Provincial budget fails to chart new course

If the 2022 Manitoba budget was intended to provide a lifeline for the Progressive Conservative government, it must surely be considered a failure.

Prior to the budget’s release, Premier Heather Stefanson and her government were teetering on the edge of the political abyss. Manitobans are profoundly unhappy with the government’s performance on most issues, including pandemic management. National polls show Ms. Stefanson is Canada’s least popular premier.

That political context made this budget a high-priority project for the Tories. It was, simply put, their best chance to shed the lingering burden left by former premier Brian Pallister, and rebuild the party brand under a new leader.

Unfortunately, Ms. Stefanson’s first budget remains shackled to the deeply flawed fiscal and political logic that defined the Pallister years. And no single budgetary measure embodies that failure more than the premier’s decision to continue cutting education property taxes.

Doctor’s departure stressful for teen

Morgan Walker is a typical teen — but only because a piece of his brain the size of a deck of cards was removed four years ago.

Walker, who had seizures multiple times a day before his surgery, fears other people might not be so lucky.

That’s because his surgeon, Dr. Demitre Serletis, is leaving the province and Health Sciences Centre. Serletis will start practising at the Cleveland Clinic in the new year.

“I was kind of shocked, but I understood why,” Walker said from his home in Brandon. “The government really hasn’t been respecting doctors.”

Rural hospital shutdowns continue into fall

Summer shutdowns at some rural Manitoba hospitals have quietly extended into fall, and the uncertainty about reopening is frustrating residents.

The trick to attracting wee, treat-seeking ghosts and goblins on Halloween is to go all-in

When I was a kid in the 1990s, I lived for Halloween.

My mom, a gifted seamstress, made all of my costumes. Deciding what I’d dress up as involved imagination and a trip to the fabric or craft store.

I loved flipping through the McCall’s patterns, and running my hands along the bolts of fabric that my mom would transform into Little Bo Peep, or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, or, one year, a Christmas tree — complete with the star on top. Old things were repurposed into new things.

Trick-or-treating was my... I don’t know, some sort of sports reference. The goal? Amass as much candy as possible. We’d troll the neighbourhood for hours, dragging snow-sodden pillow cases full of it. We’d target specific streets, lured mostly by the promise of full-sized chocolate bars.

A profile of one of Winnipeg’s worst-kept secret singer/songwriters

Roman Clarke lives in the last house on his street, with the silently shimmering Seine River as his next-door neighbour. Seated at the picnic table in his backyard are knee-high piles of snow. In the window sill by the front door rests a can of Labatt Blue, the leftover sips frozen by the mid-November chill.