Andrew Morton bio of Queen Elizabeth II due in November

City rec facilities crumbling

Throughout Winnipeg, decades-old community assets — pools, arenas and recreation and leisure centres — are deteriorating so quickly that service disruptions are inevitable.

Meanwhile, the city’s community services department, which is responsible for managing those assets, operates with an annual deficit of roughly $80 million, meaning there are scant resources to do little more than bail water on a sinking ship.

Soon, Winnipeggers will have a choice: fewer community services or higher costs.

“It poses a huge challenge because we have very limited dollars that we have to invest in our existing facilities. We also have growing demands for new amenities in new areas. We have to be very strategic,” said Ken McKim, manager of asset management for the department.

Longtime councillor Eadie ‘knew it was going to be close,’ but expected to finish on top in Mynarski

After 16 years representing Winnipeg’s North End at city hall, Ross Eadie knew his latest re-election bid would be close. What he didn’t anticipate was losing in the very neighbourhoods where he grew up.

The longtime Mynarski councillor, defeated Wednesday by political newcomer Natalie Smith, said Thursday the result was particularly difficult to accept because some of his strongest losses came in Luxton, St. John’s Park and surrounding neighbourhoods.

“I knew it was going to be close,” Eadie said. “But I thought it was going to be close with me in first place.”

“I really lost it where I live. So that’s the worst part of it.”

2026 Winnipeg election results: Mayor and council

Complete results for the 2022 election races for Winnipeg mayor and city councillors.

The landscape that taught us to see

The white pine stood at the edge of the lake, leaning out over the water, its branches bent by years of wind and weather. Beyond it stretched an expanse of blue water beneath a clear sky, a distant tree line and other pines rising along the rocky shoreline. From the deck above, the landscape seemed both expansive and remarkably still.

I had been looking at it for only a few moments when Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven entered the picture. Not literally, of course. But once the association appeared, I could not unsee it. The pine became The Jack Pine and The West Wind. The surrounding rocks, water and sky called up A.Y. Jackson, Arthur Lismer, Franklin Carmichael and Lawren Harris. A landscape I had been looking at all weekend suddenly became part of a visual history Canadians have carried with them for more than a century.

Perhaps that is the Group of Seven’s greatest achievement. They did not simply paint the Canadian landscape. They changed the way we see it.

I was at the lake for a quiet weekend, reflecting on the cultural, community and development projects that occupy much of my work through Civic Muse. Increasingly, I see these pursuits as part of the same conversation — place and identity, how we understand it, care for it and decide what is worth carrying forward.

Carrying a torch for tiki

A paper tiki mask is the only indication that the door it’s affixed to leads somewhere other than a dive bar. Ring the doorbell and walk through the kitchen, however, and you’ll be transported to an island-themed lounge that’s equal parts kitschy and comfortable.

“This is just from people’s houses, like my mom’s,” says Allan Pineda, pointing to the wood carvings, water-buffalo horns and rattan furniture decorating the room. “A lot of the stuff you see in here, you’d see in a Filipino’s house back in the day — like second-wave immigrants in the ‘60s and ‘70s, they’d bring this stuff home (from the Philippines).”

Pineda is a local chef and part of the team behind the Bahay Kubo Tiki Bar, a pop-up Filipino drinking and dining experience hosted weekly at an undisclosed Winnipeg establishment.

The details are hush-hush because the temporary eatery is meant to operate like a speakeasy. The dinners are an offshoot of Baon Manila Nights, which Pineda started as a way to highlight Winnipeg’s Filipino culinary scene.