Spanish Olympian complains of measures hurting nursing moms

Beausejour biz has a bit of everything and a lot of buzz

BEAUSEJOUR — Andrea Swain, co-owner of Pennyweight Market, a combination bulk food outlet, ice cream parlour and good, old-fashioned general store situated in Beausejour, laughingly opines that one of the challenges of launching a new venture in a small community such as theirs is that “everybody in town knows your business.”

Among the benefits? That’s easy, she says: everybody in town knows your business.

Not long after they acquired the space four summers ago, rumours abounded as to what it was going to be when it reopened, Swain continues, seated next to her associates Kimberley Friesen and Laurie McLean, inside their cute-as-a-button shop at 802 Park Ave. The previous owner had been around for more than 20 years, and ice cream and milk shakes were two of her main drawing cards, so there was some concern — OK, a lot — on the part of the high school students down the street that the three of them were going to turn it into a (here she lowers her voice to a whisper) health-food store.

Friesen, who, like Swain, grew up in Beausejour, located 45 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, was at a neighbourhood pool party in July 2017, a few weeks before Pennyweight’s grand opening. She recalls being peppered with questions, including one from a 10-year-old girl splashing about in the shallow end who was under the impression the former locale’s beloved “candy island” was about to become a thing of the past. The second Friesen told the youngster not to worry, that the colourful array of gummies, licorice and chocolates wasn’t going anywhere, she came bounding out of the pool to give her a big, albeit wet, hug.

Climate change a clear and present danger to the already-shrinking polar bear population

The rocks fly out from beneath the tires of Angela Mak’s Ford F-150 as she cruises down the gravel road along the coast of Hudson Bay just east of Churchill.

It’s a routine. Every day from July until November she comes out here looking for polar bears.

Mak and her husband Bill Fong are originally from Hong Kong, but moved to Vancouver in the early ‘90s. In 2017 they travelled to Churchill during bear season — October and November, when the bears move out onto the sea ice.

After that one trip, their hearts were set on Churchill. First they bought a house in town to host friends and other guests, then they bought a small hotel when it went on the market in 2019.

Alzheimer’s has sent my mother back in time

My mother does a lot of time-travelling — time-shifting, the Alzheimer’s Society calls it.

I wonder how it feels to be in the present at one moment and then suddenly catapulted deep into the past. Is it a jolting experience or a smooth transition to go back and forth in time?

Mom will never be able to tell me. There is so much she can never tell me now.

She can still recite her children’s names when prompted, but she doesn’t ask us about our lives. Instead, she talks about her younger siblings, their grandfather who was hard of hearing, the isolated place where they used to live whose inhabitants were resettled nearly 60 years ago.

Youth centre library cancellation baffles

It’s difficult to understand why Manitoba Corrections would shut down a library program that cost taxpayers nothing, was popular with young inmates and was designed to help them learn.

But that is what happened at the Manitoba Youth Centre, where a volunteer-run pop-up library has been cancelled by the province.

The Prison Libraries Committee, part of the Manitoba Library Association, provided the program at no cost to Corrections. Once a month, volunteer librarians brought books into the youth centre, helped young people find reading material, assisted with school research and provided something that can be in short supply in a correctional institution — positive interaction with people from outside its walls.

The program became so popular that the youth centre asked for it to be offered more frequently.

‘You’re just feeling so emotional’: Americans reunite with loved ones as the Canadian border reopens

Americans waiting to come to Canada finally got their wish as the border reopened.