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Former Tory cabinet minister runs for Brandon trustee

BRANDON — Jim McCrae, a former attorney general of Manitoba, has registered to run for a seat on the Brandon School Division board of trustees.

McCrae, 77, had a long political career as a Tory cabinet minister and before that, a Brandon city councillor.

He said his decades of public service and education experience have prepared him to contribute to the governance of the school division.

“My last cabinet position was as minister of education and training. I travelled extensively in Manitoba and met with many teachers and others involved with the education of our children,” McCrae told the Brandon Sun.

Ignoring the facts makes for a better budget story

In Premier Brian Pallister's world, the public accounts for the 2019-2020 fiscal year serve as the ultimate good news story.

The final accounting of government revenues and expenditures, the public accounts show a small surplus of $5 million. According to Pallister, this was accomplished without much pain for Manitobans, who can now share in the knowledge that finally, mercifully, the books are balanced.

Of course, in accentuating the positive, Pallister had to ignore a few things.

Such as tens of thousands of government workers who have gone without a pay increase for three years. And a health-care system that, despite an influx of funds last year, continues to suffer from three years of crippling underfunding. And infrastructure spending that has been cut back by hundreds of millions of dollars. And an education system in chaos from the dual pressures of austerity and pandemic upheaval.

Tourism operators see climate impact, but walk a fine line between just providing entertainment and environmental lessons

The white behemoth of a vehicle rumbles across the tundra in the Churchill Wildlife Management Area, just east of town. It’s not a school bus, though the white cab of the vehicle certainly resembles one. It isn’t an industrial dump truck, though the size of the wheels can’t be far off, raising passengers more than two metres off the ground.

The tundra buggy is unlike any other vehicle. It was invented in Churchill for the sole purpose of rolling across the unforgiving landscape while remaining safely out of reach of the polar bears.

Tundra Buggy Adventures owns the trademark to the vehicle, but other tourism operators now have similar contraptions; tweaking their own designs since the invention emerged in the late ‘70s.

Today, Kevin Burke is the driver, one of the only Churchillians hired to drive for polar bear tours. Burke brings a lot of knowledge to the job, having worked in Churchill’s tourism industry for 35 years, as well as working for Parks Canada and the Canadian Armed Forces in that time.

Long may you scamper, sweet little Jimothy

We desperately needed a folk hero this summer, with its wildfires and storms and diarrhea lettuce. Someone to unite us, to inspire us, to get us through.

Enter Jimothy.

Jimothy is an off-kilter raccoon with an appropriately off-kilter name from Seattle who has gone viral for his short, round body — likely the result of a congenital condition called short spine syndrome.

I have seen various creative descriptions of Jimothy online: “a child’s rendering come to life,” or “a raccoon drawn from memory,” or not a raccoon but a “rcn,” owing to his truncated spine.

Police union slams top cop’s take on violent crime wave

Winnipeg’s police chief is under fire for dismissing a recent spate of violence in the city as nothing new, in the wake of another weekend of violent crime involving innocent bystanders.