Enjoy later-life love without guilt trip from heirs

Endorsements build up mayoral candidates’ profiles

With just over a week until election day, high-profile endorsements are rolling in for Winnipeg’s top mayoral candidates in what political observers say is another way to sway undecided voters.

Not a Donut takes the circular confection in an entirely different direction

Let’s get one thing straight: Not A Donut does indeed serve doughnuts, just not the kind most North American fried dough connoisseurs are familiar with. The small shop on Langside Street specializes in mochi doughnuts, cute flower-shaped rings with a soft, chewy texture thanks to the addition of glutinous rice flour.

It’s a nostalgic dessert for owner Echo Shen.

“I tried it when I was back in Shanghai when I was little,” says Shen, who moved to Canada from China for school. “I had it for the first time and couldn’t forget it — it’s so good, it’s not like the regular doughnuts.”

Mochi doughnuts were popularized in Japan by the Mister Donuts chain, which calls them “pon de ring,” and have recently gained a following elsewhere. Shen and her boyfriend Mumu Ma, who co-owns the business, saw an opportunity with the growing trend.

Boler sales and rentals happening as soon as they pop up

In January, Jorge Torres bought a Boler trailer — a little fiberglass egg on wheels — and brought it to his fiancée’s house to surprise her.

“The opposite of a good surprise is what she had,” laughs Torres, a 30-year-old contractor. “She says, ‘What is this garbage?’”

That garbage, Torres calmly explained, was a cult classic, a lightweight, ovoid escape pod first designed in Winnipeg in 1968, of which only 10,000 were manufactured, making it a valuable commodity and a retro, futuristic objet d’art with room for four sleepers. It was in pretty rough shape: scuffed up, beat up, used. It looked as though it needed a fresh coat of everything.

So to ease his fiancée’s worry, Torres, who had a rough year business-wise owing to the pandemic, found some images of refurbished models. “I’m telling you, I can fix it up and make it look really cool, even nicer than this,” he said, saying they could rent it out. There was a market, and a growing one at that, for camping and seeing the great outdoors after a year-plus spent indoors. She started to come around.

Paper trail

WHAT IT IS: Copy Paperis a 2014 textile-based piece by Ontario-born, Winnipeg-based artist Kristin Nelson, currently on view at WAG-Qaumajuq as part of the exhibition Terra Cognita/Incognita.

Of the 125 works in the show — which uses historical and contemporary pieces from WAG-Qaumajuq’s permanent collection to explore how artists have represented the landscape over time and across cultures —probably the most attention-getting are the beautiful paintings of Canada’s lakes, plains, forests and mountains.

So, how does this seemingly modest, somewhat enigmatic work connect to Terra Cognita/Incognita’s larger themes?

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: In the middle of the exhibition, an antique desk holds several objects of beauty and utility, and this is where Copy Paper sneaks in, as something both “cognita and incognita,” known and unknown.

FIFA president overshadowing the good of the game

There is a big London Derby on Sunday (Arsenal-Chelsea), and the weekend schedule also features marquee matches in Turkey (Feherbahce-Besiktas) and the Netherlands (Ajax-PSV Eindhoven), as well as a showdown between the Italian teams with the last four Scudetti between them (Inter Milan-Napoli).

Then there’s the Under-20 Women’s World Cup, which is set to kick off in Poland (Canada plays England on Saturday at 11:00 a.m.).

And yet, clouding it all — and the world of football is a massive thing to overshadow — is the figure of FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who suddenly finds himself facing a protracted legal battle over his scheme to sell off the World Cup’s commercial rights.

Specifically, UEFA — the sport’s governing body in Europe — is “preparing to bring criminal claims in Switzerland against Infantino…for criminal mismanagement under Article 158 of the Swiss Criminal Code.” So reads its recent filing in a Florida court.