New Free Press cookbook to spice up your kitchen

Nelson following in family’s decorated Team USA footsteps

MILAN — Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. But when it comes to professional sports, it’s always fun to play the what-if game.

For example, what if the Winnipeg Jets had opted to select hometown product Seth Jarvis — who made his Winter Olympics debut Friday night against Switzerland — with the 10th overall pick in 2020?

Winnipeg instead took Cole Perfetti at that spot, and Jarvis had to wait two more turns before the Carolina Hurricanes called his name. Perfetti has shown plenty of promise, but he’s not at the level of Jarvis, who brings both a big game and a huge personality to the table.

Well, here’s another what-if scenario that dawned Thursday night while watching Connor Hellebuyck, Kyle Connor and Team USA skate to a 5-1 victory over Latvia.

A truckload of symbolism: Why Pierre Poilievre and other Conservatives are steering into the power of the pickup

Conservative politicians have found in the pickup truck a symbol for a rural working life they argue Justin Trudeau can't relate to.

Cancelled KXL won't lessen oil dependency: experts

CALGARY - Cancelling the multi-billion dollar Keystone XL pipeline expansion would not only jeopardize thousands of jobs in Alberta, it would also mean the loss of billions of dollars in corporate income taxes, carbon taxes and royalties, according to energy experts.

TC Energy Corp.'s 1,947-kilometre project would carry crude oil from Hardisty, Alta., to Steele City, Neb. From there it would connect with the company's existing facilities to reach the U.S. Gulf Coast – one of the world’s biggest oil refining hubs.

Scrapping the pipeline expansion could threaten the security of supply for those refineries, said Richard Masson, an executive fellow and energy expert at the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy.

Without a pipeline to move bottlenecked bitumen from Canada to U.S. coastal refineries, they'll be forced to import from countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Russia, he said.

Heavy rain, wind sweep across Manitoba communities

Kelvin Siemens hoped he was dreaming when a tornado touched down near his home Sunday evening.

When he woke up the next morning, the southwestern Manitoba farmer confirmed it was no dream, as his barn and hay shed was toppled and a pile of rubble was left behind.

“This kind of devastation can really test your constitution,” Siemens, 65, told the Free Press from his farm just south of Kola, a small community in the Rural Municipality of Wallace-Woodworth.

The tornado was reported near Elkhorn, about 105 kilometres west of Brandon, at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday. A second tornado touched down near Maryfield, Sask., located southwest of Elkhorn.

Legislature's statue-less plinth carries weight of community's hope, anger, sorrow

It’s late afternoon at the Manitoba legislature, inching towards evening. Under the summer sun’s fury, a man and a woman stroll over the grass around the building’s northern entrance, walking towards the great limestone block that sits squat at the heart of the grounds.

When they reach the stone’s edge, they pause. They circle it slowly, pointing out the scar where the base was shattered by the impact of something heavy. They look at the weathered shoes scattered around the stone, at the wreath that speaks of an old grief, at a poster pegged in the grass that declares a heartwrenching hope.

“Bring Them Home.”

The visitors murmur to each other, softly. They kneel on the grass and take pictures with their phones. In front of the stone, a sea of tiny orange flags writhes and snaps in the wind, the rhythm singing a lament for the hundreds of Indigenous children who were taken to residential schools and never came home.

RCMP defends N.S. shooting response

HALIFAX - Under fire for how they alerted the public to a 12-hour massacre that took the lives of 22 people, the Nova Scotia RCMP defended their actions Wednesday, saying their use of Twitter was effective.

Since the horrific string of killings started Saturday night and stretched into Sunday morning, questions have been raised as to why the province did not use an emergency alert system to transmit warnings to Nova Scotians' cellphones and television screens.

RCMP Chief Supt. Chris Leather said Twitter messages from the RCMP started Saturday at 10:26 p.m., when the Mounties warned of a firearms complaint in Portapique, a tiny village about a 130-kilometre drive north of Halifax.

Leather read from a statement Wednesday making it clear he was aware the RCMP's communication with the public was under scrutiny.