Writing community rallies to relaunch book awards

Bach says Russia ban is to protect athletes, not punish them

The truth is that many of the ingredients that led to Jason Kenney’s demise are — at least so far — winning staples of the ongoing federal Conservative leadership campaign, Chantal Hébert writes.

Ready to launch: Inside the massive undertaking to revitalize the beloved Nonsuch replica

For 44 years, the Nonsuch has been enchanting visitors to the Manitoba Museum, bringing a whiff of adventure and the romance of the sea to our landlocked city.The jewel in the crown of the Hudson’s Bay Company Museum Collection, the replica of the 17th-century fur-trading ship takes those who board her back in time.

Decades’ worth of schoolchildren have clutched the rails at the side of the rickety gangway that leads you onboard and descended the narrow stairs — backwards, please, for safety! — into the fo’c’sle, where they could marvel at the tiny bunks — how short men were back then — and peer out the round portholes, imagining them being lashed by salt spray as you crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a grand adventure to find a new trade route for England.

Few of us on long-ago field trips ever stopped to think about why this Prairie city was honouring a British ship that never actually visited Manitoba — let alone why we had built an entire museum wing around a replica that, while it sailed more than 14,000 kilometres in European, Canadian and American waters, was hauled into Winnipeg in pieces.

As the first phase of its $17.5-million Bringing Our Stories Forward capital campaign, the museum has spent about three years planning its refurbishment of the Nonsuch exhibit, which has remained largely untouched since it was installed in 1974, in part to better tell that story.

Main Street restaurant Boujee burns for the second time in one week

A former restaurant on Main Street is set to be demolished after a fire broke out for the second time in less than a week.

Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service crews responded to reports of a fire at Boujee Restaurant and Bar, a vacant, single-storey building on the 100 block of Main Street shortly before 6 a.m. Saturday. The same building was most recently damaged in a fire last Sunday.

At the scene, crews found heavy smoke coming from the building. After attacking the fire using aerial ladders that sprayed water from above, firefighters arranged an emergency demolition of the building. Demolition is expected to be completed today, the WFPS said in a news release.

No injuries were reported and the fire is under investigation.

The view from here: Phyllis Green. Boob Tree, 1975

Staycation: The Art of Being Here feautres more than 100 Manitoba-related artworks from the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq collection, spanning the past 50 years. These pieces reveal how the places around us are layered with memory, story and lived experience. Over the coming weeks, the Free Press will spotlight works from this eclectic exhibition, each one offering a new way of seeing home. Experience it in person and enjoy some staycation time at the gallery, on view until December.

Phyllis Green. Boob Tree, 1975

(Yarn, wood. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Acquired with funds from the Estate of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Naylor, funds administered by The Winnipeg Foundation, 2014-128. Photo: Ernest Mayer.)

The year 1975 was designated International Women’s Year by the United Nations, and in celebration, the WAG staged the show Images of Women, which explored how women had historically been depicted, an impressive selection but by mostly male artists. Amid pushback from the community, Sharron Zenith Corne and Marian Yeo organized a second exhibition, Woman as Viewer, which challenged those portrayals by only featuring works by women. It was called the first Canadian exhibition of feminist art. American artist Phyllis Green’s Boob Tree, a four-foot-tall crochet sculpture of a cluster of breasts, adorned the exhibit posters, which were so popular they were snatched by passersby! The sculpture is playful and unsettling, re-appropriating the objectification of women’s bodies.

After a speeding Toronto cab driver struck and paralyzed her, spirit and sports saved Paralympic paddler Brianna Hennessy

“Paralympics is about having all the valid reasons in the world to give up, and choosing not to,” Hennessy says. “Choosing to take a part of our lives back instead.”