Palace: Japan emperor ‘worried’ about Olympics amid pandemic

Meteorologist behind Rob’s Obs is moving weather station to Ontario

In a Winnipeg winter, there are always at least two certainties: it will be cold, and it will snow. A third certainty: the people will talk endlessly about how frigid the temperature is, and argue about how much snow is cloaking their driveways. Is it colder than it ever has been? Is there more snow today than the same time last year?

Rob Paola likely knows the answers to those questions.

Paola possesses no super powers. He is but a man with a metre stick and 40 years of professional meteorological experience, in the midst of a lifelong love affair with Mother Nature, a most turbulent mistress who rarely, if ever, reciprocates.

Each year when snow begins to fall, Paola heads outside his Charleswood home to figure out how much. He sticks his ruler in the ground, grabs his clipboard, and clicks his pen. In neat script, he records the temperature, what time precipitation began, how deep the powder is stacked. Then, he shares his data and insights online with thousands of followers who want a clear answer to the eternal questions: Why is this happening? When will it stop? How much snow has fallen in the city of Winnipeg?

Director Schrader returns to silver screen with complex view of religion and belief

Bleak, wintry and rigorously controlled — until it’s not — this Book of Job-like drama from American filmmaker Paul Schrader looks at the challenges of faith.

The 71-year-old Schrader, known for scripting four Martin Scorsese films (including Taxi Driver and Raging Bull) and for directing his own (including American Gigolo, Affliction and Auto Focus), grew up in a strict Calvinist home — he famously did not see a film until he was 17 — and has always been drawn to stories of agonizing and uncertain redemption.

As the Rev. Toller (Ethan Hawke) wrestles with what it means to lead a righteous life in our badly broken world, his spiritual fate remains in doubt. It is certain, however, that First Reformed marks a cinematic rebirth for Schrader after recent disasters like The Canyons and Dog Eat Dog. Serious, complex and moving, this is not a perfect film, but even its flaws are powerful.

Toller is a solitary man who has come to the ministry late in life, after a family tragedy and a failed marriage. First Reformed, a historic church in upstate New York that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, has since been reduced to an austerely beautiful tourist shop, more of a museum than a place of worship.

Brian Bowman wins mayoral battle

In the end, it wasn’t even close.

A mayoral race that was supposed to be a head-to-head battle between privacy lawyer Brian Bowman and former NDP MP and MLA Judy Wasylycia-Leis turned into a rout on election night. Wasylycia-Leis, the experienced politician, had held what looked like an unassailable lead for months, but Bowman, the outsider who promised Winnipeggers a better, prosperous future, chipped doggedly away at it.

“I’m excited to tell you that positive change is coming to city hall,” Bowman told roaring supporters at the Inn At The Forks after making his way into the small ballroom accompanied by his wife and two young sons.

He said he hadn’t expecting such a landslide victory, but had believed that the campaign was building momentum.

Waiting for Cormier verdict the ‘calm before the storm’

As the jury room door closed behind the seven women and four men who are now deliberating on the evidence against Tina Fontaine’s accused killer, Thelma Favel rose from the chair she’s occupied for most of Raymond Cormier’s second-degree murder trial.

Almost every day over the past three weeks, Favel, the woman who raised 15-year-old Tina, has sat right up front, directly across from the jury box, listening, sobbing and soaking in disturbing details of the teen’s last days that have come to light over the course of Cormier’s second-degree murder trial.

On Wednesday afternoon, after Court of Queen’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal instructed the jury and sent them off to be sequestered until they decide whether 56-year-old Raymond Cormier is guilty of killing Tina, Favel got up and hugged Crown prosecutor Breta Passler. It was one of many moments, this one shielded from jurors, that have long since proven the emotional impact of the case and the lasting power of Tina’s legacy.

Tina’s death sparked a public outcry that renewed calls for a national inquiry into disproportionately high rates of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls across Canada, and the criminal trial for the man accused of killing her hasn’t happened in a vacuum.

2026 Winnipeg election results: Mayor and council

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