Dishing out diversity Garden City, West Kildonan home to cuisine with fusion of creativity and culture By: Alison Gillmor Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Friday, Aug. 28, 2020 Last Modified: 11:51 AM CDT Tuesday, Sep. 8, 2020 Updates

Winnipeg’s ability to serve as TV production hub hampered by lack of direct flights to U.S.

As the TV series Fargo begins its second season, wistful notions of the acclaimed FX drama being shot in Winnipeg really are quite far gone.

But for the local film- and TV-production community, Fargo is still the Big One that got away — a constant reminder of the delicate nature of location-shooting negotiations and of how Winnipeg’s position as a smaller and relatively isolated city with few direct flight connections to U.S. cities will continue to make it difficult to attract major TV-series projects. 

When it was being developed as a TV series in 2013, Fargo’s producers looked north of the border for a shooting location that would match the bleak and wintry North Dakota/Minnesota landscape featured in the story, while allowing access to the benefits of exchange-rate savings and tax-credit incentives afforded by filming in Canada.

In the end, it came down to a choice between Winnipeg and Calgary. Calgary has several daily direct flights to and from Los Angeles; Winnipeg has none.

Hydro solicits help from other power companies

Manitoba Hydro is asking for help from utilities in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Minnesota to help restore power to 32,000 customers, including most of the city of Portage, in the wake of a massive storm that dumped up to 60 centimetres of precipitation on much of southern Manitoba.

The province has declared a state of emergency. The declaration is a formal step that enables Manitoba Hydro to "invoke mutual aid clauses with neighbouring utilities for such assistance as may be required to restore services," the province said.

Hydro said it would ask the other power companies for replacement transmission towers, distribution poles and specialized electrical equipment.

"I would like to say that the damage is unprecedented," said Hydro CEO Jay Grewal. "In some areas we have more lines and poles down than standing."

New vaccine brings optimism amid variants threat

Canada's vaccine rollout received a boost Friday with the approval of a third COVID-19 inoculation, giving the country another immunization option at a time when case counts remain nearly 75 per cent higher than they were at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic.

Health Canada approved a vaccine from AstraZeneca, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said jabs will keep arriving "faster and faster as we head into the spring."

While numbers of cases and hospitalizations have dropped from all-time highs just weeks ago, variants of concern are rising in parts of the country.

Canada's top doctor Theresa Tam said nationally there are 964 reported cases of the variant first detected in the U.K., up from 429 reported two weeks ago. There were also 44 cases of the variant first discovered in South Africa, and two cases of the version first found in Brazil.

Garden City, West Kildonan home to cuisine with fusion of creativity, culture

This week we head to West Kildonan and Garden City, neighbourhoods full of quiet residential streets, lots of small businesses and layers of Winnipeg history. This area has been shaped by waves of immigration, and that makes for a richly diverse restaurant scene.

THE BIG BREAKFAST:Pares Bistro (675 Jefferson Ave., 204-334-0793) is a modest, family-run resto focusing on Filipino favourites, including breakfast dishes — served all day — that will really set you up.

The longsilog, which features two sweet longganisa sausages, two eggs cooked your way, and a huge — I mean, huge! — mound of garlicky, sticky fried rice, is a tasty bargain at $6.99. Other breakfast options swap in pork chops, chicken legs or crispy fried fish.

Olympians crossed the sportsmanship line with bites, kicks and brawls

You might say Moroccan boxer Youness Baalla really sank his teeth into the Olympic spirit during his opening bout at the Summer Games in Tokyo.

That’s because Baalla, 22, tried to literally take a bite out of opponent David Nyika’s ear late in the third and final round of his loss to the New Zealand fighter.

Baalla decided to channel Mike Tyson — who famously took a chunk out of Evander Holyfield’s ear during a championship fight at Madison Square Garden in 1997 — during a clinch in the centre of the ring.

The fight continued and Nyika, who was one of New Zealand’s flag bearers at the Games opening ceremony, registered a 5-0 win to book a spot in the quarter-finals. He was surprised the referee didn’t see the attempted bite, which was only picked up on television.