Sweet, smart Smuckers is eager to please

Strike mandate for Dynacare workers

Nearly 350 laboratory technicians and technologists at Dynacare’s 22 laboratory and health services centres in Manitoba have voted in favour of a strike.

The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, which represents the employees, said in a news release that 99 per cent of members who voted supported going on strike. A strike notice has not been served to the employer. If and when that occurs, the union is required to give two weeks’ notice.

The collective agreement between the union and Dynacare ended March 31. Negotiations between the parties began in February and they have been in mediation since July 15. They’ve been unable to reach a tentative agreement through mediation, and there are no further bargaining or mediation dates scheduled, the union said in a news release.

Dynacare became Manitoba’s only private outpatient provider for laboratory services in 2017, after purchasing competitor Unicity Labs. The union said Manitoba government records show Dynacare members completed more than 15 million laboratory tests in the 2024-25 fiscal year.

It’s one thing to climb aboard rail-relocation train, quite another to pay for the ride

Anyone who wants a brighter, safer, healthier future for the city of Winnipeg should really want the renewed hopes of rail relocation to finally become reality. And the sooner, the better.

Premier Wab Kinew announced Wednesday the province was going to forge a plan to relocate the Canadian Pacific Kansas City central yards and many of other the lines that run through Winnipeg to a bypass that runs around the city.

This “plan to design a plan” strategy was devised by a task force headed up by former federal MP and cabinet minister Lloyd Axworthy, who in 2024 was given a two-year mandate to find the best way to rid the city of some or all of its rail infrastructure.

For the record, Kinew and Axworthy said a relocation would likely take 20 years to complete, which makes this week’s announcement an important statement of intent, but little more. The sobering reality is that this promising idea has been proposed by political leaders, and then abandoned, for decades.

Rainbow Stage star relates to Elle Woods’ perseverance

Nearly 9,000 aspiring barristers and solicitors cross their fingers and send in their LSAT scores to Harvard University each year, but less than 10 per cent of applicants wind up on campus in Cambridge, Mass.

In Legally Blonde, the musical opening tonight at Rainbow Stage, Elle Woods (Claire Mac Master) defies the undercutting judgment of her blue-blood boyfriend Warner (Duncan Cox) to earn a spot in the Ivy League, leaving her doubters aghast and crimson-faced.

“What?” asked Elle — played by Reese Witherspoon in the 2001 film version — “Like it’s hard?”

The New York-born Mac Master never had any aspirations to pursue a law career, but can relate to her character’s plucky self-determination based on her experience at Toronto Metropolitan University’s undergraduate acting program, which accepts 25 applicants each year from an international pool of hundreds.

Men’s recovery home dedicated to ‘homeless hero’ Faron Hall’s memory

Faron Hall never got the chance to begin recovery. Once heralded as Winnipeg’s “homeless hero” after twice plunging into the Red River to save strangers from drowning, Hall told St. Boniface Street Links executive director Marion Willis shortly before his death in 2014 that he wanted help for his alcoholism.

Nola chef earns national award

Celebrated Winnipeg chef Emily Butcher has another feather to add to her toque. The executive chef and owner of Nola and Bar Accanto in St. Boniface has received the Culinary Award of Excellence from Restaurants Canada, a national foodservice advocacy organization.