Review: Greta Van Fleet spread their wings gloriously

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: There are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions. The moon is in Aries.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

The moon in your sign is lined up with stern Saturn, which can make you feel isolated from others. Domestic problems might surface. Possibly, you might feel cut off from your emotions. You might even feel a tinge of guilt. This is fleeting.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

A distant island and a European border

It’s at roughly 80°49′35″ North latitude and 66°27′30″West longitude.

Or, you might also know it as being in the Kennedy Channel of the Nares Strait in the high Arctic.

It’s Hans Island, an island that’s split between the Kingdom of Denmark and Canada.

The border was a bone of contention between the two nations for years, but not one that sired threats of annexation. Each simply claimed it as their own.

The end of the road

St. Louis and the end of the trade route

Dynacare must treat workers fairly: health minister

Manitoba’s health minister defended the government’s contract with Dynacare, saying the for-profit company is expected to treat its workers fairly — but wouldn’t say if that expectation was spelled out in the deal.

The 350 private lab workers, who are represented by the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, have been without a contract since March 31 and went on strike on Sept. 8.

The Manitoba Labour Board ordered them back to work and they returned to the job one day later.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara was asked Wednesday about the lack of an essential services agreement and why the government didn’t intervene in March, knowing that a labour dispute could interrupt community lab services.

Canadian politicians speaking with one voice

It was something that seems unusual in politics in recent years: politicians of different stripes taking the same side and together supporting what Canada needs to do, and is doing, to address U.S. trade attacks.

Take former prime minister Stephen Harper, closing out a major Toronto investment meeting set up by Prime Minister Mark Carney with a speech where Harper said he not only supported Carney’s decision to walk away from trade talks with the U.S., but that he would have done the same thing.

The deal the Americans were demanding “leaves no choice but for Canada to pursue diminished reliance on the U.S.,” Mr. Harper said. “There will be significant costs to this effort, but those are costs that I hope and believe Canadians are able and prepared to accept.”

And, Harper said, Canada has plenty to offer to other countries that want to trade with us: integrity.

Selkirk Avenue resident misses sound of silence

Selkirk Avenue resident Gail Allard sits on her front steps, looking at a row of tree stumps.

Until last fall, Allard would have opened her front door to a lush canopy of mature trees. Now, she has an unobstructed view of a freight terminal — the Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. intermodal yard.

Although the residential street is quiet on this August afternoon, the steady beeping of machinery moving shipping containers carries throughout the neighbourhood.

It’s the first summer since Manitoba Hydro cut down 262 mature trees — most of them Siberian elms — along Selkirk Avenue between Keewatin and Railway streets.