Wet blanket dampens vacation fun

You can’t hold a government accountable for what it won’t let you see.

That is the uncomfortable lesson from the dispute between Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook and Prairie Mountain Health over her recent attempt to visit the Dauphin Regional Health Centre.

Cook wanted to see the temporary emergency department that reopened Sept. 7 after flooding forced the hospital to close in July. She wanted to speak with officials about the reopening, the challenges they were facing and the work still required.

Prairie Mountain Health said no.

Two men sustained minor, but not life-threatening injuries after a crash on Highway 8 at Whytewold Road in the RM of St. Andrews Monday afternoon.

At 3:45 p.m. Selkirk RCMP responded to the two-vehicle collision, which happened after a vehicle travelling south on Highway 8 collided with a westbound vehicle that was crossing the highway from Whytewold Road.

The driver of the southbound vehicle, a 26-year-old man, and the driver of the westbound vehicle, a 24-year-old man, both from the RM of Gimli, were involved. The 24-year-old was ticketed for proceeding before safe to do so.

BRANDON — The Manitoba government is seeking to build a soybean crushing plant and is looking for investment to make it happen.

The proposed facility is one of several projects the NDP government pitched at the international investment summit in Toronto this week.

“We’re in a new world of opportunities that I think provinces or the country of Canada needs to apprehend,” Manitoba Agriculture Minister Ron Kostyshyn said Monday.

The MLA for Dauphin said soybeans were a “very popular discussion” during recent trade missions in certain parts of Asia.

I run a company that builds software to read documents and fill out forms. When I look at Winnipeg, I see a lot of potential customers. I also think the city should be asking some fairly uncomfortable questions about what companies like mine are selling.

Winnipeg has spent decades building an economy that does not depend on any one industry. Insurance, agriculture, transportation, aerospace, manufacturing, government, health care. That mix has served it well. A bad year for one employer does not necessarily become a bad year for the whole city.

But there is another way to look at that economy: what people actually do when they arrive at work.

Great-West Lifeco, Wawanesa, IGM Financial and Manitoba Public Insurance are all headquartered in Winnipeg. There are provincial departments, Shared Health and businesses handling the freight moving through CentrePort. Their purposes are different. A surprising amount of their paperwork follows the same routine.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: Last month, I went on a trip to Mexico with my new love. It was all right, a four out of 10. I had to push her to go to different restaurants instead of sticking with the first one, because it didn’t make her stomach sick. She also didn’t like going out in the ocean, because there might be sharks. She didn’t like the sun, so we never lay on the beach. We couldn’t walk on the beach at sunset because she was afraid of being attacked by bad people when it got dark.

I was deeply turned off. But, when we got back home, she smiled again, and went back to being a happy, active, fun-loving Winnipegger.

Still, I’m bothered by what a total wet blanket she is as a traveller. Do I want to stay home at holiday time all my lifetime? I love holidays in foreign places. I asked her if she’d like to go to Europe with me, and she said “maybe… but only to civilized countries.” I told her European countries were more sophisticated than this pioneer colony we live in.

Could such a scaredy-cat be a good mother if we had children? Would she teach them to be afraid of everything beyond their own neighbourhood?