Sweet sorrow from the RWB

Will Smith apologizes: 'I was out of line and I was wrong'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The day after slapping Chris Rock on the Oscars stage and upending the 94th Academy Awards, Will Smith issued an apology to the comedian, to the academy and to viewers at home, saying he was “out of line” and that his actions are “not indicative of the man I want to be.”

The fallout from Smith’s actions during Sunday's ceremony continued Monday as Hollywood and the public continued to wrestle with a moment that stunned the Dolby Theatre crowd and viewers at home. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences condemned Smith striking Rock, who had made a joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and said it would launch an inquiry.

Later in the day, Smith gave a stronger apology than he did in his best actor acceptance speech, which notably hadn't included an apology to Rock.

“Violence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive," said Smith in a statement issued by his publicist and posted on Instagram. “My behavior at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable and inexcusable. Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally. I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness.”

Dauphin ER reopening ‘monumental team effort’

DAUPHIN — The emergency department at Dauphin Regional Health Centre reopened Monday morning after a closure of just over two months, restoring 24-7 emergency services to Dauphin and surrounding communities.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara hailed the reopening as a major milestone.

“It’s been a monumental team effort to get to this point,” Asagwara told the Brandon Sun on Monday afternoon before embarking on a tour of the facility.

“We asked everyone to approach this as one team and that’s exactly what we’re seeing the results of now.”

Local high school, collegiate athletes trying to focus on future, not dwell on season past

Nobody can relate to what today’s young athletes are going through.

Imagine entering your final year of high school and being told at the last minute that you can’t compete for a provincial championship. Or what it feels like to be the kid who made sacrifices their entire life to one day earn a scholarship and when that time comes, they’re informed the next season might not happen and their university experience will consist of them sitting behind a computer screen, taking online classes.

The realities in today’s pandemic world are unprecedented. No coach or parent can look at these athletes and say, ‘I know what you’re going through.’ Neither can Adrienne Leslie-Toogood, the director of sport psychology for the Canadian Sport Centre Manitoba. But the former University of Manitoba Bisons shooting guard said it’s important for athletes to not pretend that everything is fine during these challenging times.

“I think that bitter ends up resulting down the road if you don’t allow yourself to feel deeply. That’s the one thing we know in sport for sure, that we feel deeply. We celebrate, we work hard, we invest our heart and soul, so things can hurt pretty bad, too,” Leslie-Toogood says.

Brian Sinclair's legacy will be visible for years, but there was so much we failed to see as he neared death

Ten years later, the ghost of Brian Sinclair still haunts the edges of Winnipeg's consciousness. It whispers, moves, seems to shimmer; a phantasmic video image reconstructed from hundreds of pages of documents.

In my mind's eye, veiled by the fog of imagination and time, this is how that ghostly video begins.

It's a perfect September afternoon in Winnipeg, moments before 3 p.m. The skies above the city are gentle. Outside the Health Sciences Centre's emergency room entrance, a white Handi-Transit taxi slows to a stop.

There is a man in a wheelchair. Hands resting on his thighs, clad in a dark jacket. The cab driver pushes his wheelchair to the triage desk, and then leaves. A man in scrubs, holding a notepad, walks over to greet him.

Throne speech offers glimpse of PCs’ priorities

Throne speeches are more than just pomp and circumstance and the opportunity for selfies between political rivals on the beautiful marble floors of the Manitoba legislature building on Broadway. They set the agenda for the legislative session and set the tone for the government as it moves into its new session. Looked at carefully, they also reveal the priorities of the government by what is said, and also what is not said.

But they are also highly symbolic. They are delivered by the lieutenant-governor of the province, who acts as the symbol of the head of state, the Queen, but they are written by speechwriters for the government of the day.

Political scientists have studied the throne speeches delivered at the federal level to understand the thematic commonalities and what they say about nationalism over the past 30 years. Janine Brodie of the University of Alberta, for example, determined that Canadian throne speeches delivered before the 2000s embraced a more neo-liberal tone that was tied to the global economy.

After 2000, an analysis by Tim Nieguth (Laurentian University) and Tracey Raney (Ryerson University) found that Conservative throne speeches tended to focus on neo-conservative themes — emphasizing the family, the military and threats to security — while Liberals’ speeches talked about health care and Indigenous issues.

Ex-nurses blame red tape for holding up return to workplace

Former nurses who want to go back to work are calling out the regulatory red tape that’s in their way, even as hospitals across the province struggle to fill nursing shifts.