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

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:

Walkout creates chaos at St. James Smitty’s

Gordon Sharpe wanted to eat a meal at the St. James Smitty’s Wednesday, but he got a helping of bad news instead.

He saw several workers walk out of the restaurant, at 1017 St. James St.

“(The waiter) came back about 10 minutes later and stood over the table, looking a little distraught and said, ‘I’m quitting right now and so is everybody else,’” Sharpe said. “He said, ‘This is my last time serving you,’ and he was quite choked up.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, adding that the managers scrambled to serve patrons.

Court ruling concludes Canadian Wheat Board saga

It remains to be seen whether the recent court ruling in a lawsuit filed after Canadian Wheat Board’s dissolution in 2012 puts the whole debate to rest, as some no doubt hope.

But either way, the dust has settled on the post-CWB world. The sun still rises and a new generation of farmers on the land only knows by name an institution that for generations influenced every aspect of Prairie grain farming.

The first Rural Revival column I wrote for this newspaper more than 30 years ago was about a thousand farmers from Western Canada demonstrating in support of the Wheat Board. It was in the aftermath of the Western Grain Marketing Panel report, one of several efforts that eventually included a plebiscite to help the federal government decide what to do about a vocal minority of farmers who wanted marketing “freedom.”

The polls at the time suggested about two-thirds of farmers were comfortable enough with the single-desk system for food wheat and barley to keep it around. It served as a counterbalance to canola, which they sold on the open market. They essentially had a dual market.

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.”

Imperialist crusades: 21st-century style

In the 11th century and lasting into the 13th, the papacy launched a series of at least eight military campaigns we now refer to as the Crusades, or Holy Wars. They were an imperialistic call to arms for Christians to retake Jerusalem, which was at the time under Muslim rule.

Spiritual rewards for participation were implied, and other incentives offered, to dull the extra taxation demanded to fund the campaigns. Over time, the “crusades” morphed to become massacres of not only Muslims but also Jews and Christian dissidents — in other words, any enemies of the papacy. If today’s news sounds like déjà vu all over again, it probably should.

The stories keep repeating themselves in many forms. We now know that two 20th century world wars, global in scope, were caused by imperialistic ambitions, changes in the balance of international powers and corresponding arms races. The first was attributed to the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a Bosnian Serb, a kind of “regime change” initiative. The second resulted from rising tensions between Allied and Axis powers, triggered by the rise of European fascism and Japanese militarism. The human toll of both was unimaginable.

In the First World War, 15 to 22 million people, including soldiers and civilians, were killed and another 23 million were wounded. These numbers do not account for those otherwise affected — victims of chemical warfare whose compromised health shortened their lives; of the subsequent Spanish flu epidemic amplified by the displacement of peoples; others who died from other diseases caused by war conditions; and those who were malnourished or starved. Nor do they account for the ongoing trauma and resentments passed on intergenerationally to this day.

Province’s first female dentist took skill, insight wherever needed

Some stories take longer to get around to than others.

In the fall of 2011 I hooked up with Fiona Odlum at an Academy Road Starbucks for a lighthearted feature about people who report on traffic for a living. Odlum, currently a contributor at CBC Saskatchewan, was working for 680 CJOB at the time, clueing rush-hour commuters in on stalls, lane closures and fender-benders they’d be wise to avoid.

Odlum turned the tables at one point by asking a few questions of her own including, “So, what’s your main beat?”

I don’t really have one, I told her, but if pressed, I would probably go with human-interest pieces.