Alberta border blockade hampered by tow trucks reluctant to haul away vehicles: RCMP

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.”

‘Women were shortchanged.’ Why bobsledding’s idea of equality doesn’t add up

When female bobsledders pushed for an Olympic four-woman event, they got a solo discipline instead: monobob. Now they’ll race for the same number of medals as men, but with fewer sledders. Not the progress they were looking for.

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.

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.

No Christmas trees, no Christmas trees — the lots are empty as can be

It might take a Christmas miracle to get your hands on even a scraggly Charlie Brown-style tree this holiday season.

Winnipeg garden centre owners interviewed Monday morning said they are totally sold out and they’ve never seen stock vanish this quickly in all their years in the business.

They likened it to the holiday version of panicked shoppers binge-buying toilet paper when the COVID-19 pandemic first arrived in the province back in March.

“I’m sold out,” declared Ray DuBois, owner of Ron Paul Garden Centre on St. Mary’s Road. “I could see it coming back in August. When we placed our order, I bumped it up by 10 per cent.”

World Indigenous Business Forum comes home to Winnipeg for first time, ponders questions for future prosperity

When Nicola Shirley-Phillips imagines what the Indigenous economy in her country might look like 100 years from now, she doesn’t mention social media or artificial intelligence. Instead, she envisions a holistic way of life where people work alongside each other in a way that cares for the planet.

“I see community (and) I see us being more respectful of all the energies around us — our water energy, our climate (and) the soil,” she said. “In all of that, there are opportunities for us to create businesses and opportunities to provide our services.”

Shirley-Phillips, a serial entrepreneur, organic farmer and community economic development specialist from Jamaica, shared her vision Tuesday morning during a panel discussion focused on Indigenous women and prosperity.

The discussion was one of the first items on the schedule during the first full day of the World Indigenous Business Forum at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg.