Shifting line on COVID-19 statistics

Last week, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe provided residents of his province with the kind of detailed coronavirus pandemic information rarely seen in neighbouring Manitoba.

Concerned by the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Saskatchewan Hutterite colonies, Moe served up some cold facts July 29: of the 322 active cases in the province that day, 244 were from colonies. In an update the following day, Saskatchewan officials backed away from specifically mentioning Hutterite colonies, instead citing infection totals for "multiple communal living settings."

Manitoba has also seen a recent spike in Hutterite case counts, but its residents have received scant information from their provincial government.

For a time, the province did refer to certain cases as being linked to Hutterite colonies, but quickly stopped when it received blowback from the communities for being singled out. The public can now only guess the actual numbers based on regional health authority counts.

Call to revoke Buffy Sainte-Marie’s honorary doctorate from Brandon U

BRANDON — Brandon University has been urged to revoke the honorary doctor of music degree given to singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie in 2011.

Alex Lacharité made the request to the university senate and cited the 2023 investigation by the CBC’s The Fifth Estate that found her claims to Indigenous ancestry were false.

“She has since been stripped of her Order of Canada and other honours by the Governor General of Canada, honorary degrees from the University of Toronto and Dalhousie University, Juno Awards, and the Polaris Prize,” Lacharité wrote in an Oct. 25 email to the senate, president and other officials.

“Her actions of assuming the identity of an Indigenous person who was adopted into the United States as part of the ’60s Scoop, generally pretending to be an Indigenous person, and taking awards, space and opportunities from actual Indigenous people were and are harmful to our society and are morally wrong,” Lacharité wrote.

Rock musical returns to Winnipeg stage after 14 years

Can any household honestly claim to be normal?

The Goodmans — the central family of the rock musical Next to Normal — seem perfectly average on the surface. But it takes only a lyric or two before the domestic mythology gets punctured.

“They’re the perfect loving family, so adoring and I love them every day of every week,” sings Diana Goodman, the matriarch, as she introduces her family in the play’s first song, Just Another Day. “So my son’s a little s—-, my husband’s boring and my daughter, though a genius, is a freak.”

Diana’s bold, she’s honest, she’s strong and for more than 15 years, she has been dealing with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Her energy shifts and swings, but her commitment to her family’s well-being is steadfast.

Winnipeg police warn of cannabis candy amid Halloween treats

Cannabis candies — pre-packaged along with regular chocolate bars in zipped plastic baggies — were found in at least a half-dozen stashes of Halloween treats collected by children in Winnipeg’s South Tuxedo neighbourhood.

Ready to launch: Inside the massive undertaking to revitalize the beloved Nonsuch replica

For 44 years, the Nonsuch has been enchanting visitors to the Manitoba Museum, bringing a whiff of adventure and the romance of the sea to our landlocked city.The jewel in the crown of the Hudson’s Bay Company Museum Collection, the replica of the 17th-century fur-trading ship takes those who board her back in time.

Decades’ worth of schoolchildren have clutched the rails at the side of the rickety gangway that leads you onboard and descended the narrow stairs — backwards, please, for safety! — into the fo’c’sle, where they could marvel at the tiny bunks — how short men were back then — and peer out the round portholes, imagining them being lashed by salt spray as you crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a grand adventure to find a new trade route for England.

Few of us on long-ago field trips ever stopped to think about why this Prairie city was honouring a British ship that never actually visited Manitoba — let alone why we had built an entire museum wing around a replica that, while it sailed more than 14,000 kilometres in European, Canadian and American waters, was hauled into Winnipeg in pieces.

As the first phase of its $17.5-million Bringing Our Stories Forward capital campaign, the museum has spent about three years planning its refurbishment of the Nonsuch exhibit, which has remained largely untouched since it was installed in 1974, in part to better tell that story.