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Gerald Flood
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West-side farmers to carry can for Gary Doer's folly
BRUNKILD -- There were 28 pickups, nine cars and a few vans parked outside the Brunkild Community Hall when I pulled up a few minutes late on Wednesday afternoon. It was an impressive turnout, about 60 of an estimated 300 farmers in southwestern Manitoba who are being forced to carry the can for Gary Doer's folly -- the decision to ban Manitoba Hydro's Bipole III transmission line from Manitoba's east side wilderness and move it instead to a longer, less-efficient, less-secure corridor through rich, west-side farmland at a waste of at least $1 billion.View Full Column | 02/9/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Writing contest was peppered with coincidences
The 2012 Free Press/Writers Collective non-fiction contest is over for another year, which means that we can begin to present the top six stories in this space each day, ending on New Year's Eve. Every contest (and this is my 15th) has its own internal story. This year, I would say the internal story is coincidence.View Full Column | 12/24/2012 3:17 AM | 0
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The North: Canada's missing link
Would a road and power line from Sundance in northern Manitoba to Rankin Inlet, at a cost of at least $1.7 billion, kick-start economic development in the region? That's been the dream for the past 50 or so years, and it's a question a task force looking into economic development opportunities in the southwest basin of Hudson Bay is expected to answer later this year.
View Full Column | 10/20/2012 10:32 AM | 0
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Churchill must diversify, but how?
CHURCHILL -- The annual migration to Churchill of hundreds of polar bears -- and thousands of polar-bear watchers -- is underway as you read this. Seasonal hotels and restaurants are opening, rooms are being prepared, linen is being aired, shelves are being stocked with souvenirs and native art. Mechanics are tuning up tundra buggies, the improbable balloon-tired buses that carry tourists willing to pay up to $6,000 for up-close encounters with ursus maritimus on the Churchill lowlands, where about 1,000 of the white bears gather in anticipation of freeze-up and their winter seal hunt on the ice in Hudson Bay.View Full Column | 10/6/2012 1:00 AM | 0
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Adversity not all bad for port
Setbacks and uncertain futures are not new to Churchill. Adversity, it could be said, is its middle name, and has been since 1782, when Fort Prince of Wales, built to protect the territory, surrendered to the French without a shot being fired. Some of that adversity is the result of bad luck, but much of it can be traced to northern boosterism, a penchant to overstate and then under-deliver the "vision" of Churchill as the "Gateway to the North."View Full Column | 10/6/2012 1:00 AM | 0
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Gold mine in the backyard
RANKIN INLET, Nunavut -- Mining has eclipsed government as the No. 1 contributor to Nunavut's GDP, a government official told me recently. That's good news across the 13-year-old territory, but it's an odd kind of good news in that no matter how quickly it travels, it arrives very slowly. Such is the nature of mining.View Full Column | 09/29/2012 1:00 AM | 0
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A mining 'whopper'
The two-billion-year-old rock that Eric Prosh, director of the Nunavut minerals department, placed on his desk was the size of a cantaloupe but as heavy as a pumpkin -- not surprising, given that rich-black rock is 65 per cent iron, three times the concentration of typical iron ore. The ore body from which Prosh's sample was taken is so rich, in fact, that it has launched the biggest development in Arctic history -- an open-pit mine at Mary River near the top of Baffin Island, 1,200 kilometres north of Iqaluit (3,500 kilometres north of Winnipeg).View Full Column | 09/29/2012 1:00 AM | 0
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Pangnirtung capitalizes on climate change
PANGNIRTUNG, Nunavut - It's likely the person who wrote "Welcome to Pangnirtung" in white-painted rocks on the side of a 2,000-foot "hill" overshadowing the airport here was well-meaning. But the cruel irony is the same massive rock that welcomes visitors also is the source of Pang's notoriety as the "stuck" capital of Nunavut -- a place that's often easier to get into than out of. Winds sweeping over the hill tumble down onto the airstrip creating a vortex that makes it impossible for aircraft to land when crosswinds are a mere 20 mph (they can land in 45 mph crosswinds most anywhere else). I flew in for a three-hour stay. When the winds freshened, as they say, three hours became 30.View Full Column | 09/26/2012 9:44 AM | 0
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A capital ambition
IQALUIT, Nunavut -- From the moment I first saw Iqaluit from the air, I was intrigued, could not stop marvelling at it, could not stop thinking -- might this be it? Might this be, if not the realization of aboriginal aspiration, at least a shining example of what it might be? An Inuit city in an Inuit territory governed by Inuit according to Inuit principles, and succeeding. What I first saw from the air was a small city rising as high as eight storeys above a baked-brown, treeless landscape of bulging rock dotted with fall-coloured plants and shimmering pools of water.View Full Column | 09/22/2012 1:00 AM | 0
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From China to Iqaluit
IQALUIT, Nunavut -- The thing that you never think about as a passenger on an aircraft hurtling toward takeoff is that the length of the runway is finite -- it has an end, marked by big yellow-and-black barriers that could, shall we say, trip the aircraft, snag its wheels and bring it down before it gets up. But looking forward from the cockpit of a Boeing 767 taking off from Winnipeg International Airport at 270 km/h, the end of the road very quickly becomes clear. It wasn't frightening, but I must say the approaching end focused my mind until the instant when all became comparatively silent and we "slipped the surly bonds" with lots of runway to spare, climbing at a rate that was exhilarating to witness through the large and panoramic windows of the cockpit.View Full Column | 09/19/2012 1:00 AM | 0
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The Forks a place for fun and life
I quite like Allen Mills, enjoy his company and I'm always pleased to publish his stuff, which is consistently provocative and incisive. That doesn't mean I always agree with Allen, and I certainly don't agree with his glib dismissal of a water park at the The Forks.View Full Column | 04/28/2012 1:00 AM | 0
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You need to have a cake to ice it
Unlike Stephen Harper and all the others who managed to pull strings to horn their way into the game, I was not at the official rise of the phoenix Jets last night. But then, unlike the string-pullers, I'm not in it for bragging rights following a one-night stand (which I begrudgingly admit was orgasmic, even on TV).View Full Column | 10/10/2011 1:00 AM | 0
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Bipole move creates double tragedy
Manitoba Hydro has budgeted $90 million to compensate west-side landowners for the imposition of Bipole III on their lands and landscape. How much, you might ask, was offered to the 16 isolated east-side First Nations to string Bipole III across their "traditional" lands and landscapes? Zilch, zip, zero.View Full Column | 10/1/2011 1:00 AM | 0
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Strung out on bipole line
COWAN --The village of Cowan is one of those places you can miss in a blink. There's a general store with gas pumps under a big blue and yellow Tempo sign, a fast-food joint, a fast-food trailer and a clutch of houses strung out along Highway 10 east of Swan River, about a five-hour drive from Winnipeg. Yet the name Cowan has loomed large on Manitoba's political landscape for decades, all because of a different name -- Harapiak. Three members of the farm family have been NDP cabinet ministers, beginning in 1981 when Harry, now deceased, was elected, followed by Leonard, then their sister, Rosann Wowchuk, the current NDP finance minister and minister for Manitoba Hydro.View Full Column | 09/17/2011 1:00 AM | 0
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Jets brand is golden... why tarnish its storied lustre?
