Kid-sitting for sis could be win-win prospect

COVID running up the score on some U.S. NHL teams

Boy, how about the thrilling, non-stop NHL action Thursday night? Let’s roll the highlights:

Down in Denver, you had the high-flying Colorado Avalanche hosting the Arizona Coyotes. Well, on paper, anyways. The actual on-ice product was postponed. OK, let’s head to the State of Hockey to see how our old Central Division friends fared, as Minnesota entertained St. Louis. What’s that? Scrapped as well. Huh.

Surely things are a bit better on the East Coast. Were the Buffalo Sabres able to contain Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals? Turns out their inability to contain something else meant this one was also shelved. At least there’s that Flyers-Devils clash in Philly, right? Wrong.

Oh, for Pete’s sake.

Brandon laying groundwork for Arabian championship

BRANDON — It’s time to dish the dirt on what’s about to happen at Brandon’s Keystone Centre.

Hundreds of horses and hundreds more spectators are about to descend on the site for Canada’s National Arabian Championship Aug. 6 to 15, and before that happens, the staging surface has to be perfect.

“We have been working on this day in and day out,” said Devin Epp, sales manager in the Ag Centre at the Keystone Centre.

Since July 24, staff have been working on a 24-hour schedule to build the competition floor. Dirt was hauled into the arena and has since been worked into place with tractors and hand-pushed equipment.

Prepare to be … blutterbunged?

Are you not blutterbunged?

If Russell Crowe’s second-century gladiator character had uttered a 19th century equivalent of “Are you not entertained?” that fit the mood of today’s 21st century, that would be it.

Definitions first. Blutterbunged is an obscure regional dialect word from England that means everything from astonished to confounded to bemused or shocked into speechlessness. Its composition suggests something both more and less, namely blustering bloviation (that’s the more part) and empty words (that’s the empty part). These days we would more naturally punctuate our reaction to an event or statement with a profanity. But you get the drift.

Unearthed by lexicologist Susie Dent, it speaks volumes about our times that it fits now. That we need to reach back hundreds of years to find the right word to adequately capture a contemporary civic reaction to what the hell is going on in politics and the world today.

Pimicikamak FN locked down, police hunt for suspect after fatal shooting

Pimicikamak Cree First Nation, also known as Cross Lake, remains under lockdown as RCMP Major Crime Services investigate a shooting that left a 42-year-old man dead.

RCMP said officers were notified by local First Nation Safety Officers at about 9:30 p.m. Friday about a seriously injured person on Main Road in the community. Officers found two males at the scene, including one with a gunshot wound.

The 42-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene by EMS. The second male was not injured and did not require medical attention, police said.

Manitoba RCMP Major Crime Services, along with Cross Lake RCMP and Forensic Identification Services, are investigating. Police said the suspect is believed to be known to the person shot and may still be in the community.

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.

Sagkeeng's scars: colonization has left a traumatic imprint

At the mouth of the river.

In Anishinaabemowin, that is what “Sagkeeng” means. It is what the people of Sagkeeng First Nation have called their homeland, located on the lush banks of the powerful Winnipeg River, since time immemorial.

The Canadian government would rename that land the Fort Alexander Indian Reserve, as federal agents carved new territorial boundaries out of the countryside in the aftermath of the signing of Treaty 1.

But in the language of the people who call it home, it has always been Sagkeeng.