Old-fashioned mail.......

I've received a Happy Holidays card from the University of Manitoba Students Union, snowflakes rampant on a dark blue background and wishing me peace, goodwill, and a tuition fee freeze for all. And also a terrifically nice card from Brandon University president Louis Visentin, his own artwork depicting girls on an idyllic frozen pond, with figure skates and hockey sticks, one of a series of 10 described as "continuous one-line pen and ink creations." Yes, I know, I know absolutely nothing about art, but having recently chosen to spend three hours in the McMichael Gallery, I'd say this card was really nice to receive, and will go up in our living room. The message inside is a simple multi-lingual 'peace'. Louis Riel School Division superintendent Terry Borys sends a picture of a brook deep in the snowy woods, that makes me wish I could skip out of work for a few hours and go cross country skiing. Meanwhile, from the Gray academy of Jewish Education, a nifty card by artist Terry Ananny called Canadian Six, a painting of six kids playing road hockey, each in the sweater of a Canadian NHL team. I know, it should be eight, and maybe one of these days....... On something completely different........ Our provincial movers and shakers are constantly bemoaning how we lose some of our best and brightest, and are just as constantly trying to figure out how to keep them here, or get them back here. Some incredibly smart students have gone outside the province to attend university, and some of them might come back here to work the summer at public sector jobs which they're highly qualified to fill........but it's tough to do so, when government jobs require a personal interview in February or March, when these young people are in class, not to mention the expense. On that same subject, this will be the tax year coming up that the Doer government's plan kicks in to allow graduates who've chosen to stay here to work, or come here to work, to begin writing off a portion of their tuition. Some of the young people I know who've left the province to attend university, for a variety of reasons, earned major scholarships. Those scholarships apply first to their tuition, so you end up with bright young people that Manitoba would like to have here working, who have no tuition to claim the government's tax incentive.

Nick Martin, Winnipeg Free Press