Cut the risky game-playing and seek a referee

Granite housing project passes final council hurdle after appeal rejected

Critics of the proposed 12-storey housing project set for the parking lot of the Granite Curling Club were shut down at a city meeting Thursday as councillors allowed the development to proceed.

The 110-unit building at 30 Granite Way originally meant the loss of 45 of the 80 parking spots, which the long-running club said would ruin its financial viability.

In June, the city produced a plan to add parking spots around the club by removing a boulevard and adjusting spots at another parking lot, but the club’s management called the plan inadequate.

City council’s property and development committee discussed a number of proposed variances to the building plan Thursday, including allowing the building height to reach 126 feet even though regulations stipulate a maximum 100 feet, and shifts in the width of some parking spots allotted to the residential building and the curling club. Appeals against those changes, including those by management at the Granite Curling Club, were unanimously denied by the committee.

Max Parrot lands bronze but actor-turned-snowboarder Su Yiming takes big air spotlight

Su Yiming, a precocious Chinese teenager, truly exploded with supernova brilliance on Tuesday, writes Rosie DiManno.

COVID picture remains bleak in Manitoba with record cases, three more deaths

A day after the province's top doctor admonished Manitobans for their cavalier approach to COVID-19, a starker picture emerged Tuesday, as a record 184 new cases and three more deaths were announced, including two patients at St. Boniface Hospital.

A man and a woman, both from Winnipeg and in their 80s, were patients at the province’s second largest hospital when they were diagnosed with COVID-19. A female in her 60s linked to the outbreak at Parkview Place care home also died.

Manitoba's death toll stands at 58. 

St. Boniface Hospital is managing an outbreak of the virus which has spread to include three units (B5, E5 and E6) and has infected 23 patients and 10 staff members.

Tory meddling could cost MPI millions, boost Autopac rates

The Pallister government has directed Manitoba Public Insurance to give complete control of its future online product sales to insurance brokers, a move that could cost the corporation an extra $23 million over five years and boost Autopac rates, according to documents obtained by the Free Press.

The documents, which include emails, letters, briefing notes and presentations, show repeated interventions by the Progressive Conservative government on behalf of brokers and shed light on why the Tory-appointed MPI board of directors sought a legal opinion last year to clarify its rights and responsibilities.

The documents also reveal that the PC government directed MPI management last fall to extend the corporation's contract with brokers by two years to Feb. 28, 2021 at a remuneration rate MPI viewed as excessive.

MPI had first proposed a less generous package than the brokers had been receiving, and then offered zero per cent increases in the first two years followed by 0.75 per cent in Year 3, mimicking government policy on civil servant and Crown corporation employee pay. The brokers wound up receiving annual increases to their base $84.5 million compensation that are indexed to inflation (the Consumer Price Index, which rose 1.9 per cent in March compared to a year earlier ).

Local brother act cut their teeth working with the late Jerry Lewis

One of the toughest tasks for the Steiner Brothers, a former kid tap dancing act from Winnipeg, was performing with Jerry Lewis at hospitals for sick kids.

“Oh my, you’d be trying not to cry,” recalled Rob Steiner, 72.

And Lewis, who would go on to help raise over US$2 billion for muscular dystrophy over his career with his annual telethons, would admonish the boys.

“He’d say, ‘What are you crying for? You’re making them happy. Why are you crying?’”