Debrief your summer bummer and move on

Protesters gather at hospitals across the country

TORONTO - Two police officers escorted Faye Doiron and Randy Longaphie as they left Toronto General Hospital on Monday, helping the pair make their way through a crowd of protesters denouncing pandemic measures.

Doiron, who came to Toronto from Prince Edward Island to wait for a lung transplant, was leaving after a physiotherapy session at the hospital, with Longaphie, her cousin, pushing her wheelchair.

The crowd of largely unmasked demonstrators parted slowly but peacefully to let them through as one officer led the way and another walked behind them.

"It's terrifying," Doiron said. "Doctors told me if I ever catch COVID, I won't make it."

Prepare to be … blutterbunged?

Are you not blutterbunged?

If Russell Crowe’s second-century gladiator character had uttered a 19th century equivalent of “Are you not entertained?” that fit the mood of today’s 21st century, that would be it.

Definitions first. Blutterbunged is an obscure regional dialect word from England that means everything from astonished to confounded to bemused or shocked into speechlessness. Its composition suggests something both more and less, namely blustering bloviation (that’s the more part) and empty words (that’s the empty part). These days we would more naturally punctuate our reaction to an event or statement with a profanity. But you get the drift.

Unearthed by lexicologist Susie Dent, it speaks volumes about our times that it fits now. That we need to reach back hundreds of years to find the right word to adequately capture a contemporary civic reaction to what the hell is going on in politics and the world today.

Long journey to home ownership for Eritrean couple

Solomon Ghebru and his family have been building a life together in Winnipeg for the past three years after years of living apart in various countries. Now, they are working toward a new goal: owning a home.

Their story is the focus of this year’s Habitat for Humanity Manitoba Cycle of Hope fundraising ride, a seven-day cycling event through southern Manitoba that begins Monday. The ride aims to raise $150,000 to support Ghebru, his wife, Mehret Awate, and their two daughters as they work toward affordable homeownership.

The couple’s journey to Canada started in Eritrea, where they grew up and attended the same church together. They left Eritrea separately, hoping to build a better life together out of the country. Ghebru travelled through Sudan and Libya before reaching Malta, while Awate travelled to Sudan and then Uganda.

After he found work in Malta, he tried to have his family join him, but government policies prevented them from reuniting. The couple married in Uganda in 2016, and their first daughter, Peniel, was born there the following year.

Troubadour of tears

Field Guide, for all his sad songs, is dressed exclusively in vibrant colours. His beanie is mustard yellow, his jacket and shirt are forest green, his Blundstones are burgundy. His short, scruffy beard is Spalding-ball orange.

Too close to call in Assiniboia

The Winnipeg constituency of Assiniboia was too close to call Tuesday, with the NDP candidate leading over the incumbent Tory minister of seniors and long-term care.

At 11:15 p.m., Elections Manitoba, reporting just seven of 18 polls, had the NDP’s Nellie Kennedy with a 562-vote lead over Progressive Conservative incumbent Scott Johnston in the swing riding on the western edge of the city.

Losing the seat would be a blow for the Tories, but it would be a moral, rather than a functional, one. A win for the PC incumbent would do little to dent the NDP’s majority victory. Liberal Charles Ward was running a distant third.

A NDP win would be a reversal. In the 2016 and 2019 elections, the party lost Assiniboia to the PCs by roughly 16- and nine-point margins, respectively. Johnston won with 44 per cent of the vote in 2019.

Unlike NHL officiating, feds should call this game consistently

It's about federal government and health officials potentially kowtowing to Canadian NHL teams by loosening quarantine requirements to facilitate the speedy return of dozens of players currently in the United States and Europe, including many who have been riding out the global crisis in areas where the COVID-19 curve is still growing.

Are you kidding me?

Such a move is under consideration in Ottawa, with details expected any day now that could solve an ongoing headache for six teams north of the border whose seasons are still alive, including the Winnipeg Jets. If so, it would be a major, tone-deaf mistake on several levels.

The optics alone are terrible. There is no reason these athletes who decided to flee the country once the pandemic paused the season in mid-March should now be given preferential treatment from Joe and Jane Public so they can get back to their home markets to prepare for a 24-team Stanley Cup tournament starting later this summer.