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Woman who saved child, father from Red River uncomfortable with hero label

A Winnipeg woman who’s been hailed as a hero by police for saving a father and his young child from the Red River says she doesn’t feel like one.

“I’m a mom… and I would do it again,” said Jayclyn Morrissette, who was walking with her neighbour through St. John’s Park on Aug. 24 when they spotted a young girl flailing in the nearby river. “I was meant to be there and that was supposed to happen.”

Morrissette, who spoke to the Free Press Wednesday after police released details about the rescue, said she and her neighbour began looking for the child’s parents and found them at the nearby playground searching for her.

Morrissette waved them over. The father, who she said could not swim, jumped into the river first and immediately began to sink.

A way of seeing, a vision for living

In Ways of Seeing, John Berger reminds us that seeing precedes words.

We encounter the world before we learn to name it, and the images we make carry something of how we understand it. Looking involves choices: what we attend to, what we overlook, what our experience allows us to recognize.

An artist’s work can make us conscious of those choices, inviting us to see through another person’s eyes. It is one reason a painting can change our experience of a place we thought we knew.

I thought of this standing on a dock with artist Wanda Koop, listening as she described the changing light across the water: landscape and colour before detail, atmosphere before composition.

Red River Polytechnic looks to expand after MITT takeover

Red River College Polytechnic is celebrating an enrolment bump and eyeing new high school partnerships as part of its merger with a longtime competitor.

For the first time, nearly 400 students attended their first day of RRC Polytech in Winnipeg’s south end on Tuesday.

The new campus is outfitted with two school logos — a new red one and a blue design belonging to the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology.

“It feels great to be a part of history,” said Dom McLaren, an 18-year-old who is enrolled in RRC Polytech’s network and systems administration program. “I’m definitely going to enjoy my time.”

Provencher Park eyed for new aquatic centre

Provencher Park may be the next site for a new aquatic centre.