Procuring coveted item can call for some charm

Women rise above misogynistic online attacks

Nicole Zajac was at home Tuesday morning, when an anonymous email landed in her inbox.

Shannon Birchard found out the next day, when a friend contacted her to break the news about images that were starting to blaze across social media and would soon ignite a firestorm in the hockey world and beyond.

There were 55 images in all: screencaps of messages sent to a private Instagram group of Winnipeg hockey players, including Washington Capitals fourth-liner Brendan Leipsic; his brother Jeremey Leipsic of the University of Manitoba Bisons; Florida Panthers prospect Jack Rodewald; and University of North Dakota forward Jackson Keane.

Some discussed cocaine use and sexual exploits. Mostly, though, the men insulted women.

Sagkeeng's scars: colonization has left a traumatic imprint

At the mouth of the river.

In Anishinaabemowin, that is what “Sagkeeng” means. It is what the people of Sagkeeng First Nation have called their homeland, located on the lush banks of the powerful Winnipeg River, since time immemorial.

The Canadian government would rename that land the Fort Alexander Indian Reserve, as federal agents carved new territorial boundaries out of the countryside in the aftermath of the signing of Treaty 1.

But in the language of the people who call it home, it has always been Sagkeeng.

Prepare to be … blutterbunged?

Are you not blutterbunged?

If Russell Crowe’s second-century gladiator character had uttered a 19th century equivalent of “Are you not entertained?” that fit the mood of today’s 21st century, that would be it.

Definitions first. Blutterbunged is an obscure regional dialect word from England that means everything from astonished to confounded to bemused or shocked into speechlessness. Its composition suggests something both more and less, namely blustering bloviation (that’s the more part) and empty words (that’s the empty part). These days we would more naturally punctuate our reaction to an event or statement with a profanity. But you get the drift.

Unearthed by lexicologist Susie Dent, it speaks volumes about our times that it fits now. That we need to reach back hundreds of years to find the right word to adequately capture a contemporary civic reaction to what the hell is going on in politics and the world today.

‘There’s another Kamloops coming’: Here are some Canadian sites believed to hold more unmarked graves of Indigenous children

A network of more than 130 institutions would eventually spread across the country. The last shut its doors in the mid-1990s.

Brandon laying groundwork for Arabian championship

BRANDON — It’s time to dish the dirt on what’s about to happen at Brandon’s Keystone Centre.

Hundreds of horses and hundreds more spectators are about to descend on the site for Canada’s National Arabian Championship Aug. 6 to 15, and before that happens, the staging surface has to be perfect.

“We have been working on this day in and day out,” said Devin Epp, sales manager in the Ag Centre at the Keystone Centre.

Since July 24, staff have been working on a 24-hour schedule to build the competition floor. Dirt was hauled into the arena and has since been worked into place with tractors and hand-pushed equipment.