City legal staff recommend paying $7M in settlements to three Indigenous men wrongfully convicted in 1973 slaying

The city’s legal department is proposing Winnipeg pay $7 million to settle lawsuits filed by three First Nations men wrongfully convicted of the 1973 slaying of a restaurant worker.

Allan Woodhouse and Brian Anderson, members of Pinaymootang First Nation in the Interlake, were formally acquitted of the 1973 slaying of Ting Fong Chan in 2023 and filed lawsuits in Court of King’s Bench in 2024 over the miscarriage of justice.

Allan’s brother, Clarence Woodhouse, who was formally acquitted of the killing in October 2024, filed his lawsuit last February. A fourth convicted man — Clarence Woodhouse’s brother — died in 2011.

The federal justice minister has ordered the Manitoba Court of Appeal to review Russell Woodhouse’s conviction.

Encampment bylaw enforcement on horizon, mayor says; homeless man throwing bottle at child ‘not acceptable’

Winnipeg is in the “in-between” stages of implementing a new bylaw to prohibit encampments near playgrounds, parks and other recreational areas, Mayor Scott Gillingham said Wednesday.

Exchange District public cigar lounge seeks to light up ‘untapped’ market

One lone public cigar lounge stands in Manitoba. That could change next month.

Celebrated Manitoban author Miriam Toews attempts to unpack why she writes in latest work

The question at the core of Miriam Toews’ latest book is one she’s been asked many times. It’s a question with no neat and tidy answer, but one the Manitoba-born, Toronto-based novelist felt compelled to try to unpack: Why do you write?

The result is A Truce That Is Not Peace, Toews’ first work of non-fiction since 2000’s Swing Low, a memoir told from her father’s perspective about his life and eventual suicide in 1998.

Toews is in Winnipeg Thursday to launch the book at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location at 7 p.m., where she’ll be joined in conversation by local musician/artist couple Christine Fellows and John Samson Fellows.

The author of All My Puny Sorrows, Fight Night, A Complicated Kindness, Women Talking and other novels has long imbued her fiction with events from her life.

City gets ball rolling to seek relief for wildfire costs: mayor

Mayor Scott Gillingham’s inner circle will consider a proposal for the city to seek provincial aid to cover costs associated with this year’s devastating wildfires.

Winnipeg was the primary host community for thousands of evacuees as several city-run buildings were converted into congregate shelters or reception centres at the height of the emergency.

“There were costs incurred by the City of Winnipeg to provide that emergency assistance, and now as part of the regular process we’ll submit an application to the Province of Manitoba to recover some of those costs,” said Gillingham, who plans to vote in favour of the motion at Tuesday’s executive policy committee meeting.

The city has not yet determined final wildfire-related costs, spokesman Adam Campbell said.

‘Feral butchery’: Scottish judge sentences man to life for killing Alberta girlfriend

Claire Leveque was a young Alberta woman who had travelled to Scotland with a boyfriend when she was brutally stabbed and drowned by the man in an act of “feral butchery,” a judge said Wednesday.

Leveque left her rural hometown north of Edmonton in the fall of 2023 to live with Aren Pearson and his mother in Sandness, a village in the remote Shetland Islands of Scotland.

“In the words of your late mother ... she was ‘just a lovely young girl,’” Judge Paul Arthurson of the High Court in Edinburgh said in a transcript posted on the court’s website.

The judge also said Leveque was vulnerable and isolated, with no work permit and no driver’s licence in a foreign country. The 24-year-old was killed in February 2024.

Children’s advocate says province fell short on emergency preparedness for young wildfire evacuees, calls for ‘urgent action’

The Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth is condemning government leaders’ failure to protect young wildfire evacuees from further traumatization or their right to access education.

Sherry Gott is calling on the Kinew government to take “urgent action” and establish child-friendly emergency-response plans before the 2026 wildfire season.

“We’re really disappointed in Manitoba’s preparedness, which did not consider children and youth as a specific group in need of special care and attention,” she said Wednesday.

Gott said the response is particularly inexcusable given the recent COVID-19 pandemic disruptions to education and the lasting fallout on student well-being from the health crisis.

Bronze sculpture, hundreds of engraved stones honour past four-legged members of WPS canine unit

The Winnipeg Police Service unveiled a memorial Wednesday to dogs that have served in its canine unit.

California artist Susan Bahary created the bronze sculpture, titled Forever Faithful. It is located beside the canine unit building at 77 Durand Rd., on the grounds of the police service’s east district station.

The memorial is intended as a tribute to the nearly 80 dogs who have worked with city police since the unit’s inception in 1971.

“These dogs were not just part of our team, they were our protectors, our companions and our family,” WPS Chief Gene Bowers said at an event unveiling the memorial.

U.S. man sentenced to prison over data breach that included Canadian students’ info

An American man was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison after pleading guilty to cyber extortion in the mass data breach of a student information system used across Canada. 

Court documents show Matthew D. Lane was sentenced in a Massachusetts court after he pleaded guilty to charges relating to the cyber extortion of two companies. 

The companies were not named in court documents but PowerSchool, a software and cloud storage company for school systems in the U.S. and Canada, confirmed Wednesday that Lane was the person behind its data breach. 

"PowerSchool appreciates the efforts of the prosecutors and law enforcement who brought this individual to justice," a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Salesman defrauded workplace of millions: Winnipeg police

A salesman is accused of defrauding his former employer, a building product supplier, out of nearly $4.2 million over an eight-year period.

The man registered four fictitious home-building companies, including fictitious employees, between April 2016 and April 2024, the Winnipeg Police Service said in a news release Wednesday. During this time, he used forged cheques to submit about 5,500 fraudulent applications through a rebate program set up by the supplier for participating business clients, the WPS said.

“It’s a large amount of money,” WPS spokesman Const. Claude Chancy said. “We’ve got a person here who was doing this while employed… and took some time to figure out what he was doing.”

Chancy called the fraud “fairly complicated” and “multi-faceted.”

Ottawa boosts provincial nominees by 30 per cent after earlier, larger reduction

The Manitoba government learned last week that the provincial nominee program it relies on to recruit and retain skilled immigrants was getting a 30 per cent boost after Ottawa chopped its allocation for 2025 in half.

The federal government previously said it was reducing levels across the country.

Manitoba was allocated 4,750 nominations for 2025, a decrease of 50 per cent compared with the 2024 nomination allocation. The program recently received an increase of 1,489 nominations, bringing the total to 6,239.

“This increase bolsters (the Manitoba nominee program’s) capacity to address provincial labour market needs and deliver on Manitoba’s strategic priorities,” the province said in a statement.

City mulls grants to lure developers for heritage building conversions

New grants could offer an incentive for developers to transform vacant or under-utilized downtown heritage buildings into housing.

A new proposal calls for the city to devote $2 million from its $122.4-million share of the federal Housing Accelerator Fund for grants that support such renovations of commercial and industrial structures, pending city council approval.

CentreVenture Development Corporation would be tapped to administer the grants, while eligible projects would be required to secure building permits by Nov. 1, 2026.

“It is estimated this program could support the redevelopment of approximately four heritage buildings, creating approximately 150 residential units,” a city report notes.