Paper trail

Endorsements build up mayoral candidates’ profiles

With just over a week until election day, high-profile endorsements are rolling in for Winnipeg’s top mayoral candidates in what political observers say is another way to sway undecided voters.

Billboard evangelism may look outdated but group says it’s effective

Maybe you’ve seen them in Winnipeg — billboards that say things like: “Jesus is alive!” “Are you prepared to meet Jesus?” “After you die, you will meet God.” They include a phone number to call: 844-FIND-TRUTH.

There are two billboards in Winnipeg. One is on Henderson Highway in Elmwood. The other is on Balmoral Street, by Cumberland.

Have you ever wondered who is behind them, and why they do it?

You might be surprised to learn they are created and sponsored by an Amish/Mennonite organization called Christian Aid Ministries (CAM). Based in rural Ontario, the group is funded by Amish and some conservative Mennonite denominations and individuals.

Running a clothing company keeps mom of five girls in stitches

Andrée-Anne Généreux, mother of identical, four-year-old triplets, has grown used to being peppered with questions whenever passersby spot her and the girls ambling through their River Heights neighbourhood.

Do triplets run in the family, they openly wonder? How long was her pregnancy? Was she big?

Not that she’s aware, though both of her in-laws do have twin siblings; 34 weeks and three days, “but hey, who’s counting?”; and, “Are you freaking kidding me? I was huge,” she responds with a laugh, each and every time.

More and more, however, comments directed her way are along the lines of, “Where did the girls get those gorgeous dresses?” or “That jumper! You have to tell me who makes it.”

FAQ: Winnipeg’s boil-water advisory

To boil water: Fill a pot with water from the cold-water tap. Heat it until bubbles come from the bottom of the pot to the top. Once the water reaches a rolling boil, let it boil for one minute (kettles with an automatic shutoff feature may not boil for a full minute).

Boler sales and rentals happening as soon as they pop up

In January, Jorge Torres bought a Boler trailer — a little fiberglass egg on wheels — and brought it to his fiancée’s house to surprise her.

“The opposite of a good surprise is what she had,” laughs Torres, a 30-year-old contractor. “She says, ‘What is this garbage?’”

That garbage, Torres calmly explained, was a cult classic, a lightweight, ovoid escape pod first designed in Winnipeg in 1968, of which only 10,000 were manufactured, making it a valuable commodity and a retro, futuristic objet d’art with room for four sleepers. It was in pretty rough shape: scuffed up, beat up, used. It looked as though it needed a fresh coat of everything.

So to ease his fiancée’s worry, Torres, who had a rough year business-wise owing to the pandemic, found some images of refurbished models. “I’m telling you, I can fix it up and make it look really cool, even nicer than this,” he said, saying they could rent it out. There was a market, and a growing one at that, for camping and seeing the great outdoors after a year-plus spent indoors. She started to come around.

Explaining Canada’s superior employment rate

Donald Trump regularly makes outrageous claims. Fentanyl was pouring across the northern border from Canada and had to be stopped. Canada is nasty to deal with and has the highest tariffs in the world. Canada needs the U.S. but the U.S. doesn’t need Canada. Canadians want to become the 51st state. And so on.

In the latest trade dispute, after Mark Carney walked away from negotiations, Trump made a new claim that Canada’s unemployment rate was 10 per cent and climbing rapidly. Insofar as the unemployment rate is closely monitored, reported monthly, and given similar attention to the rates of inflation and economic growth, the comment was likely intended to signal Canada’s weakness. It fits Trump’s narrative that Canada needs the U.S. for its livelihood and protection and would be better off more directly under U.S. influence as a 51st state, or perhaps a protectorate like the Philippines or Panama in the past.

Fact checkers quickly reported that Canada’s unemployment rate is really 6.4 per cent for July, not 10 per cent, has fallen from 6.9 per cent in April, and is at its lowest rate since May 2024. Some astute observers pointed out that Canada’s method for the calculation of the unemployment rate leads to a higher rate than the U.S. by about one per cent. Under the American methodology, then, our unemployment rate would be 5.4 per cent, not that far off the U.S. July rate of 4.1 per cent.

Detection of unemployment is less straightforward that might appear, as it is sandwiched between the labour force statuses of employment and inactivity at a particular point in time. The internationally established standard for determination of unemployment is the notion of searching for work — you are unemployed if you do not have paid employment and you are looking for work without success. Surveys have been developed to categorize respondents as employed, unemployed or inactive, including the labour force survey (LFS) in Canada and the current population survey (CPS) in the U.S.