Clever collection empowers heroine

A Rocky day on the mayoral campaign trail for Kevin Klein

Kevin Klein acknowledges it’s hard to foresee what he’ll wake up to each morning in the final weeks of a mayoral campaign.

But the seasoned politician, who has served as both a city councillor and a provincial cabinet minister, couldn’t have predicted the events — what he describes as “drama” — that unfolded last Sunday.

Fellow mayoral candidate Mike Vogiatzakis accused Klein’s campaign team of offering him a job to drop out of the race, while a guest writer’s column in the Winnipeg Sun that questioned the deaths of Indigenous children at residential schools, just days after the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, sparked condemnation from a prominent Indigenous organization. (Klein is the CEO of the Klein Group, the company that owns the Sun. He has maintained he is not involved in its operations while running for mayor.)

The Free Press had already been scheduled to join Klein on the campaign trail Monday, intending to document a day in the life of the front-running candidate to unseat incumbent Scott Gillingham, before the controversies hit.

Dog feces vandalism shuts down food pantry

A few shelves set up beneath a West End community notice board were meant to offer a place where neighbours could leave food for anyone who needed it.

Chopped trees will leave a ‘blight’ on Windsor Park

Robert Gordon has watched the trees grow along a popular Windsor Park walking path for nearly six decades.

Now, as Manitoba Hydro cuts them down to protect nearby power lines, he says a familiar part of his childhood neighbourhood is disappearing.

Although he no longer lives in the area, Gordon regularly returns to walk or cycle along the tree-lined path, which runs parallel to Archibald Street.

He was concerned when he recently spotted crews clearing vegetation near the entrance to the path, but initially assumed they were removing brush. When he returned, he discovered the clearing had extended farther along the corridor.

Orphaned polar bear cub has new home at Winnipeg zoo

It’s a grey September afternoon and a small group is gathered for a special behind-the-scenes visit with Assiniboine Park Zoo’s newest resident.

“Heeeeere, bubba,” animal-care specialist Caitlin Gordon-Hall hollers from between a double layer of chain-link fencing.

After a beat, a small white face appears at the entrance of the private enclosure. The polar bear cub sniffs the air before trundling toward the fence, where his keepers have been working to encourage calm behaviour around humans ahead of his public debut on Thursday.

Gordon-Hall offers sing-song affirmations while the cub, who is nearly 200 pounds and 10 or 11 months old, observes the fawning strangers with guarded curiosity.

Clever collection empowers heroine

Sue Goyette’s Penelope (Gaspereau, 96 pages, $20) meditates on the act of waiting, anchored in the mythology of Penelope, who waited 20 years for her husband Odysseus to return from the Trojan War.

Goyette’s Penelope wakes each day to a new challenge that threatens to draw her away from her long wait, whether set upon by suitors, or the demands of her son, or transformed by grief or by magic.

Goyette paints Penelope as a heroic and active figure at the centre of her own world, rather than the traditional view of her as a passive, peripheral character in Odysseus’s story.

“Are you the lady / who’s been waiting for a husband for a pathetically long time? // I’m asked. Are you f—king kidding me? I reply.” A melodic, meditative, clever collection of poems.