Cinematheque celebrates LGBTTQ+ director’s catalogue

As a distinct and important voice in queer cinema, director Gregg Araki’s sex-filled, nihilistic films about LGBTTQ+ life have left a lasting impact on indie films.

Rural councils work hard, plan big to build local arts scenes

BEAUSEJOUR — Brittany Wurch has always been drawn to art. She fell in love with illustration and animation as a kid, but growing up near Beausejour meant she had to travel elsewhere to satisfy her creative interests.

“I had to go to a different community to take art,” says Wurch, who chose to study in Selkirk, about a 30-minute drive west, for its high school’s superior art program.

As an adult, she’s determined to make art more accessible in her community.

A smiling red barn and a tall water tower greet visitors on the way into Beausejour. The cute, compact town is located 50 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg and is home to 3,300 people. It’s surrounded by farmland and situated within the RM of Brokenhead, where agriculture and sports have historically reigned supreme.

New Bannatyne eatery brings feast of Asian flavours

Matriarchal influences run deep at House of Ma Kitchen and Bar.

Executive chef Dom Merano took inspiration from his mom’s home cooking while developing the menu for the new Exchange District restaurant — specifically Cynthia Merano’s recipes for lumpia (Filipino spring rolls) and kare-kare (braised beef and peanut stew).

“It tastes like home,” Merano says of the dishes, adding that his mom “felt honoured to be able to share her cooking with people. She was actually here prior to opening helping me roll lumpia.”

Cynthia’s photo is hung among the “Wall of Mas” at the back of the restaurant, where the mothers and grandmothers of True Hospitality staff are given pride of place.

New exhibition offers up 125 different ways to look at Canada

As a curator and head of collections and exhibitions at WAG-Qaumajuq, Riva Symko has been contemplating landscapes in art for a long time. But living in an ever-changing and ever-threatened one has altered her perspective on them.

Before coming to Winnipeg, Symko and her husband lived in Anchorage, Alaska. One day, seven or so years ago, they were out hiking when a sudden thunderstorm rolled through — “which is very unusual in Alaska,” she says — sparking a forest fire that ended up raging out of control. That summer, the whole city, save for the ocean side, was surrounded by fire and blanketed with heavy smoke. Climate change was viscerally visible.

“And since then, I really haven’t been able to look at a beautiful landscape the same,” she says.

With Terra Cognita/Incognita, a new exhibition opening at WAG-Qaumajuq Wednesday night, Symko wants to inspire and challenge viewers to look at landscapes differently, too.

Terri Clark striking a balance on- and offstage en route to Winnipeg

Terri Clark spends most of her summers outdoors, performing in the “middle of fields” at festivals and fairs across Canada and the midwestern United States.

“’Tis the season for corn dogs and ferris wheels and country music,” Clark, 58, says over the phone in late June from somewhere in Wisconsin.

The iconic Canadian country singer is no stranger to a heavy touring schedule, having spent much of her career on the road since the release of her breakout self-titled album in 1995.

These days, when she’s not criss-crossing the continent in her tour bus, Clark can also be found casting for pike, walleye and bass in the middle of lakes and rivers. Fishing became a passion during the pandemic, when live performances weren’t an option.

A new chapter: Renamed Winnipeg Book Festival takes to The Forks this fall

Winnipeg’s long-running annual literary festival returns this fall, once again featuring a slate of authors, local and beyond, ready to engage with readers.

New this year is pretty much everything else, including a new name, executive director and team of staff — as well as a shift to a tight, condensed timeline and a move to hold all events under one roof.

The festival formerly known as Thin Air/Livres en fête is now the Winnipeg Book Festival; the event takes place Oct. 1-4 at The Forks Market, with most events offering free admission.

It’s a lot of changes for the stalwart literary festival, which was run for more than two decades by Charlene Diehl, who stepped away in late 2025.

Winnipeg pooches get time in spotlight in Rainbow Stage production of Legally Blonde

On stage and screen there are no small roles, but there are small actors.

And then there is Lil’ Beast, a spunky, wild-haired performer who weighs in at 1.5 kilograms (3.5 lbs).

“You think of a small dog, and then he’s even smaller,” says his owner Britainy Jasper.

In April, when the beast was only six months old, he was encouraged by dozens of dog park acquaintances to tap into his creative side and audition for his first professional acting gig.

It’s been a winding journey to the pros for PWHL’s first Manitoban bench boss

Christine Bumstead has never been one to spend much time wondering what might be on the horizon.

The Winnipegger has made a habit of focusing on the task at hand, leading to a wide variety of experiences behind the bench, culminating with her promotion to head coach of the PWHL’s Seattle Torrent in early June.

“I truthfully never look at things in (terms) of what is next or shooting for the next thing. I’ve never been someone with a five-year plan or anything,” Bumstead said during a recent telephone interview.

“I kind of laugh, five years ago I was in a classroom in Morden, Manitoba, teaching. So a lot can happen in five years that you can never really expect.”

Take a hike... or a bike ride on these Winnipeg trail options

We’re halfway through the 10-week summer holiday and if your family is anything like mine, it’s very likely you’ll be in full-blown survival mode at this point.

You’ve already visited all the popular ice-cream spots in the city (and if you haven’t then you’ll find a list of our faves here) , you’ve ticked every box in our Road Trip Bingo Card and answered every single question in the our How Well Do You Know Your Province Quiz (Part 1 and Part 2) … and there are still 29 days to go before school starts on Sept. 8.

