McCain Foods suspends shipments to Russia, ends production facility project

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.

Opera group hits pub to stage shows for sophisticated palates

Opera’s famous drinking songs — La Traviata’s Brindisi, Don Giovanni’s Fin ch’han dal vino, Carmen’s Votre Toast — tend to flow with references to women and wine, not beer.

But that hasn’t stopped Winnipeggers from sipping 1919s or Generics at local bar and brewery Little Brown Jug over the past few years to the strains of Verdi, Puccini and Mozart.

Currently in its eighth season, Opera by the Pint has its next LBJ event Wednesday at 7 p.m. (The artists also perform at the Public Brewhouse and Gallery in Steinbach at 7 p.m. on Thursday.)

This week’s program focuses on musical hits, while also featuring traditional Filipino ballads and Mexican art songs.

‘You vote with your bike’: cyclists celebrate freedoms, call for increased safety

Patty Wiens got dressed up in her sparkly, hot pink cowboy boots to pedal and talk politics with more than 100 other people on Sunday.

The founder of Winnipeg’s Fancy Women Bike Ride called on attendees of the 2026 event to ask candidates in the upcoming civic election — a half-dozen of whom were in attendance — about their active transportation platforms.

“We’re here today, in an election year, to remind you that you vote with your bike,” Wiens told a crowd of nearly 120 cyclists gathered on the legislature grounds for the group ride.

“When (city council) candidates come to your door and ask what’s important to you, you’re going to say, ‘I want to ride my bike safely in the city. What are you going to do about it?’”

Hometown hero hits CEBL championship clinching shot

Chapter 1 of Winnipeg Sea Bears basketball was capped by hometown hero Chad Posthumus.

It was May 27, 2023, and the late, great centre out of River East Collegiate had a put-back basket off a Teddy Allen miss to give the Sea Bears a 90-85 victory over the Vancouver Bandits in Winnipeg’s inaugural game, in front of what was then a record crowd of 7,303.

So, on Saturday, it was rather poetic that Simon Hildebrandt — another Winnipegger and a player Posthumus used to mentor — was the one to put an exclamation mark on the franchise’s latest and greatest chapter.

Hildebrandt drilled a wide-open three in Target Score Time to crown the Sea Bears as the 2026 CEBL champions.

Rise of social media reflects rise of self-promotion — to the detriment of genuine storytelling

A conversation is overheard between two people; one congratulates the other on their success, evident through countless posts on LinkedIn, but the other confesses the prolific aggrandizement is due to slumping success.

A young man on an airplane spends three hours poring over selfies taken on a vacation, zooming in on his biceps and using AI to retouch photos before posting on Instagram.

Anonymous and cowardly trolls on Reddit attempt to end another person’s career.

All this “storytelling” was observed in one day by this reviewer.

Take advantage of hydroelectric potential

Manitoba Hydro tells us that we are going to need significant new electricity generation over the coming decades.

Hydro, like every other utility in the world has recognized this fact. Around the world, new generating capacity is being built. Countries that have access to hydroelectric potential are building dams and planning for the future. Other countries, without the natural advantage rivers provide, are building nuclear energy capacity. And yes, in almost all those countries solar and wind generating capacity are being developed as quickly as possible.

All that additional energy capacity is needed to fuel our endless need for technology, data storage and a thousand other things. Quickly moving to electric vehicles from combustion engines will also drive up demand.

Although it is tempting to think that ever larger and better battery storage will help, it will only help in how energy is distributed. The introduction of more and better battery storage is not likely to limit the total demand for energy. The enthusiasm for battery storage is understandable, but it is certainly possible that battery storage will effectively increase our use of energy, simply because it can be so reliably accessed from our battery storage systems.