Don’t jump to conclusions with mom’s new flame

Brown ponders life in his 71st year, warts and all, in thoughtful, fearless prose

Sequels are rarely as good as their originals. (The movie The Godfather Part II may be the rare exception.) That’s the main shortcoming of Ian Brown’s Seventy, a sequel of sorts to his popular and acclaimed Sixty.

Both works are diaries of pivotal years in his life. And while Seventy has fewer surprises, Brown is still writing at the peak of his powers. Luckily, there are new things to ponder, wonder and worry about from a slightly different perspective.

Brown is the widely respected features reporter for the Globe and Mail. He has several books to his credit, most notably The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son, the winner of too many awards to list in a short book review. He’s an immensely accomplished writer.

Brown is definitely not a typical septuagenarian. Not yet retired, he travels extensively, has a wide circle of friends with whom he stays in regular contact, bikes to work year-round, swims in the ocean, golfs, plays pickleball, rows and skis. And not just downhill skiing, but heli-skis — helicoptering into remote areas of the B.C. Rockies to blaze new trails.

The Parade will soon end, but the show will go on

While the Manitoba Home Builders’ Association’s 2026 Fall Parade of Homes comes to an official close on Sunday, that doesn’t mean your chance to visit Manitoba’s newest and finest show homes will end as well. Almost all the show homes that have been part of this year’s Fall Parade will remain open for viewing well after the Parade of Homes ends.

MHBA builders have seen outstanding crowds visit the 130 new homes entered in this year’s Fall Parade. This year’s entrants certainly did not disappoint, providing an amazing array of design, style, quality, craftsmanship and choice for prospective homebuyers or those seeking inspiration.

Our Fall and Spring Parades of Homes are showcase events hosted by the MHBA that demonstrate the best that the new home building industry has to offer. Whether you’re in the market for a new home, considering a change or just looking for ideas for your current home, no other Parade of Homes in Canada provides this kind of opportunity for people to experience such a collection of new home concepts, features and decor.

Nowhere else in Canada can homebuyers visit this many unique show homes. Only MHBA builders can enter show homes in our Parade of Homes, so you know you are visiting homes offered by Manitoba’s best and most reputable builders when you view a Parade show home. Winter is a great time for new homebuyers to visit show homes, because it allows you to see many of the home features in full operation, like the heating system and the lighting.

AI-powered personal finance is here: for better and for worse

Financial advice at your fingertips is by no means a new innovation.

Yet with the rise of artificial intelligence, getting insights about your money has been taken to new heights of potential benefit — and dangers.

“There is a lot of upside to using AI, especially for budgeting, and it’s often good as a first draft for anything you want to do,” says Monisha Sharma, Toronto-based chief revenue officer at Fig Financial, which provides consolidation, home improvement and unsecured loans.

Fig has some insight on AI’s benefits. The fintech company leverages AI technology to make loans quickly to Canadians, but its use case is contained to Fig’s own specific data to ensure a low error rate.

In basketball, complaining about calls its own Olympic sport

Linda Frum, one of the most high-profile Conservative women in the country, is resigning from the Senate, the Star has learned.

Raised Icelandic

Twenty-five per cent of Iceland's population left the island in the late 1800s. Acidic volcanic ash had poisoned the land and water, killed the livestock, and ruined much of the arable land leaving these fiercely nationalistic people with the choice of starve or leave.

Promised land in the Interlake, even though indigenous people also believed this land had been reserved for them under the recently signed Treaty 1, Icelanders came hoping to make a living by fishing and livestock farming.

Life in New Iceland was not easy. The people faced smallpox, frigid temperatures, grasshoppers, mosquitos and floods. Some Icelanders were treated as second-class citizens. One family changed their name from Eirikson to Steinberg to avoid discrimination.

All of my maternal great-grandparents came to Manitoba. Growing up in Lundar ("puffins" in Icelandic) my mother spoke only Icelandic until she started school. But like most of her generation she lost fluency after moving to Winnipeg as a teenager. The sound of Icelandic and Icelandic-inflected English is as familiar and comforting to me as the scent of my Amma's hand lotion, the clacking of knitting needles and the aroma of fresh ground coffee.