Breastfeeding Olympians allowed to bring babies to Tokyo

A voice from within the shelter

On a sticky-hot evening, the bus shacks of Winnipeg sit mostly empty, void both of people waiting for the bus and of people who find under their roofs a sheltered, if not entirely comfortable, place to stay. For all the words about the latter groups that have spackled the news as of late, there are few out tonight. Not on Regent, or Pembina, or Osborne, or North Main. 

There is one person. In a shelter at the awkward intersection where Marion Street and St. Mary’s Road meet, Samantha Thomas sits on the bench, arranging containers of soup. Soon, she’ll pack her cart with all her things — a tent, some blankets, a thrift store Bible — and head south to find a quieter shack to bunk in for the night. 

“I do this every day, back and forth,” she says. “When nighttime comes, I’ll go sleep in St. Vital. It’s actually scary over there, because I’m all alone in the bus shelter and everybody’s gone. I can’t believe I stay out there by myself, but when you’re tired, you’re tired.” 

This bus shelter is already in bad condition. Two of the wall panels have been smashed out; Thomas, 27, was sleeping when it happened. She didn’t even know that it had been busted until the cops came, and she woke up to find the shack inundated by rain.

Japan’s Kobayashi among favorites in wide-open ski jumping

Employers have until June 2 to draft disconnect policies, and experts say most will focus on email. This former lawyer, forced out of her career by overwhelming demands, says real change needs to come from the top.

Truck driver blew stop sign in Broncos crash

MELFORT, Sask. - Grieving families sobbed Monday as they heard how a semi-truck driver barrelled through an oversized stop sign with a flashing red light and failed to avoid a high-speed crash with a bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team.

An agreed statement of facts about the collision that killed 16 people on the bus and injured 13 more was entered in a Saskatchewan court as part of a heart-wrenching first day of a sentencing hearing for the truck driver. Roughly half of 75 victim impact statements to be submitted by friends and family members were read out.

Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, 30, of Calgary, sat next to his defence lawyers as court heard he was going between 86 and 96 km/h with a load of peat moss when he drove into a rural intersection north of Tisdale last April.

The sun wasn't in his eyes. He wasn't distracted by a cellphone. And he hadn't been drinking or doing drugs. Weather and road conditions were also good, said Crown prosecutor Thomas Healey.

Cruise control: city mulls move to curb street noise levels

Sunday cruise nights on Portage Avenue are a Winnipeg tradition, but cavalcades of convertibles and muscle cars rolling down the street can come with a noisy byproduct.

Next week, the city's executive policy committee will discuss some changes — including noise cameras that capture licence plate data of particularly loud vehicles — aimed at keeping the volume down.

The recommendation, which would require provincial approval, comes on the heels of complaints from area residents about the Sunday night noise levels, says Coun. Cindy Gilroy (Daniel McIntyre).

"Most residents don't mind the cruise nights themselves," she said Thursday. "It's the revving and the screeching" and the modified mufflers.

Former MLA Kevin Chief opens up about his 18 years of sobriety

Every day starts and ends with a prayer.

In the morning, Kevin Chief asks for the strength and courage to stay sober. At night, he thanks the Creator for another day of sobriety. It’s been 18 years since his last drink. Staying sober is still the most important thing to him.

“You’d have to be pretty close to me to know. And there are people today who know me very well that don’t know,” the 45-year-old father of three says.

“I never meant it to be like that. The anonymity was important to me because I honestly thought I wouldn’t make it, and I thought it’d be embarrassing when I slipped again. So I thought it was better for me to not let people know. And then my sponsor told me, ‘Look, you’ll know when the time’s right. You don’t need to force it.’”