Urgent love-and-marriage agenda can be frightening

2026 Winnipeg election results: Mayor and council

Complete results for the 2022 election races for Winnipeg mayor and city councillors.

The landscape that taught us to see

The white pine stood at the edge of the lake, leaning out over the water, its branches bent by years of wind and weather. Beyond it stretched an expanse of blue water beneath a clear sky, a distant tree line and other pines rising along the rocky shoreline. From the deck above, the landscape seemed both expansive and remarkably still.

I had been looking at it for only a few moments when Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven entered the picture. Not literally, of course. But once the association appeared, I could not unsee it. The pine became The Jack Pine and The West Wind. The surrounding rocks, water and sky called up A.Y. Jackson, Arthur Lismer, Franklin Carmichael and Lawren Harris. A landscape I had been looking at all weekend suddenly became part of a visual history Canadians have carried with them for more than a century.

Perhaps that is the Group of Seven’s greatest achievement. They did not simply paint the Canadian landscape. They changed the way we see it.

I was at the lake for a quiet weekend, reflecting on the cultural, community and development projects that occupy much of my work through Civic Muse. Increasingly, I see these pursuits as part of the same conversation — place and identity, how we understand it, care for it and decide what is worth carrying forward.

World Indigenous Business Forum comes home to Winnipeg for first time, ponders questions for future prosperity

When Nicola Shirley-Phillips imagines what the Indigenous economy in her country might look like 100 years from now, she doesn’t mention social media or artificial intelligence. Instead, she envisions a holistic way of life where people work alongside each other in a way that cares for the planet.

“I see community (and) I see us being more respectful of all the energies around us — our water energy, our climate (and) the soil,” she said. “In all of that, there are opportunities for us to create businesses and opportunities to provide our services.”

Shirley-Phillips, a serial entrepreneur, organic farmer and community economic development specialist from Jamaica, shared her vision Tuesday morning during a panel discussion focused on Indigenous women and prosperity.

The discussion was one of the first items on the schedule during the first full day of the World Indigenous Business Forum at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg.

NDP introduces last-minute rent-hike bill, Tories say it will cause administrative nightmare

A day before the legislative session ends, the NDP government introduced a bill to ensure landlords can’t charge tenants backpay for approved above-guideline rent increases.

Bill 59, the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act (2), would prohibit a landlord who has applied for a rent increase above the maximum permitted by regulation from charging tenants the new rate until it is approved.

Premier Wab Kinew announced earlier this month that renters would not have to pay the increases until the provincial Residential Tenancies Branch hears landlords’ arguments and issues its decisions.

“We recently passed legislation in the house to make sure life will be more affordable,” Kinew said at a news conference on Oct. 20, referring to a new rent bill introduced in March and expected to become law before the session ends on Oct. 29. He was flanked by Winnipeg tenants facing rent increases of more than 50 per cent.