Calgary council revisits fluoride debate after study showing increased problems

Manitoba Book Awards

releases short list

The Manitoba Book Awards has unveiled the short lists for the literary prizes to be presented this year.

For the 2026 awards, jurors evaluated 42 submissions in both English and French, and will present six prizes in total for best first book as well as best fiction, non-fiction and poetry, plus the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award and a prize for French literature.

AI literacy course mandatory at U of W Collegiate

The University of Winnipeg Collegiate is requiring new students to complete artificial intelligence 101 lessons and offering a first-of-its-kind elective for those who want to perfect their chatbot prompts.

The private high school is piloting two projects this year in a bid to improve digital literacy on the downtown campus.

Every Grade 9 and 10 student will have to pass an approximately two-hour long online course about “AI essentials.”

Dean Osaed Khan likened the mandatory e-learning sessions to requiring students to complete a safety course before they can participate in a science lab.

Woman pleads guilty in toddler’s death

A woman who pleaded guilty to failing to provide the necessaries of life after her 13-month-old son died of an drug overdose in their Sherbrook Street apartment will serve a sentence of house arrest.

Latasha Stewart, in her mid-30s, was given the conditional sentence order of two years less a day by provincial court Judge Malcolm McDonald last Wednesday over the Dec. 29, 2022 death of her son Romeo.

“The circumstances in this case are truly tragic. As a result of an adult’s careless drug use, a 13-month-old boy lost his life,” said McDonald.

“It’s hard to imagine a clearer … lesson in the dangers of street-drug use in a household with young children present (than) in this case.”

Thespian has lofty goals for province’s theatre scene

Daniela Smith-Fernandez has had an eventful summer.

Her debut play, the verbose sex comedy Jean-François: plus que parfait premièred at the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival in July (earning 4/12 stars in the Free Press).

And just a week before, in early July, Smith-Fernandez joined the Manitoba Association of Playwrights as its new company manager.

“I don’t want inclusion to be tokenism anymore. I want people to be including Manitoba plays because they’re amazing, not because they feel like they should support local,” says the 41-year-old trilingual Chilean-Canadian artist. “(At MAP) I feel like I get to be myself in a way that definitely didn’t happen when I was working in insurance.”

A bigger grid, and a tougher one

The Free Press editorial of Aug. 21, Time for a stronger Canadian grid, makes a case that should unsettle anyone who read it.

A co-ordinated attack on nine substations could bring down the American electrical grid.

The transformers needed to repair it carry lead times of 128 weeks and longer, from countries on the U.S. president’s tariff list.

And because the North American system is effectively one machine, a fault in Ohio once darkened Toronto.

H.P. Tergesen & Sons General Market surpasses 127 years as family-run business in Gimli

GIMLI — Walk into the store. Meander past the clothing, candy and candles. Find him in the corner, his eyes scanning the bookshelves, a smile on his face as a half-dozen people explore this side of the shop.

Wearing grey shorts and a light blue shirt, Stefan Tergesen, the fourth-generation proprietor of H.P. Tergesen & Sons General Market, is explaining his vision for what’s widely recognized as the oldest general store in Western Canada.

“First and foremost, I want everybody to enjoy being in here,” he says. “I want you at some point to look and go, ‘Oh, cool!’ after seeing something that gets your blood flowing.”

If you ever find yourself on the west side of Lake Winnipeg, some 80 kilometres north of Manitoba’s capital, and you realize you forgot to pack something, there’s a good chance you’ll find it at Tergesen’s.