CBC’s ‘The Porter,’ Nathan Fielder’s ‘The Rehearsal’ nab Spirit Awards nominations

Killer pleads guilty in three-year-old daughter’s fatal stabbing

A Winnipeg man has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the shocking stabbing death of his three-year-old daughter.

Frank Nausigimana, 29, entered his plea before Queen’s Bench Justice Joan McKelvey during a brief hearing Thursday morning.

Asked if he understood he was waiving his right to a trial, Nausigimana, through an American Sign Language interpreter, told McKelvey: “ Yes, I accept the punishment and I am following the law of God.”

“I’ve decided that I am going to pray,” Nausigimana said. “I admit I am guilty.”

Go with the snow

Wearing a dusty pink snowsuit and a face mask emblazoned with colourful Dala horses, Sonja Lundstrom is excited.

“This is going to be my 80th birthday present to myself,” she says, pointing to a nearby wooden kicksled poised for takeoff. “My grandma had one of these and my dad made me one out of hockey sticks for all my children… but these are the new modern ones and I haven’t had one of those.”

But today’s frosty jaunt is less of a test drive and more of a diplomatic adventure. Lundstrom is the president of the Swedish Cultural Association of Manitoba and is at The Forks to give Urban Ahlin, the Swedish Ambassador to Canada, a little taste of home.

“In my part of Sweden we use the (kicksleds) when we go out on the ice for ice fishing,” says Ahlin, who was in town recently with several other Nordic ambassadors to meet with the premier. “This is a very climate-friendly means of transportation and you can use it for lots of different reasons… it’s actually pretty fun to ride as well.”

Say What?! Sports guys travel to new destination

Say What?! is an email conversation between sports editor Steve Lyons and sports columnist Paul Wiecek. Look for us regularly but intermittently on the Free Press website.

Steve Lyons: Heya. How you doing? How’s 2020 treating you so far?

Few things to get us started:

Winnipeg novelist's latest offering a riveting fictional account of missionaries' plight

In 1955, five American missionary couples set out to evangelize the Waorani, an Indigenous people group of the Ecuadorian rainforest that had never had contact with the outside world. They dubbed their mission “Operation Auca.”

After a few months of airdropping gifts, the five men — Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, Nate Saint, Ed McCully and Roger Youderian — opted to set up camp on a beach near a Waorani settlement. Just a few days later, they were all speared to death. Thanks to the swift arrival of a Life magazine photographer, the brutal conclusion to Operation Auca became global news.

In her new novel, Five Wives, Winnipeg writer Joan Thomas tells this story again.

“In the missionaries’ memoirs, ‘God’s leading’ explains almost every impulse,” Thomas writes in a postscript. “I set out to peer behind that, to explore in human terms actions that astonished me.”

RRC Polytech program cuts take bite out of hospitality, tourism sector

Manitoba’s tourism industry is bracing for the disappearance of hospitality training programs — once-popular courses among international students.

Citing budgetary challenges related to a shift in federal immigration policy, Red River College Polytechnic is scrapping 11 programs and scaling back three others in 2026-27. Its hospitality business management diploma is one of seven permanent casualties.

The announcement, while unsurprising, is but the latest blow to a sector trying to “build back the workforce” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Michael Juce, president of the Manitoba Hotel Association.

“Are people going to go outside of Manitoba for training? And if they leave, are they going to come back?” Juce said, adding that rural hotels in particular are already grappling with staffing shortages.