Pop… goes their world

Helping families break bread

One turkey, five pounds of potatoes, a box of stuffing mix, two packages gravy mix, one baked pie, one bag frozen mixed vegetables, and of course, cranberry sauce.

As Thanksgiving approached, volunteers at the new food bank in Thompson, which is run by Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, were busy packing food boxes for families in the north.

It marked their first major holiday since opening; after a long period of research, searching for space and digging up funding, MKO launched the food bank on Sept. 24. By that time, there was a long list of applicants.

“Our mandate above and beyond anything is that we’re going to try to feed people and help them out during these trying times, especially in recovery after the pandemic,” said Shyanna Lynxleg, urban initiatives manager at MKO.

Netflix comedy set will make you think

The title of Hannah Gadsby’s new 70-minute comedy set (currently available on Netflix) has absolutely nothing to do with the material. The 40-year-old Aussie standup makes that clear right away: Nanette is someone she met in a café, a possibly interesting woman who turned out not to be, and that is the last we hear of her.

Instead, this wonderfully misleading title signals that whatever we are expecting will not be what we get. And that is the whole point of this show, a funny, powerful bait-and-switch ploy that uses comedy to deconstruct comedy.

Gadsby keeps the paradoxes coming in this farewell-to-comedy tour that has actually launched her international career. She tells jokes — lightly, casually, almost shyly — and then circles around and comes back to them, forcing us to confront the pain that was hiding in plain sight.

Like one of those thrillers where a twist ending reveals everything that has come before in a new and blinding light, Nanette forces a tough and timely re-evaluation of humour and its tricky relations with power, trauma and misogyny. Watching Nanette in the #MeToo era of comedy, you’ll laugh. You’ll cry. Most of all, you’ll think.

Weekends don't get any bigger than this one for Winnipeg Folk Festival artistic director Chris Frayer

Weekends don't get any bigger than this one for Winnipeg Folk Festival artistic director Chris Frayer

‘There’s another Kamloops coming’: Here are some Canadian sites believed to hold more unmarked graves of Indigenous children

A network of more than 130 institutions would eventually spread across the country. The last shut its doors in the mid-1990s.