Eyewitness to a disaster

Federal government to build $267-M emergency research lab in Winnipeg

The federal government says it will build a $267-million medical countermeasures laboratory in Winnipeg with the goal of preparing Canada for future pandemics or outbreaks.

Expected to open in 2033, the national site will help the country develop vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostic tools, Winnipeg Liberal MP Terry Duguid said.

“This is a big deal for our city and for our province, a big deal for life sciences in Canada,” he told reporters Wednesday. “This facility is going to help protect the nation and help protect the world.”

Ottawa said the site — to be located next to the National Microbiology Laboratory’s Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health on Arlington Street, just north of William Avenue — draws on lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gilbert Plains Country Club closes for remainder of season due to flood damage

Scott McCallum has made the trek to the Gilbert Plains Country Club clubhouse countless times.

But this was the first time the golf professional and general manager of the course required hip waders to get to his office.

Walking hand in hand with his wife Lindsay, McCallum didn’t need much time to see the devastation caused by the flash flooding in the Parkland region in late June.

“We’re on a river and it’s a beautiful golf course, but anytime you’re on a body of water you know that you’re taking a chance of events like this happening,” McCallum said in a telephone interview. “To this magnitude, we’ve never seen anything like it before. So, this is new to us.

Time-travel mystery a hallucinogenic trip

Here’s a spooky premise: A fishing boat, the Rose of Nevada, that disappeared along with its crew 30 years ago, makes a mysterious return — empty but unchanged — to a small village in Cornwall, on England’s southwest coast.

“She’s back,” the boat’s owner says ominously. Even more ominously, he doesn’t sound particularly surprised. It feels as if this has happened before.

There’s something unsettling going on in this strange and singular film. Cornish writer-director Mark Jenkin (Bait, Enys Men) has crafted a ghostly time-travel tale that collapses past and present, leaving his characters — and the audience — in haunting emotional and moral quandaries.

If the film’s sense of time can be deliberately hazy, its sense of place is very clear. All three of Jenkin’s features have been set in Cornwall, and there’s an intimate, immediate sense of connection to this coastal town, which is depressed and dwindling, its inhabitants beset by economic precarity. The harbour is deserted, the pub is empty, shop windows are boarded up and the young people are leaving. It seems as if the disappearance of that boat and crew broke not just the men’s grieving families but the whole community.

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.

Asian supermarket T&T to open at Polo Park

Live seafood, more than 150 varieties of baked bread and rows of Asian produce are being promised for CF Polo Park — in two years time.