Don’t confront mom over Christmas concerns

Lemonade Stands for Hope raises funds for CancerCare Manitoba

It’s hard to miss the bright yellow balloons on the lawns of many Winnipeg homes this weekend.

Over in St. Vital, those balloons marked the spot of nine-year-old Myla and seven-year-old Elsie’s first-ever lemonade stand, where the sisters are spending a sunny Saturday morning serving cups of lemonade to neighbours and raising money for CancerCare Manitoba.

Their stand is one of more than 300 taking place across the province this summer as part of Lemonade Stands for Hope, a CancerCare Manitoba Foundation campaign supporting local cancer research and patient care.

“It’s summertime, and we thought, why not take advantage of the hot weather and do something good for CancerCare?” said their mom, Monica de Leon.

From ‘Freedom convoy’ to border blockade: The tale of two towns — Ottawa and Coutts, Alta. — caught in the middle of a protest

They are, seemingly, two different manifestations of the same resentment and fury that has brewed across the country over the past nearly two years of the COVID-19 pandemic —sparked newly by the vaccine mandates affecting truckers crossing the Canada-U.S. border.

21 positive for coronavirus on cruise ship off California

SAN FRANCISCO - Twenty-one people aboard a mammoth cruise ship off the California coast tested positive for the new coronavirus and 19 of them are crew members, Vice-President Mike Pence announced Friday, amid evidence the vessel was the breeding ground for a deadly cluster of more than 10 cases during its previous voyage.

He said federal officials were working with California authorities around-the-clock to bring the Grand Princess, with more than 3,500 on board, to a non-commercial port over the weekend and test everyone for the virus. There was no immediate word on where the vessel will dock.

“Those that will need to be quarantined will be quarantined. Those who will require medical help will receive it,” Pence said.

The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed to 16 after Florida health officials said late Friday night that two people who tested positive for the new coronavirus died in the state. The announcement was the first report of deaths on the East Coast.

Spacious rural garden makes smooth transition to urban space

It’s not uncommon for homeowners to dig up some of their beloved plants when they sell their home and move to another property. But relocating hundreds of prized plants from an established and spacious rural garden to a blank slate is a whole other matter.

In 2022, Sandra Gessner Eggertson and her husband decided it was time to sell their three-acre rural property near St. Andrews. They purchased a home on a quiet street in Winnipeg where Eggertson planned to make a new garden. Their rural property was listed that fall and sold immediately. Eggertson moved in December, but first, hundreds of treasured perennials, including hostas and specialty lilies and iris plants, needed to be transplanted into pots.

With the assistance of a good friend — a fellow lily and iris enthusiast — the enormous task of digging and dividing took three months. The plant divisions were loaded into a truck and transported to her friend’s farmyard, where they spent the winter in a protected location with ample snow cover.

“First we placed bales of straw in the shape of a big square to act as a catch-all for snow,” says Eggertson. “The pots were placed close together inside the square and then covered with mulch. I had very few plant losses.”

Lobster and crab harvesters push back against ‘red list’ meant to help right whales

It is disappointing that crustaceans have been added to a so-called "red list" of seafood to avoid as a way of protecting endangered whales, Canadian lobster and crab harvesters said Tuesday.

A recent report by California-based Seafood Watch, a group that monitors global harvesting of fish and crustaceans, said lobster and crab fishing industries are a menace to the endangered North Atlantic right whale because the animals get entangled in fishing gear.

Geoff Irvine, executive director of the Lobster Council of Canada, says the red-listing does not take into account the "significant efforts" being made by Canadian lobster harvesters to avoid entanglements with the whales.

"We have an extensive program where when we see a single whale, we close all the fishing around that whale for a period until the whale leaves," he said in an interview Tuesday.