Big brother’s behaviour insultingly immature

Projecting ghost signs in new light

The existence of ghosts is uncertain. Ghost signs? Those are real. In Winnipeg’s Exchange District, they’re easy to spot: fading advertisements for faded firms, splashed across century-old buildings in paint that isn’t quite ready to disappear just yet — unfinished business for finished businesses.

At 281 McDermot Ave., three ghost signs refuse to go to the grave, and Matt Cohen and Craig Winslow refuse to let them.

On Friday night, the duo will flick on a set of projectors to illuminate the huge ads in what they call the world’s first permanent ghost sign installation, overlooking Old Market Square each night from sunset until midnight. Grim reaper be damned.

Cohen, a Winnipeg marketing professional, has been obsessively cataloguing the city’s surviving wall-based advertisements for a decade. In 2016, he first heard of Winslow, who was working on reviving ghost signs across the United States using light projection. The two connected, and a few months later, Winslow was in Winnipeg to breathe new life into five ghost signs for a single night.

Overhaul of police training is long overdue

You can’t do a job properly unless you’ve been adequately trained. And according to an advocacy group calling for sweeping change, it has been a long time since police training prepared law-enforcement personnel for the realities they face in their day-to-day duties.

“People have this idea of policing as dealing with crime and laying charges all day long. And we really don’t,” police constable Lisa Deveau, speaking for the Coalition for Canadian Police Reform (CCPR), told the Globe and Mail. “We deal with homelessness, we deal with addictions, we deal with mental health. And we’re not equipped for it.”

She makes an interesting point, whose validity is doubtless reinforced in interactions between police and the public in Winnipeg every day.

Ms. Deveau, who is currently on leave from a large municipal police force, is among the current and retired police-force members, academics, community organizers and physicians who have formed the CCPR in hopes of successfully lobbying for an overhaul of police training to make it better reflect the conditions officers face in 21st-century Canada.

Housing-first initiative aims to offer city’s homeless dignity, understanding

Ken St. George has dedicated the last 20 years to taking care of people in the community-health sector. Now he will enact the Housing First model in Winnipeg for the first time.

Tory government betting on wrong numbers

It is often said, in the heat of political battle, combatants have the right to their own opinions but they do not have the right to their own version of the facts.

When it comes to the debate over the future of Manitoba Hydro, that essential principal seems to have eluded the Progressive Conservative government.

For several years, the Tories have attempted to severely limit Public Utilities Board authority over Hydro rate applications. Former premier Brian Pallister and current Premier Heather Stefanson both introduced legislation that would essentially gut any hope of an independent review and give cabinet new authority to control rates.

When asked why, both Pallister and Stefanson and their ministers have repeatedly claimed the cost to Hydro for a PUB rate application hearing is $10 million annually, an expense that was, in and of itself, driving up electricity rates.

240 WestJet flight attendants picket in Winnipeg

Winnipeg’s WestJet flight attendants took to the picket line outside of Richardson airport on the first day of nationwide strikes Sunday, while inside, frustrated flyers scrambled to re-route cancelled long-weekend flights.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees’ Ontario arm and the airline announced the strike would commence after the strike deadline was passed without a deal early Sunday morning. WestJet attendants have been without a contract since Dec. 31, 2025.

Hours later, the 240 WestJet flight attendants based in Winnipeg had walked off the job and were marching outside of the airport terminal, some carrying signs with slogans including “Tired with WestJet? So are We!” and “Unpaid Work Won’t Fly.”

Key issues causing the stalemate are wages and pay for work on the ground: the union says flight attendants are not being paid for some of that work, while the company says they pay for the work through a “credit hour” system rather than an hourly rate.