B.C.’s Playland pushes back opening to May 25 over COVID travel restrictions

Get to know your Jet: Mario Ferraro

A one-on-one conversation with a Winnipeg Jet about the stuff you don't always hear in the media scrum

Is this the season of secession?

Canada has entered its season of secession. Like El Nino, the currents of grievance can blow hot and cold. Today, they are hot. But how hot for how long? The odds of Alberta and now Quebec separating from Canada are not high, but they are never zero.

After a year of waving the flag in a surge of national patriotism to confront Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada — economic and verbal — it is both jarring and frustrating for most Canadians to be reminded of the pervasive and persistent tensions that come with governing our federation.

When we need new national purpose to confront big economic sovereignty and security challenges from outside, that purpose is undermined and diminished by having to confront homegrown grievances.

We’ve seen and seen off two separation referendums in Quebec. Now we have a newly elected separatist party coming to power. In Alberta, voters will soon decide whether the independence road is one they want to travel.

Jets encouraged by play through first five games

Turkey. Stuffing. And a heaping helping of rest and recovery.

The Winnipeg Jets have plenty to be thankful for this holiday weekend, including a solid 3-1-1 start to the NHL campaign. Players and coaches are also counting their blessings at finally getting a breather after a busy stretch of five games in eight days.

“We don’t have another (break like this) until a week before Christmas. So we’re going to take advantage of it,” head coach Scott Arniel said following the club’s first regulation loss, a 5-1 stinker on Friday night against the visiting Anaheim Ducks.

To borrow a funny old Thanksgiving-related phrase from former defenceman Nate Schmidt, the hockey club was “leaking gravy.” They looked like a group that could use a timeout — which they’ll get since they don’t play again until hosting the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday night.

Nurses disciplined for botched IV infusion

Two nurses working at the Grace Hospital have been reprimanded and fined $2,500 each for an IV infusion gone bad and an attempted coverup.

The incident happened on November 23, 2023 when a nurse asked a colleague to set up an IV infusion on him in an unused operating room.

During the attempted IV start, the nurse lost consciousness. The nurse who attempted the IV drip and another who was in the room called for help and several staff responded.

The nurse regained consciousness and vomited, but recovered and continued to work his shift, a March 18 decision by the College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba says.

Late philanthropist, family fill Harvest’s Empty Bowls with record-setting $5-M donation

It was a record-breaking night for Harvest Manitoba made possible by a genuine Winnipeg hero and his family.

The organization’s annual Empty Bowls Celebrity Auction Dinner on Thursday raised $6.5 million to support Manitobans facing hunger and food insecurity.

And it was a $5-million legacy donation from late city philanthropist Doug Harvey and his family that will see the event go down in the history books as the largest gala fundraising total ever recorded in Manitoba.

“There was literally nothing that lit my dad up more than contributing himself, but even more so, inspiring others to give,” his daughter Lauren Harvey said Friday.

Piece of magic history disappears

A piece of Winnipeg’s magic history has vanished, and internationally renowned escape artist Dean Gunnarson is offering a $500 reward to anyone who can make it reappear.

The plaque marked the birthplace of what has become the world’s largest organization of professional and amateur magicians, the International Brotherhood of Magicians, which was founded in Winnipeg more than a century ago.

Gunnarson said fellow magician and local magic historian Bruce Thompson discovered the disappearance Tuesday while on his way to work.

Thompson returned to inspect the site and found what appeared to be evidence it had been forcibly removed.