You owe estranged adult child at least a meetup

Winnipeg Comiccon to feature Terminator 2 villain, Stargate cast

You gotta ask the question.

In Robert Patrick’s five-decade career, the 67-year-old actor — who’s in town for this weekend’s Winnipeg Comiccon — has played a gambling addict (The Sopranos), a racist (Peacemaker), a terrorist (Die Hard 2), a bereaved father (The X Files) and dozens of other memorable American TV and film parts.

Sometimes weak, though more often, bold and intimidating characters — but, in any case, real men, with emotional ranges well beyond the robot he’s most famous for playing, namely Terminator 2: Judgment Day’s T-1000, a visual paradox of blob and blades whose only mission is to kill a teenage John Connor.

Still, the people want to know: what does Hollywood’s most iconic machine villain make of today’s AI boom?

Pandemic point man didn’t resign, exactly

The rumours of Paul Beauregard's demise appear to have been greatly exaggerated.

Email inboxes and phone lines were burning-hot Thursday morning with the news that Treasury Board Secretary Beauregard — arguably the most powerful bureaucrat in the Manitoba government and the point man for the province's pandemic response — had resigned his post while the province is still very much in the grips of a public-health crisis.

Beauregard is a controversial figure who been caught up in a scrap with the Opposition NDP over allegations he was improperly involved in the awarding of a contract to Bell MTS, his former employer. The political battle prompted Beauregard to file an unprecedented harassment and bullying complaint against an NDP MLA.

But even with all of Beauregard's baggage and the myriad problems with Manitoba's pandemic response, changing leadership mid-crisis would be a horrible blow to a government already suffering from a deficit in public confidence.

Carrying a torch for tiki

A paper tiki mask is the only indication that the door it’s affixed to leads somewhere other than a dive bar. Ring the doorbell and walk through the kitchen, however, and you’ll be transported to an island-themed lounge that’s equal parts kitschy and comfortable.

“This is just from people’s houses, like my mom’s,” says Allan Pineda, pointing to the wood carvings, water-buffalo horns and rattan furniture decorating the room. “A lot of the stuff you see in here, you’d see in a Filipino’s house back in the day — like second-wave immigrants in the ‘60s and ‘70s, they’d bring this stuff home (from the Philippines).”

Pineda is a local chef and part of the team behind the Bahay Kubo Tiki Bar, a pop-up Filipino drinking and dining experience hosted weekly at an undisclosed Winnipeg establishment.

The details are hush-hush because the temporary eatery is meant to operate like a speakeasy. The dinners are an offshoot of Baon Manila Nights, which Pineda started as a way to highlight Winnipeg’s Filipino culinary scene.

In Africa, virus ruins Olympic dreams and tests dedication

When fully-vaccinated international tourists will be allowed into Canada is the next step in discussions on current travel restrictions, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. But when might unvaccinated travellers be allowed?

Prairie opportunists are knocking and prime minister should answer the door

In preparation for Halloween, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe have spent an inordinate amount of time rattling their chains and howling like indignant spirits about the raw deal they are getting from the rest of the country.

In the wake of a federal election in which the governing Liberals failed to elect a MP in either province, Kenney and Moe are summoning apocalyptic visions of secession. We've heard a lot of that before but Western separatists, inspired by the Alberta and Saskatchewan first ministers, are warning everyone that this time it's serious.

Now, before anyone gets too spooked, it's important to remember that a good politician is — first and foremost — an opportunist. These are the folks with the pure political instinct to recognize a moment in which they can gain the upper hand and then seize on it like a ravenous dog on a bone. Imagine that, and you'll have a pretty clear picture of what Kenney and Moe are up to.

In short, the two premiers want two big-ticket items from Ottawa.

The politics of place

From the Introduction to Authorized Heritage: Place, Memory, and Historic Sites in Prairie Canada, by Robert Coutts, published by University of Manitoba Press

Landscape as culture. It is a concept that at first glance seems peculiar.

Upon reflection, however, we realize that our Western view of landscape is the result of shared values and shared culture, a culture assembled from a rich accumulation of myths, folklores, events, and memories. Such landscapes of memory are cultural memories, and we all experience place and memory in different ways.

One of my own encounters came from historical interest rather than personal familiarity. It was in August of 1983 that I found myself with a small group of people in a boat heading to Hudson Bay. We were travelling on the Hayes River in northern Manitoba, bound for York Factory, the once great trading post and entrepôt of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Leaving from the junction of the Fox and Hayes rivers about 120 kilometres southwest of Hudson Bay, we travelled the river in the warm summer sunshine as the topography of the lowlands became flatter, the riverbank grew steeper, and the fir trees appeared smaller and stunted, bent low by the winter winds off the bay.