Party disinvite is the height of disrespect

A calm and compassionate spirit

There’s a teaching Carol Wood once shared that Cheryl Montgomery will always remember.

It was the summer of 2025. Wildfires were ripping through northern Manitoba, closing in on their community of O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation, about 750 kilometres north of Winnipeg on the shore of South Indian Lake. In the midst of the crisis, the First Nation was forced to evacuate, sending most of its 1,200 residents out.

Wood and Montgomery were among those who stayed behind. Both served on the community’s emergency response team, and threw themselves into making sure their community members were safe. The days were long; the stress was immense. Most nights, Montgomery recalls, she’d still be awake and working well past 2 a.m.

One day, Wood and her brother, Burnell Anderson, took Montgomery aside. They worried about their longtime friend, who is also the principal of the community’s Thunderbird School. They wanted to make sure she was taking care of herself. They reminded her of a teaching they carried, handed down from their own parents.

Gillingham outlines big plan for Seine River in a second-term as mayor

Scott Gillingham promises to turn the Seine River into a permanent recreation and nature attraction, if re-elected as mayor.

At a riverside campaign announcement Friday, Gillingham said a long-term plan would be to create Rivière-Seine Historic Municipal Riverway encompassing the entire Winnipeg section of the Seine, building on past volunteer efforts to clean up the river and make it a paddle-friendly attraction.

The Seine, which winds through St. Boniface and St. Vital, originates in the Sandilands Provincial Forest, passes through southeastern Manitoba, crosses the Red River Floodway and joins the Red River in St. Boniface just north of The Forks.

“What we want to do, really, is to establish the permanence of this river and allow its beauty and the opportunity to enjoy it, to be something that we don’t just leave to volunteers alone, but come together and focus on establishing it as, really, a place that gets focused attention and investment,” said Gillingham.

Vinzenz Geiger rallies, wins Olympic gold in Nordic combined

Horror stories about China’s treatment of Uyghurs gives issue more attention.

‘Premier of Costa Rica’ moniker in the making

Will Brian Pallister ever get a break?

Last week, the premier was back in the hot seat, this time for the revelation that he is not, while vacationing at his estate in Costa Rica, connected to the government he leads by email. In fact, he doesn’t really use email at all, a somewhat surprising admission from a political leader in this digital age.

Allies will howl at the unfairness of this story, but the underlying point it raises is valid: can a premier still be a premier when he spends, by his own admission, up to two months away from Manitoba in a Central American paradise without using email, a critical productivity tool that most people could not live without?

Pallister responded quickly to the story, holding a number of one-on-one interviews with journalists late last week. For each interview, the premier showed off the raft of reading material he ferries back and forth to Costa Rica and stressed repeatedly that he remains in telephone contact with his office the entire time he is away.

Winnipeg author Joan Thomas wins GG fiction award

Winnipeg author Joan Thomas has been awarded the 2019 Governor General's English-language award for fiction for her fourth novel, Five Wives.

The winners of the Governor General's Literary Awards were announced Tuesday morning; each winner in the English and French categories receives $25,000, while each publisher receives $3,000. Five Wives was published in September by HarperCollins.

“It's incredible,” Thomas said on the phone from HarperCollins' Toronto office, where she was doing media interviews following the announcement of the win.

“I woke up this morning to my phone going crazy. I know there are a lot of people in Winnipeg who were cheering for me, and who are very happy, and that just deepens my joy about the whole thing. I was calm at first, but when I walked into the offices here I started crying.”

Four Jets clear waivers to join Moose

The Winnipeg Jets organizational depth has yet to take a hit on the waiver wire.

On Saturday afternoon, all four players exposed to waivers — defenceman Isaak Phillips and forwards Nikita Chibrikov, Noah Gregor and Parker Ford — cleared, which means they can be assigned to the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League.

Owing to injuries to captain Adam Lowry and winger Cole Perfetti, both Chibrikov and Ford started last season on the NHL roster but spent the bulk of last season with the Moose.

Chibrikov, chosen in the second round of the 2021 NHL Draft, has dealt with multiple lower-body injuries during the prior two seasons and is still working his way back to peak form.