Windfall eases angst over later-life partnership

West Kildonan Industrial residents call for speed bumps after child hit by truck

Residents in the West Kildonan Industrial neighbourhood are calling on the city to install speed bumps in their area after a child was hit and dragged by a vehicle Thursday.

Katelyn Bemister lives near the area where the child — who was hospitalized as a result of the incident and has been upgraded to stable condition — was struck. She says people frequently speed in the area.

“They’re going really fast, and they’re not really paying attention at all to the pedestrians in the area,” says Bemister.

In video supplied to the Free Press by a resident, the child can be seen riding a bike down a sidewalk along the 500 block of North Point Boulevard.

Four years on, future of 24 Sussex uncertain

OTTAWA - Nearly four years after Justin Trudeau opted not to move into the prime minister's official residence over concerns about its crumbling state, the building remains vacant — except for staff who continue to use the kitchen to prepare meals for Trudeau and his family.

And it appears no decisions will be made on the future of the residence until well after the fall federal election.

The federal Conservatives accuse the Trudeau government of dithering over "critical" upgrades to the stately yet run-down home, and needlessly costing taxpayers more money in the process.

At the same time, none of the main federal party leaders appears willing to opine on whether the building should be torn down or renovated, or whether they would live in the residence if it were upgraded.

Knit wit: self-taught knitter quit school, job to stitch together new career

It’s the coldest night of the year and inside a cosy North Kildonan cafe, knitter Janine Myska is spinning her yarn.

Not the woolly kind, as one might expect from an expert knitter, but the proverbial sort that details exactly how the charming, 24-year-old Winnipeg entrepreneur went from crafting simple tuques on a loom to operating her own successful online-based knitwear and pattern company.

Seated at a table for two, Myska sets forth that her flourishing company, Knits N’ Knots — knitsnknots.ca. — got off the ground three years ago when the then-21-year-old was a student of Food Science at the University of Manitoba. Around that time, her mother bestowed upon her a plastic, circular knitting loom on which she speedily churned out roughly 50 simple woolly tuques.

“They turned out really nice,” recalls the milliner, who instantly began posting photographs of the double-brim toques on her Instagram account for all of her 20 followers to admire. (Her first @knitsnknotswpg Instagram post on Feb. 18, 2016 shows her sporting a chunky white tuque with a large pom-pom and black stripe; it garnered 109 “likes.”)

Free Press Field Trips

The Free Press is hitting the road this summer — back roads, primarily — in search of little gems of stories from small-town Manitoba.

TV loses a visionary showrunner

Despite the respectful, nostalgic nods that are occasionally afforded to television’s long-ago, black-and-white past, there is simply no disputing that we — the binge-watching, Netflix-and-chilling, various-device-viewing generation — are living in TV’s golden age.

Not only is more content being created now than ever before, but the best of what is available to viewers of conventional broadcast TV, cable networks and streaming services is being produced at a level of quality that continually pushes boundaries, raises standards and challenges viewers on an almost-weekly basis to reconsider what qualifies as great.

And it’s worth noting, in this week when television lost one of its most noteworthy and powerful creative forces, just how significant Steven Bochco was in the modern evolution of the medium.

Simply put, Bochco, who died Sunday at age 74 after a lengthy battle with leukemia, helped set the stage for the current wave of scripted-TV excellence, particularly in the drama-series realm. Whatever it is that you consider to be the small screen’s best, from Game of Thrones to Breaking Bad to House of Cards to This Is Us, the roots of its success can be found in Bochco’s primetime productions of the 1980s and ’90s.

Soccer stars continue to inspire

For nearly a decade, Desiree Scott had visualized just what the moment would look like. Feel like. Sound like. And there were times, no question, where the Winnipegger wondered if it would all simply remain locked in her head, a figment of her vivid imagination.

Heartbreak in London in 2012. More disappointment in Rio in 2016. A 2020 Summer Games delayed by a global pandemic. And then, one year later, an all-too-familiar foe once again standing in their way.

But all the scheming and dreaming, all the training and sacrificing and blood, sweat and tears left on the field and in locker rooms around the world paid off in an epic way last week. Scott, along with her teammates on the Canadian national women's soccer team, had finally reached the pinnacle of their profession.

They were Olympic gold medallists.