

He said his driver, a man in his late 40s, has a wife and two teenage children. His death has saddened his co-workers.

“I visited their house today to pass along my condolences,” Valluru said. “I know him very well, this driver.”

‘Women were shortchanged.’ Why bobsledding’s idea of equality doesn’t add up

When female bobsledders pushed for an Olympic four-woman event, they got a solo discipline instead: monobob. Now they’ll race for the same number of medals as men, but with fewer sledders. Not the progress they were looking for.

Prairie opportunists are knocking and prime minister should answer the door

In preparation for Halloween, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe have spent an inordinate amount of time rattling their chains and howling like indignant spirits about the raw deal they are getting from the rest of the country.

In the wake of a federal election in which the governing Liberals failed to elect a MP in either province, Kenney and Moe are summoning apocalyptic visions of secession. We've heard a lot of that before but Western separatists, inspired by the Alberta and Saskatchewan first ministers, are warning everyone that this time it's serious.

Now, before anyone gets too spooked, it's important to remember that a good politician is — first and foremost — an opportunist. These are the folks with the pure political instinct to recognize a moment in which they can gain the upper hand and then seize on it like a ravenous dog on a bone. Imagine that, and you'll have a pretty clear picture of what Kenney and Moe are up to.

In short, the two premiers want two big-ticket items from Ottawa.

The politics of place

From the Introduction to Authorized Heritage: Place, Memory, and Historic Sites in Prairie Canada, by Robert Coutts, published by University of Manitoba Press

Landscape as culture. It is a concept that at first glance seems peculiar.

Upon reflection, however, we realize that our Western view of landscape is the result of shared values and shared culture, a culture assembled from a rich accumulation of myths, folklores, events, and memories. Such landscapes of memory are cultural memories, and we all experience place and memory in different ways.

One of my own encounters came from historical interest rather than personal familiarity. It was in August of 1983 that I found myself with a small group of people in a boat heading to Hudson Bay. We were travelling on the Hayes River in northern Manitoba, bound for York Factory, the once great trading post and entrepôt of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Leaving from the junction of the Fox and Hayes rivers about 120 kilometres southwest of Hudson Bay, we travelled the river in the warm summer sunshine as the topography of the lowlands became flatter, the riverbank grew steeper, and the fir trees appeared smaller and stunted, bent low by the winter winds off the bay.