I was in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod (the former Soviet city of Gorky) several years ago in the company of a gaggle of editorial writers, all Americans. We went to some sort of health research institute to discuss health care post-collapse. I remember only two things about that visit.View Full Column | 06/4/2011 1:00 AM | 0
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The solstice is coming, the solstice is coming, the solstice...
As I sit watching a cold drizzle wash over the flat-roof wastes of the Inkster Industrial Park, it is hard to imagine that summer is just around the corner, that the reward for enduring five months of cold, dark winter is at hand. But it is. Harold Egbert Camping's apocalyptic fund-raising campaign notwithstanding, the tilt of the planet and its orbit around the sun ensures that summer will officially start on June 21, the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.View Full Column | 05/28/2011 1:00 AM | 0
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Down from the hills to triage the wounded
It is said that editorial writers are the folks who come down from the hills after a battle to kill the wounded. In that spirit, I come down from the hills 12 days after the election, not to kill the wounded but simply to identify some of them for triage and to survey the battlefield. First, and most obvious, is a moaning, groaning heap of bodies at the base of a shredded and bloodied banner on which it is just possible to see inscribed in Roman numerals LX:XL, or 60:40 to modern eyes.View Full Column | 05/14/2011 1:00 AM | 0
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Lviv -- birthplace of masochism
There is a brass statue of a handsome man in a long coat at the side of Serbska Street in the historic centre of Lviv not far from city hall. On closer examination, brass hands can be seen reaching out from under his jacket, an opening in the chest reveals a sepia photo of a woman at his heart. His left pocket gaps open, its hems polished by countless hands reaching in to discover by touch two half-orbs and a brass ridge.View Full Column | 06/10/2010 1:00 AM | 0
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Judges battle over salaries
WINNIPEG -- Provincial court judges are racing toward a courtroom showdown against the province over their salaries. They've taken their case to the Court of Queen's Bench, naming Justice Minister Andrew Swan as a defendant. The case was filed in February with no fanfare.View Full Column | 04/24/2010 2:10 AM | 0
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It used to be THE PITS
KATOWICE, Poland — Agnieska Babczynska dreamed as a girl that one day she would travel to the Amazon to study the wealth of plants in its lush rainforests. An unusual ambition, but perhaps understandable given that she was living and dreaming in Katowice, one of the most polluted corners of the planet at that time. It was an ecological dead zone that was killing its coal miners and steel-foundry workers 10 years faster than other Poles. The air reeked of a toxic brew wafting from chemical plants and was often opaque with smoke and coal dust.View Full Column | 03/27/2010 1:00 AM | 0
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Kyiv: City of doubts
Kyiv, Ukraine — It is sagely said here that when two Ukrainians get together there are three leaders. Which might explain why it is that getting anyone to acknowledge that Ukraine is significantly better off in most every way today than it was 20 years ago and it usually and comes with a "Yes, but."View Full Column | 03/20/2010 1:00 AM | 0
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FYI: She's the dreamer of Gordon Bell's field
IT was a hot day in August 2008 that I first opened an e-mail from Eagles and Doves, the nom de Internet of Nancy Chippendale. Inside I found an appeal that I publish a piece she had written about the "dream of fields" she had for her beloved old high school, Gordon Bell.View Full Column | 12/12/2009 1:00 AM | 0
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FYI: A shot in the arm to all those who got a shot in the arm
I got my H1N1 shot this week. I went to the clinic on College Avenue, where I was told the lines were short. When I got there, however, there must have been 20 cars in the lot and a bus was parked at the door. Nuts. I went in anyway and discovered that I was the only -- the lonely -- person in line. The cars in the lot belonged to the dozen or so bored nurses, and the clutch of security guards, greeters and handlers. The bus? Who knows.View Full Column | 11/28/2009 1:00 AM | 0
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Life of the party
Premier Greg Selinger. Greg Selinger, premier of Manitoba.View Full Column | 10/31/2009 1:00 AM | 0
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Doer's $53-million farewell gift to his party
I have a wonderful souvenir of Gary Doer's last days in office.
It's a clip of him clowning before the start of an interview last week with the Free Press legislature bureau. He looks straight into the camera and stabs at it with a finger while he says:
View Full Column | 10/11/2009 1:00 AM | 0
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