Face it, ‘firsts’ aren’t always meant to last

Projecting ghost signs in new light

The existence of ghosts is uncertain. Ghost signs? Those are real. In Winnipeg’s Exchange District, they’re easy to spot: fading advertisements for faded firms, splashed across century-old buildings in paint that isn’t quite ready to disappear just yet — unfinished business for finished businesses.

At 281 McDermot Ave., three ghost signs refuse to go to the grave, and Matt Cohen and Craig Winslow refuse to let them.

On Friday night, the duo will flick on a set of projectors to illuminate the huge ads in what they call the world’s first permanent ghost sign installation, overlooking Old Market Square each night from sunset until midnight. Grim reaper be damned.

Cohen, a Winnipeg marketing professional, has been obsessively cataloguing the city’s surviving wall-based advertisements for a decade. In 2016, he first heard of Winslow, who was working on reviving ghost signs across the United States using light projection. The two connected, and a few months later, Winslow was in Winnipeg to breathe new life into five ghost signs for a single night.

WSO ready to set sail on the Nonsuch

Sailors aboard the Nonsuch as she crossed in the Atlantic in 1668 might have entertained themselves with a few hornpipes or sea shanties to pass the time as they searched for a new trade route from England.

Wednesday night, visitors to the Manitoba Museum’s replica of the 17th-century square-rigged ketch will hear a slightly more elevated soundtrack: selections from the classical canon played by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

WSO resident conductor Julian Pellicano admits the logistics were a bit of a hurdle. 

“As it was being renovated, we couldn’t get in the gallery, but just before I left Canada a couple of weeks ago I was able to get in and do some measurements,” the New York-born conductor says from Connecticut, where’s he’s conducting at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. “We figured out a viable plan.”

For singer-songwriter Scott Nolan, poetry is the path to grace

Words mean everything to Scott Nolan. After all, they saved his life.

240 WestJet flight attendants picket in Winnipeg

Winnipeg’s WestJet flight attendants took to the picket line outside of Richardson airport on the first day of nationwide strikes Sunday, while inside, frustrated flyers scrambled to re-route cancelled long-weekend flights.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees’ Ontario arm and the airline announced the strike would commence after the strike deadline was passed without a deal early Sunday morning. WestJet attendants have been without a contract since Dec. 31, 2025.

Hours later, the 240 WestJet flight attendants based in Winnipeg had walked off the job and were marching outside of the airport terminal, some carrying signs with slogans including “Tired with WestJet? So are We!” and “Unpaid Work Won’t Fly.”

Key issues causing the stalemate are wages and pay for work on the ground: the union says flight attendants are not being paid for some of that work, while the company says they pay for the work through a “credit hour” system rather than an hourly rate.

Crop storage headaches loom on horizon

A sense of calm descends over Prairie fields this time of year — at least on the surface.

Activities become more limited in the weeks leading up to harvest. There’s not much farmers can do now to support this year’s crop, other than monitor and protect it from diseases such as sclerotinia in canola and leaf stripe and fusarium head blight in wheat and barley.

July is when you might see farmers wading into a thick stand of canola, conducting a so-called “wet pants test” to get a low-tech read on how much disease-inducing moisture is lurking in the canopy.

Disease pressure is high in a humid, hot summer like this one and it’s kept aerial applicators busy applying fungicides. Sclerotinia spores live on plant residues in the soil and blossom into a mould that destroys the canola stem, starving the maturing pods.