Mitzvah Day promotes creating a better world

Manitoba Hydro’s strategy: Deny, deny, deny

Here’s a good story…

A man walks into your office and says, “Have I got a deal for you! I want $3 billion (plus perhaps a bit more) to build you something that you might use three or even four times a year, for maybe 30-60 hours each time. Sign here.”

You might respond… “and I’ve got a lovely bridge for sale…”

That is exactly what Manitoba Hydro wants — $3 billion or more, plus the fossil fuel bonus for peak load events that happen a few times each year. They assure us that the gas turbines will only be used very occasionally. At the same time, they tell us that we are headed for a crisis of energy supply by 2030.

Motion seeks to remove longtime head of Southern Chiefs’ Organization due to ‘behaviour’ concerns

For the second time in a year, the leadership of Southern Chiefs’ Organization Grand Chief Jerry Daniels is being called into question.

A motion obtained by the Free Press calls “immediately” for a special summit of the 33 SCO chiefs to consider removing Daniels, who’s been at the helm since 2017.

The Aug. 17 motion, put forward by Lake Manitoba First Nation Chief Cornell McLean and Bloodvein First Nation Chief Lisa Young, cites concerns about “governance, leadership, accountability, transparency, organizational decision-making and confidence of member Nations in the current leadership of the organization.”

McLean would not provide specific examples Wednesday but said the “behaviour” of Daniels is a concern.

Doctor pays $500K to revamp courtyard at care home where he works

Fifty years after Dr. Pravinsagar Mehta began caring for residents at Actionmarguerite, a courtyard he had long watched deteriorate is getting a new life after he and his wife committed $500,000 to its redevelopment and long-term maintenance.

At the city’s busiest fire and paramedic hall, first responders face a relentless workload

As a soft rain begins to fall between the concrete walls of “Hope Alley,” little feels further away than the place’s namesake.

Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service crews have been called to the narrow downtown passage, named by Al Wiebe, a formerly homeless man turned advocate. People regularly pass through here, moving between the shelters, drop-ins and resource centres clustered around Main Street between Logan and Higgins avenues.

Against a wall, as the sky switches into night mode, a man sits bleeding from his nose, seemingly unaware of how he ended up with blood running down his T-shirt.

His situation has already set Winnipeg’s emergency response network in motion.

As camp fees increase, Sunshine Fund delivers another summer of adventures

Dana Moroz is on the other end of the line and the manager of the Sunshine Fund can hardly contain her enthusiasm.

With the summer winding down and school on the verge of being back in session, Moroz was asked about the 46th season of the program that sent children in need to 31 accredited camps across the province and northwestern Ontario.

Although the final numbers are still being calculated, it was a banner year for the program, which benefited from the Free Press Sunshine Fund campaign that ran throughout the past several months.

“We had over 700 kids that we supported to go to summer camp,” said Moroz, noting the cost of doing so eclipsed $300,000.

Beware invasive, ‘frightening’ waterhemp

There’s a threat lurking on the edge of Manitoba farmers’ fields this fall that’s even scarier than the escalating trade war with their biggest customer.

Provincial extension advisers are warning farmers to watch for a weed known as “tall waterhemp,” which, true to its name, may already be towering above ready-to-harvest crops.

Those wispy tentacles waving in the breeze look pretty innocuous from a distance. But this highly invasive member of the pigweed family produces hundreds of thousands of seeds that are just itching for dispersal through farmers’ combines and across their fields.

Each of those tiny seeds — one small pill container filled halfway holds 44,000 — can produce plants with stems the width of saplings and heights of two to five metres. One or two plants can quickly turn into a patch. If waterhemp takes over a field, it can choke out the growing crop and cut yields by more than 90 per cent.