Second go-round proves to be a real let-down

Winnipeg musicians respond to pandemic in different ways through music

By now, everybody knows what the pandemic looks like: masks, on faces or on the sidewalk; kitchen tables transmogrifying into co-working spaces; hands cracked and red from sanitizer.

But what does the pandemic look like when musicians start putting pen to paper? And what will it sound like once those words and music are recorded? The Free Press reached out to Manitoba musicians to find out, and discovered some are leaning into the new state of the world for inspiration, while others are avoiding it altogether.

Ava Wray finds humour in pandemic lifeAva Wray had good reason to feel pessimistic. She lost her job. Her relationship ended. It seemed she was spending more time with cats than with people (though, admittedly, she sort of liked that). When it came to writing songs, it was hard to focus on anything but the implosion of her world and the world around her.

“So often, lyrics come from the events in our lives, but suddenly, nothing was happening,” says the singer and guitarist, a member of local duo Bicycle Face and other projects. “So I had to look around and write about what was happening — right then.”

Internal election reform should be high on Tories’ priority list for 2022

Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative party has a challenge in the new year: how to change its leadership election process without alienating grassroots members, while also avoiding the kind of debacle it experienced in the fall.

After coming within a whisker of electing a leader who ran on an anti-vaccine mandate platform before the Oct. 30 vote, the party will almost certainly revise its voter eligibility rules in 2022.

Former Conservative MP Shelly Glover, who ran for the leadership to replace outgoing party boss Brian Pallister, signed up thousands of new members during the race. She did so largely by appealing to opponents of vaccine mandates and other measures taken by the province to fight COVID-19.

Under the current rules, candidates were allowed to sign up new members until a month before voting day. Last-minute signups allow candidates to attract new blood to the party. However, under the Tories’ one member, one vote system, it also leaves the party open to a hostile takeover.

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?’”

Hydro’s $5-billion deals with Saskatchewan ‘deliberately covered up’

A scathing review of Manitoba Hydro failed to disclose the details of two multibillion-dollar power sales to Saskatchewan that are fundamental to the Crown utility's financial future, the Free Press has learned.

The report, by former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall, into the Keeyask generating station and Bipole III transmission line concluded the former NDP government rushed to build both projects before getting proper regulatory approval, and failed to provide adequate financial oversight once construction started.

Premier Brian Pallister has used the report to buttress his assertion that Keeyask and Bipole III were the worst examples of NDP mismanagement and incompetence.

However, Hydro sources said it was suspicious the Wall report ignored the effect of two recent power sales to Saskatchewan that were completed last year — well before Wall's report was finished.

Each of city's historic bridges has unique story

They span the muddy waters from which Winnipeg derives its name. They connect neighbourhood to neighbourhood. They’re a fundamental feature of our city.

Winnipeg has a reputation as a “River City,” but many don’t know the stories behind the bridges they use every day.

While a bridge may seem to be a boring piece of basic infrastructure, many of Winnipeg’s have fascinating histories that go back more than 100 years.