Don’t get your hopes up after brash intrusion

‘We’re just all thankful to have some baseball’

Driving more than 2,000 kilometres in less than a day might seem like the equivalent of getting a root canal to many. But it's a journey Winnipeg Goldeyes manager Rick Forney was happy to make this week, one that started from his residence in Maryland and ended in his most unusual temporary baseball home of Fargo, N.D.

Unable to play games at Shaw Park this summer owing to COVID-19 restrictions banning large gatherings for sporting events until at least September, the Fish will instead fly in enemy territory. An abbreviated spring training gets underway Thursday followed by an abbreviated 60-game American Association baseball season starting July 3.

Forney's 24th season with the Goldeyes, including the past 15 as skipper, is going to be unlike any other.

"It's not ideal, but it's not a reason to not work. If the Goldeyes are going to operate in any fashion, then I want to be a part of it," Forney said by telephone as he passed the midway point of his solo trek just outside Chicago.

The ‘Buy Canadian’ trade war challenge

“Buy Canadian,” they tell us, as trade tensions escalate between Canada and the United States. “Elbows up,” the pithy slogan advises again and again, in response to the latest daily affront from increasingly unbalanced U.S. President Donald Trump.

And there’s no question Canadians from coast to coast to coast have bought into the patriotic mindset that politicians, from Prime Minister Mark Carney right on down to elected officials at the municipal level, have implored us to adopt.

“We were attacked,” is how Carney described the Aug. 21 unraveling of trade talks, after U.S. negotiators reportedly inserted last-minute demands the Canadian side viewed as both unreasonable and unacceptable. “You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked.”

The breakdown led to the immediate imposition by Trump of steep new tariffs on $29 billion worth of Canadian goods headed to south-of-the-border markets. A targeted, dollar-for-dollar Canadian tariff response will take effect after the Labour Day weekend. In the meantime, Canadians are more motivated than ever to stand firm against Trump’s tyrannical tactics.

Conflict confusion of interest to Manitobans

Was Paul Beauregard guilty of a conflict of interest?

That is the question left hanging in the air following a remarkable week of disclosures, allegations and counter-allegations.

The Manitoba NDP claims Beauregard, former secretary to the Treasury Board, had improperly interceded in the awarding of a contract to his former employer, Bell MTS.

The party and MLA Adrien Sala devoted a considerable amount of time in 2020 pursuing such allegations against Beauregard who, in turn, filed a complaint against the official Opposition under the legislature's Respectful Workplace Policy.

Metaphor is dead as Trump ‘renovates’

It appears U.S. President Donald Trump will not stop until he has rendered literally every metaphorical description one could give for his presidency.

Case in point: he’s tearing the White House apart.

Trump, as part of a lifelong effort to make everything about himself, has torn down the entire East Wing of the presidential building as he moves ahead with construction of an ornate, US$350-million ballroom. The demolition was carried out without the approvals that are normally required. He already had the Rose Garden paved over, he evidently needs more change than that.

One could have made the argument during his first term that Trump had already rewritten American politics in his image, an image which persisted through others even during his four-year absence from the Oval Office during former president Joe Biden’s term. Republican policy revolves around his whims. Democrats were, and still are, defined by how hard they will work to oppose him. When he leaves the office one day, his spectre will likely endure, hovering over the American body politic for a generation.

'Your helmet whistles' through Cortina's Tofana Schuss

CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, Italy - Watching skiers hurtle down the mountain at full throttle, it’s often hard to appreciate the connection to nature.

When racers soar through the air off a huge jump between two massive walls of rock outcroppings on Cortina’s spectacular Olympia delle Tofane course, though, it’s hard to miss.

The Tofana Schuss is the signature section of the women’s downhill to be contested on Saturday at the skiing world championships.

The schuss, or chute, comes about 20 seconds into the downhill.

St. Boniface culinary matriarch’s presence, devotion are much missed

Irène Kirouac’s smile was as iconic as her restaurants.