Canadian actor August Schellenberg dies at 77

Daycare, family centre addition will turn care home into intergenerational community hub

Seven-year-olds and 70-somethings will socialize daily when a 152-spot daycare opens inside of a seniors’ residence in Winnipeg in a couple of years.

Construction on a new wing of the Saul and Claribel Simkin Centre is scheduled to begin this fall, it was announced Monday.

The project won’t be complete for at least 22 months, but it’s already being touted as a made-in-Manitoba model for intergenerational community hubs across the country.

“It’s a real good idea to mix the younger generation with the older generation,” said Allan Rutherford, a 79-year-old resident of the 200-bed personal care home in Linden Ridge.

A grand jeté of climate-change denial

The first hurricane to hit Hawaii in 34 years. The Mediterranean on fire from Spain to Greece. ‘Heat domes’ one after another for months on end in Europe and North America. Thousands of excess deaths. A record El Niño piled on top of an average global temperature up from +1.2 C five years ago. Predicted high for this year: +1.7 C.

Surely they’ll get it now, you think — but no, they won’t. It once seemed sensible to think that when the climate damage gets bad enough and the trend line becomes impossible to ignore, ‘they’ (meaning the climate change deniers and their fellow travellers) will finally accept that the threat is real and urgent action is necessary.

A few of them will, but most will not.

It is becoming clear that as the old position of flat disbelief in climate science becomes untenable, the preferred response among former deniers is to admit that climate change is big, dangerous and already well underway — but to insist that it is already too late and nothing can be done about it now.

Letters, Aug. 18

A huge shout out to David Asper, coach Mike Raimbault and his staff, all those involved in game-day and office activities and all the Winnipeg Sea Bears players for an outstanding and very entertaining championship basketball season.

TV that waxes poetic, vacations hard, reminisces

The summer TV drawer is nearly empty, but here is a varied platter of viewing suggestions to amuse through to September, including: travelling with an epic poem, a group vacation, an anniversary reflection on the Tragically Hip (sob), a missing-child crime thriller and the return of a fictional talk-show host.

● Richard E. Grant’s Very Modern Odyssey

Documentary series streaming on CBC Gem

Sidestepping the argumentative hubbub about a new translation of Homer’s epic poem vs. old, and whose biceps Matt Damon wears in Christopher Nolan’s big-screen The Odyssey, consider this luscious travelogue, hosted by Richard E. Grant (Withnail and I). Beauty is beauty.