C.K. appearance a downside: owner

Festival riffs off Main Street’s storied past

Fifty years later, Billy Joe Green can still remember one of the biggest breaks of his career. It was 1971, and his band was asked to become the house band at the Brunswick, an old Main Street hotel and bar.

People would line up around the block to see them, and for a while Green, who was barely out of his teens, could really feel as if he’d made it.

“That was like the high-end place to play for our people,” he says, with a nostalgic smile.

Oh, if the walls of the Main Street strip could talk, they would tell a million stories, and Green would be in a bunch of them. An Ojibwa man and member of Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, Green is one of Winnipeg’s most iconic blues guitarists; back then, he was jamming on the Main Street circuit, slinging out country and rock hits.

Wasteful operations should be held accountable

Rising water bills are a top-of-mind issue for residents of Winnipeg going into the fall election. Management of the water and waste system is under question, with citizen’s groups, as well as the Free Press, calling for proper oversight of rates (Time for the PUB to review Winnipeg water rates, Editorial, Sept. 26).

The need to increase rates to build the North End sewage plant is understandable. Siphoning off utility proceeds to make up other tax revenue shortfalls is another matter. But it is not the only questionable practice. If there was Public Utilities Board oversight of Winnipeg’s water and sewer rates, it would certainly be asking why the city is spending more than $3 million annually to operate the 164-kilometre-long, Greater Winnipeg Water District railway (GWWD) on ratepayers’ behalf.

The GWWD has come to the attention of the Railway Relocation Study, led by Lloyd Axworthy. All existing rail lines within the city are under review, as is the feasibility of a new railway bypass.

The GWWD is an example of a railway that has outlived its usefulness and sits on a pocket of land close to downtown that could be converted to higher-value uses.

Ribbon cutting marks new roads, buildings start in Water Tower District

Work is underway transforming land previously home to the massive Canada Packers building into St. Boniface’s latest development.

Alberta-based Olexa Developments and Winnipeg’s Shindico Realty Inc. held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday to unveil the names of two completed streets running through the new Water Tower District and mark the start of building construction.

Crews broke ground last month on the first multifamily residential building, which is expected to have 500 units. The developers have City of Winnipeg approval for 2,800 units across the 165-acre community, up from the previous 2,000-unit limit.

Dan Cristall, founder and CEO of Olexa, said the project has high potential because it can utilize existing infrastructure by being an inner-city development.

The women’s 100 metres in Tokyo ended with Elaine Thompson-Herah’s celebration. It might have cost her a world record

Thompson-Herah beats compatriot Fraser-Pryce and leads a Jamaican sweep of the podium.

Pimp sentenced to 11 years in prison

A man who picked up a vulnerable 17-year-old child-welfare ward on the streets of Winnipeg and coerced her into providing sexual services for several months has been sent to prison for more than a decade.

After a trial, Hassan Kargbo, who’s in his early 30s, was found guilty of sexual exploitation, making child sexual abuse and exploitation material, receiving a material benefit from sexual services provided by a person under 18, procuring a person under 18 and advertising sexual services.

Provincial court Judge Julie Frederickson sentenced him to 11 years behind bars late last month.

“Mr. Kargbo picked up a young Indigenous girl walking over the Osborne Street bridge and quickly got her involved in drug use and escorting,” Frederickson said in a written decision.