If you’re running low on ideas, don’t worry — we’ve got you covered, with not one, not two, but three cycling/walking routes to help you squeeze a bit more fun from what’s left of the holidays. Grab your helmets, lace up your sneakers, pack water bottles and get outside to explore different neighbourhoods in the city.

NOTE: Check the Winnipeg Trails website before you leaving to make sure paths are open and in working order, especially if we’ve had a bout of nasty weather.

Vibrant Norwood apartment garden a labour of love to honour green thumb’s late partner

St. Vital resident Rob Duncan can’t pinpoint when he first noticed an award-winning garden blanketing the grounds of a two-storey St. Mary’s Road apartment block, near Coniston Street.

Perhaps he was on his way home from work and caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye. Or maybe he was running errands in the Norwood Flats area and paused to admire the array of annuals, perennials and potted plants that extends from the block’s doorway to the front curb.

What Duncan does know for certain is that after spying the urban oasis, twice fêted in Take Pride Winnipeg’s annual Winnipeg in Bloom competition, he couldn’t unsee it.

“First of all, the pink building really stands out,” Duncan says, referring to the brightly painted California Apartments complex at 268 St. Mary’s Rd. “But then you have the pergola, the rock garden, the flowers and trees… a sea of colour on a very busy street.”

Farm to table is better, friendlier, tastier

Every year without fail, when the ground starts to thaw and temperatures begin to rise, Manitobans start calling Scott Schriemer.

“I’ll have people already phone me in the beginning of May asking if the local strawberries are ready yet,” says the proprietor of Vic’s Market (1049 Pembina Hwy.).

“Generally speaking, most people know strawberries don’t start until the end of June, but they get to a point where they have a real craving for something that’s been produced here, that’s fresh and that’s new.”

There are plenty of positives for those with access to locally grown, seasonal produce, especially when it comes to how something tastes.

New sci-fi/fantasy bookstore a welcome addition

A new chapter has begun in Winnipeg’s literary landscape with the opening of science fiction and fantasy bookstore Other Places Books.

Located at 436 Graham Ave., the queer-owned and operated shop is the latest in a host of genre bookstores to have opened in the city over the last few years. In addition to longtime mainstay Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore (163 Lilac St.), the local scene now also features a horror bookstore (Raven’s End Books, which opened at 1859 Portage Ave. in 2024) and a shop focused on romance (Bound to Please, which opened at 995 McPhillips St. earlier this year).

The 900 titles currently in stock at Other Places, which opened Tuesday, span a range of sci-fi and fantasy sub-genres, with a particular focus on queer writers and storylines. The bookstore is the brainchild of Didi Chanoch, who moved to Winnipeg from Israel in 2025 after the Canadian federal government began offering work permits to those in Israel and Palestine looking to leave the area due to the conflict.

Winnipeg ended up on Chanoch’s radar in large part due to a more reasonable cost of living than other Canadian cities.

Winnipeg artist RYAN AD's ambitions growing as work reaches Paris

RYAN AD is Jamaican-Grenadian, lives in Winnipeg and receives iPhone notifications in French.

One of these notifications recently gave the photographer (who goes by his artist name) good news: a prestigious Parisian art gallery was interested in featuring two of his photographs in one of its exhibitions. One was captured in Manitoba, the other in Jamaica.

“I felt a constant sense of community in Jamaica. You’ll walk down the road and people will talk to you,” he says. “Here you have to be buying something to exist in most places.”

One photo, entitled Born Underwater, is a gentle depiction of Lake Winnipeg, reminiscent of Wanda Koop for its symmetry and pastel-like softness. The other, Myself When Young, shows a man leaning on an old car with its hood popped, a glimpse into Jamaica’s culture of repair and resourcefulness.

Homegrown grub: Resto turns to the Leaf for freshest ingredients

The term “eat local” has taken on a whole new meaning at Gather Craft Kitchen and Bar, where the journey from plot to plate is measured in footsteps rather than miles.

Head chef Mike Licharson has expanded the restaurant’s focus on local sourcing by incorporating fruit and vegetables grown in The Leaf’s biomes and outdoor kitchen garden into his menu.

Bananas from the tropical biomes star in his banana-bread French toast and accompanying banana compote. Leeks, braised slowly and paired with Manitoba-grown beluga lentils, and Swiss chard — which takes the place of grape leaves in Licharson’s play on classic meze dolmades, a nod to the chef’s Greek-Ukrainian-Irish heritage — are both grown in the outdoor kitchen garden.

The park’s produce complements the restaurant’s other locally sourced ingredients, Licharson says.

Book gives patients tools for navigating the Canadian health-care system and getting treatment they need

More than a few of us have been known to complain about the Canadian health-care system: the lack of staffing, the long ER waits, the challenge of finding a family physician, the lengthy waiting lists for specialized tests and surgeries. There’s been an outcry for answers for a long time.

The publication of The Canadian Health Care Guerrilla Handbook: How to Fight for What You Need is welcome news for anyone seeking those answers.

Written by Michael Decter, who served as cabinet secretary in Manitoba before his move to Ontario — and Mike McCarthy, patient advocate and consultant who brings a personal story of living with hemophilia, the book is a must-have, packed with answers to commonly asked questions that will help the reader navigate a complex and fractured system.

The book, written in plain language, talks about how to get what you want and need: a family doctor, diagnostic tests, appropriate medications, a second opinion, long-term care, home care, mental-health care — all of that and more is easily accessible in its 217 pages.