Biden names FEMA, CDC officials to head monkeypox response

Olympic wrestler elected to Calgary city council

The premier knows or certainly should know, the great majority of newcomers to Canada and Ontario come as economic-class immigrants, bringing exactly the skills the country needs because they’re selected for that very reason.

Saviour of the slopes

It’s not yet winter but that hasn’t stopped Lori Natuik from preparing for when snow hits the ground.

Winter is her favourite season and she’s ready to strap on her skis, not only for pleasure but also as part of her duties as a Canadian Ski Patrol (CSP) volunteer.

Natuik, 69, is one of more than 4,500 CSP volunteers across the country.

CSP volunteers are often the first responders when skiiers get into difficulty on the slopes. The non-profit organization was established in 1941 to provide advanced first aid services for more than 200 alpine and Nordic ski areas nationally. In the off-season volunteers provide services at non-skiing events such as marathons, bike races, fundraising events, sporting tournaments and concerts.

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison dead at 88

NEW YORK - Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, a pioneer and reigning giant of modern literature whose imaginative power in "Beloved," ''Song of Solomon" and other works transformed American letters by dramatizing the pursuit of freedom within the boundaries of race, has died at age 88.

Publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced that Morrison died Monday night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. Morrison's family issued a statement through Knopf saying she died after a brief illness.

"Toni Morrison passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends," the family announced. "The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing."

Few authors rose in such rapid, spectacular style. She was nearly 40 when her first novel, "The Bluest Eye," was published. By her early 60s, after just six novels, she had become the first black woman to receive the Nobel literature prize, praised in 1993 by the Swedish academy for her "visionary force" and for her delving into "language itself, a language she wants to liberate" from categories of black and white. In 2012, Barack Obama awarded her a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Emotional Scheifele accepts punishment, says attacks on family unacceptable

Winnipeg Jets centre Mark Scheifele faced the music on Friday morning, expressing remorse for a brutal hit that hurt Montreal's Jake Evans, shock at a four-game playoff suspension, and anger over some vitriol being directed at his family.

"I can handle the punishment. I can accept the accountability. That’s what you sign up for, being in the NHL. But the hate that my family has gotten, the bullying that they’ve gotten, online, phone calls. It’s pretty gross to see," Scheifele said on a Zoom call, fighting back tears.

"My parents are the salt of the Earth. For my parents to get hate like that, and my brother and sister, it’s awful. I can handle it, I’m a grown man. I’ve accepted that and I can be held accountable for that. But for my family to get that, it hurts me a lot.

"In a society where you can hide behind a keyboard, that is the problem. I can handle the criticism. I got suspended four games. I got held accountable. But there’s no right to go after my parents, to go after my loved ones. That’s completely unacceptable."

Curtain finally comes down on The Garrick

The Garrick Theatre opened in 1921 as a movie house, its construction beginning two years earlier at the tail end of the influenza pandemic. Nearly a century later, the historic performance venue’s doors are closing, possibly for good, as another virus rages on.

Sam Smith saw the writing on the wall. The operations and production manager for the Garrick, which was reborn in the mid-2000s as a live music venue after decades as a downtown Winnipeg multiplex, knew the pandemic would put an untenable strain on the centre’s bottom line.

That didn’t make it any easier for him when the lease for the property was effectively terminated and he handed back the keys earlier this week for a new tenant to move in.

“As much as I’ve said this was not a surprise, turning in the keys made it register with me. This is actually real,” he says.

‘In Normandy, we remember’

Travelling nearly 7,000 km from his home in France to Winnipeg gave Gabriel Zaranski a new perspective on warfare.

“It’s very different to speak about war in school (than) to speak with real people who (have fought) in a war,” he said. “We can feel the emotion when they speak … The testimony has more impact when it’s real soldiers.”

Zaranski is one of 14 Grade 12 students from Bayeux, a town in France’s Normandy region, in Winnipeg this week for a learning tour.

The students, who attend Lycée Arcisse de Caumont high school, met on Saturday with veterans from the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, a local military regiment, to discuss their studies and the regiment’s role in the Second World War.