Concerts, cooking, crackers, kids and choirs

Advertisement

Advertise with us

Social distancing means a lot more time on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like.

Read this article for free:


or

Already have an account? Log in here »

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Subscribe and receive a limited-edition Free Press branded hat or tote.

Digital Subscription

One year of digital access for only $205*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles

*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional

$1 for the first 4 weeks*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles
Start now

*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/03/2020 (2386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Social distancing means a lot more time on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like.

Need some entertainment? A distraction? Here are five fun things to see on social media right now.

 

Fred Penner goes live

supplied
Winnipeg’s Prairie Voices choir
supplied Winnipeg’s Prairie Voices choir

One of Winnipeg’s favourite children’s performers is taking the show on to social media this weekend — and he’s taking requests. Fred Penner, who has postponed most of his upcoming 40th anniversary tour, will be playing a live concert on Facebook and Instagram this Sunday beginning at 2 p.m. Song requests can be submitted on either social media account before the show; unsurprisingly Sandwiches and The Cat Came Back have been popular choices.

www.facebook.com/fred.penner.583

www.instagram.com/fpenner5

 

 

Cooking with Man Repeller

Fred Penner goes live
Fred Penner goes live

Dressed in chic loungewear and fashion-forward pyjama sets, the women of Man Repeller — an online women’s fashion and life magazine started by Leandra Cohen in 2010 — have taken to Instagram to share cooking videos from the comfort of their impossibly trendy New York apartments.

Not only are the Instagram recipe videos funny and easy to recreate, the whole feed is a much needed dose of levity.

wfp.to/manrepeller

 

 

The truth about Triscuits

Cooking with Man Repeller
Cooking with Man Repeller

In a delightful Twitter thread full of twists and turns, user Sage Boggs explains how Triscuits got their name. No spoilers, but the wheat crackers made by Nabisco are so named for the way they were produced back in the early 1900s — and it has nothing to do with the number three.

wfp.to/sageboggs

 

 

The interview interrupters are back

South Korea-based political science professor Robert Kelly conducted a BBC News interview on Thursday with his internet-famous family in tow. The expert, who was commenting on the state of COVID-19 in the country, was joined by his wife and children, who became unsuspecting social media stars when they barged in on a similar remote video interview with the BBC back in 2017. His kids, Marion and James, were equally distracting this time around.

wfp.to/robertkelly

 

 

Local choir performs in isolation

Winnipeg’s Prairie Voices choir has published a haunting rendition of Part Uusberg’s Ilus Ta Ei Ole (It is not beautiful) to YouTube. The nearly 50-member choir is made up of local 18- to 25-year-old singers. Each singer was recorded remotely from isolation and the videos and audio have been stitched together to give the feeling of a full performance.

 

 

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney

The truth about Triscuits
The truth about Triscuits
Eva Wasney

Eva Wasney
Arts Reporter

Eva Wasney is a reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.

Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.

Report Error Submit a Tip

More Stories

Dozens of Uber, Lyft drivers switched to cheaper insurance coverage: MPI probe

Erik Pindera 5 minute read Preview

Dozens of Uber, Lyft drivers switched to cheaper insurance coverage: MPI probe

Erik Pindera 5 minute read Updated: Yesterday at 6:09 PM CDT

Ride-service drivers have been defrauding Manitoba Public Insurance by improperly insuring their vehicles as for personal use.

The public insurer and the City of Winnipeg, which regulates ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, discovered the widespread fraud after MPI conducted a review in December last year.

“When a driver changes their coverage from ride-share insurance to a personal vehicle coverage and continues to operate as a ride-share driver, that is fraud, plain and simple,” said MPI chief executive officer Satvir Jatana at a news conference Thursday.

MPI’s review looked at a random sample of 408 ride-hailing vehicles and found 108 were operating without the proper vehicle-for-hire insurance coverage. In order to register with the city as a ride-service driver, a vehicle must have such insurance and proof must be provided to the ride-booking company.

Read
Updated: Yesterday at 6:09 PM CDT

Alarm bells ring as contact tracing clock ticks on

Tom Brodbeck 4 minute read Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020

The provincial government says it doesn’t know how long it’s taking for public health officials to connect with people infected with COVID-19 or their close contacts.

With infection rates and the number of COVID-19 patients admitted to hospital growing at an alarming rate, the province’s inability (or refusal) to share contact tracing data with the public raises serious questions about how many people may be spreading the novel coronavirus unwittingly.

The Free Press has asked the provincial government repeatedly over the past week for pandemic contact tracing information, including how long it’s taking public health officials to follow up with people who test positive and to track down their close contacts.

“We do not have these statistics readily compiled, and do not have the capacity to pull them at this time,” a government spokeswoman said in an email Wednesday.

Fraser Institute report places Manitoba near bottom of all provinces, states in productivity, income advancement

Gabrielle Piché 5 minute read Preview

Fraser Institute report places Manitoba near bottom of all provinces, states in productivity, income advancement

Gabrielle Piché 5 minute read Yesterday at 8:01 PM CDT

Manitoba trails behind most Canadian provinces and American states in economic well-being, according to a new study.

The Fraser Institute, a right-leaning think tank, compared provinces’ and U.S. states’ GDP per person, among other economic measures, in a report released Thursday.

It places Manitoba 56th of 60 jurisdictions. Most provinces and every state except Mississippi had a higher GDP per person in 2024 than Manitoba, the Fraser Institute calculated.

It used data from Statistics Canada and the United States Census Bureau.

Read
Yesterday at 8:01 PM CDT

Fantastical, moving graphic memoir explores addictions, organ procurement and more

Reviewed by Candida Rifkind 4 minute read Preview

Fantastical, moving graphic memoir explores addictions, organ procurement and more

Reviewed by Candida Rifkind 4 minute read Saturday, May. 30, 2026

At the heart of Mary Shelley’s 1818 classic Frankenstein and its many pop culture adaptations is the scene in the mad scientist’s lab where Victor Frankenstein, helped by a bolt of lightning, animates the grotesque figure made out of human and animal parts lying on his anatomy table.

As much as Shelley’s novel is a philosophical investigation into the desire of modern science to create new life, it is also a gruesome window into the clandestine European trade in graveyard and battlefield body snatching that fuelled early 19th-century anatomy research, medical training and public dissection theatres.

Whose bodies ended up on the slab to advance medical knowledge? As Montreal-based artist Arizona O’Neill explains in her captivating first graphic narrative, it was inevitably poor, racialized and criminalized bodies that were deemed appropriate for the indignities of public display and dissection in earlier periods.

But what about today? This is the central question driving the story of Opioids & Organs, O’Neill’s beautifully drawn story of coming to terms with her father’s untimely death due to a fentanyl overdose as well as the awful truth that Canada’s post-2015 opioid crisis has greatly increased the number of organs available for donation, mostly from otherwise healthy young men like her father.

Read
Saturday, May. 30, 2026

PCs call for crackdown on property crime

Nicole Buffie 4 minute read Preview

PCs call for crackdown on property crime

Nicole Buffie 4 minute read Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026

A Progressive Conservative government would open a Crown prosecutor’s office dedicated to dealing with property crime.

Interim party leader Konrad Narth made the announcement Wednesday flanked by colleagues in front of a boarded up 7-Eleven on Main Street. Narth promised to hire 25 prosecutors who would focus on property theft, which he said is the type of crime attorneys have been inundated with in recent years.

Narth said crime has increased under the NDP government and pledged to crack down on thieves in Winnipeg and rural areas, if the PCs win power in the next provincial election, due on or before Oct. 5, 2027.

“Under this premier, Manitoba’s crime rate is 81 per cent above the national average. Property crime represents 58 per cent of crimes committed, an increase of nearly 25 per cent since Wab Kinew and the NDP took office,” Narth said, citing numbers from Statistics Canada. “In Winnipeg, the rise of property crime has significantly increased the cost of doing business and forced many businesses to now close their doors.”

Read
Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026

New spin on old polar vortex behaviour

Sarah Lawrynuik 5 minute read Preview

New spin on old polar vortex behaviour

Sarah Lawrynuik 5 minute read Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021

The polar vortex has wrapped its icy arms this week around nearly every inch of the Prairie provinces and northern Ontario, drawing warnings from Environment Canada.

As much as the extreme warmth of January was related to climate change, so too is the recent extreme cold — and it all starts and ends with how a warming planet is changing an enormous climate feature that has the power to dictate weather across the Northern Hemisphere.

The polar vortex is nothing new. It is a low-pressure area that exists over the northern pole of the planet, with a mass of cold air circulating counterclockwise.

“I've been going to the North for close to 40 years now. And when I first started working in the Arctic, the polar vortex was a thing that was well-understood,” said David Barber, a Canada Research Chair in Arctic System Science and director of the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Earth Observation Science.

Read
Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021