A bow and a curtsy Manitobans recall meeting the queen as children By: Chris Kitching Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Sep. 15, 2022

About more than just Sundays

It’s cold outside, but it’s warm and comfortable inside Gordie’s coffeehouse on a Thursday evening in Glenelm.

That’s where a full house of around 50 people is gathered to listen to folk and blues music.

People have been coming to weekly concerts at Gordie’s since 2007, listening to local groups like the Nite Snackers, Agassiz Railroad, the Cat’s Advice and Two Crows for Comfort. There’s also an open mic for anyone who wants to perform a song or two.

But what makes Gordie’s unique isn’t just the music — it’s the location: Gordon-King Memorial United Church. Or, as it’s known in the neighbourhood, the Big Red Church.

Manitobans recall meeting the queen as children

Before meeting Queen Elizabeth when he was five, Landon Klassen practised his bow over and over so he’d get it just right during a ceremony at Winnipeg’s Children’s Hospital.

Biden says he's mulling health emergency for abortion access

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) — President Joe Biden said Sunday he is considering declaring a public health emergency to free up federal resources to promote abortion access even though the White House has said it doesn't seem like “a great option.”

He also offered a message to people enraged by the Supreme Court's ruling last month that ended a constitutional right to abortion and who have been demonstrating across the country: “Keep protesting. Keep making your point. It's critically important."

The president, in remarks to reporters during a stop on a bike ride near his family's Delaware beach house, said he lacks the power to force the dozen-plus states with strict restrictions or outright bans on abortion to allow the procedure.

“I don’t have the authority to say that we’re going to reinstate Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court's decision from 1973 that had established a national right to abortion. Biden said Congress would have to codify that right and for that to have a better chance in the future, voters would have to elect more lawmakers who support abortion access.

Survey says city's downtown is struggling, but it's been here before

The convenience store cashier sees everything on his corner of Graham Avenue. His view is good: behind the register, he sits on a fading vinyl stool that pivots, and if he turns his head over his left shoulder, his eyes look right out toward the bus stop. If he’s lucky, the benches are full of university students or harried office workers, and the No. 18 is running a bit late.

If that’s the case, the shop door will swing open, and the cashier will be a very busy man, selling cans of Coca-Cola and energy drinks, packs of gum and cigarettes, a few lottery scratchers, a loaf of bread, a stick of deodorant, whatever anyone needs. For most of the day, the corner is somewhat quiet, but for a few short bursts — one in the morning, shortly after he opens up at 5:30 a.m., another at lunchtime, and another when people start to go home, around 3:30 p.m. — the intersection of Graham and Vaughan is a very loud place, and business is as steady as the pace on the sidewalk.

“After six o’clock, it always slows down,” says the cashier, who’s worked at the Graham Convenience Store for five years. For the last 12 months, it’s felt like after six o’clock.

Every person has a unique vantage point of how the pandemic has shifted the world, but the cashier, who didn’t want his name shared, has had a crystal-clear perspective on the way COVID-19 has changed Winnipeg’s downtown. All he’s had to do is turn his head, look through his window and watch the clock. He has anecdotal evidence, such as the quiet. But he also has empirical evidence, such as the relatively empty street corner and the number of customers as compared to his first four years at the store.

Man who killed two Indigenous women, was accused of killing third, back in prison less than year after statutory release

A Winnipeg man convicted of killing two First Nations women more than a decade ago — with charges stayed in a third slaying — has been sent back to prison less than a year after he left under conditions.

Parole Board of Canada officials revoked 67-year-old Shawn Lamb’s statutory release after a hearing last week.

“Your actions are not beyond your control, yet you continue to wilfully make poor decisions that place the public at risk,” board member Arun Kundu-Thomsen wrote in a decision released this week.

Lamb gained statutory release — a legislated conditional release most federal inmates automatically qualify for after serving two-thirds of their sentence — in November last year and lived in several Ontario facilities for federal offenders.