No personal gifts unless it’s serious

As the world watches, Haiti’s hopes continue to fade

I wish that I had something uplifting and positive to say about the circumstances in Haiti today.

Memories of East Selkirk evoked on Zoon Monkman’s new album

At the dawn of the MP3 era, an adolescent Zoon Monkman didn’t have the money for an iPod or a Microsoft Zune, the short-lived competitor to Apple’s revolutionary personal-listening device.

What the recording artist from Brokenhead Ojibway Nation did have in his backpack was the catalogue for the Scholastic Book Club, where only one product demanded attention: an AM-FM radio pen that scoured the airwaves for connection with every click.

For Monkman — a Polaris Music Prize-nominated musician who records as Zoon and pioneered the “moccasingaze” genre, which blends the dreamy textures of shoegaze with the rhythms and energies of Indigenous song — his mother’s gift of the ballpoint pen was a means of both self-discovery and the development of his musical taste.

During lonely days as an elementary student at East Selkirk’s Happy Thought School, the device was also a recess-hour tether to distant worlds, where artists such as Feist, Avril Lavigne and Broken Social Scene were introduced by the enthusiastic voice of a man who called himself Ace Burpee.

City puts Osborne Village lot up for sale third time

The city is making a third attempt to sell a seemingly prime Osborne Street property, after an offer for the surface parking lot fell through earlier this year.

The 772-square-metre space at 145 Osborne St., which formerly operated as an official paid city parking lot, has been posted for sale once again.

It may puzzle some Winnipeggers to see the site in the heart of Osborne Village remain empty so long after the city declared it surplus in 2020.

However, a few different challenges may limit its appeal to potential buyers, alocal real estate agent said.