Settling for ‘crumbs’ of affection demeans you

Businesses scramble over rescheduled Hydro outage

River Heights business owners who adjusted their operations to accommodate a planned power outage were taken off guard when Manitoba Hydro rescheduled the event.

Work on overhead electrical equipment was supposed to take place Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and affect properties on Lanark and Renfrew streets, between Corydon Avenue and John Brebeuf Place.

The owners of several establishments — including restaurants, a Royal Bank and services such as physiotherapy — learned about the outage on Wednesday.

Staff in Corydon Village Mall scrambled to reschedule appointments and cancel catering orders. A medical centre posted a sign saying it would close Friday.

Colman radiant in well-woven romance

There have been wicker-related films before. The Wicker Man from 1973 is a classic of folk horror. This bawdy, rowdy outing is more of a folk sex-comedy.

Adapted from a story by Ursula Wills by filmmakers Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, Wicker is sometimes overly obvious in its satirical messaging. But like the wicker creation at its centre, Wilson and Fischer’s unexpected world is nicely crafted, the wonderful Olivia Colman weaving it all together with radiant, raunchy directness and real vulnerability.

In this feminist fable, set in some vague, peasanty time and place, Colman plays the ostracized, isolated Fisherwoman. Fisherwoman is either ignored or bullied by her fellow villagers, and in a community where the women are known as “Innkeeper’s Wife” or “Doctor’s Daughter,” perhaps the worst insult hurled at her is “Spinster.”

After a magical omen is dropped by her feet at a village wedding, Fisherwoman goes to the Basketmaker (Peter Dinklage), who has his own reasons for living alone at the edge of town, and orders up a husband.

WAG-Qaumajuq names first Indigenous director, CEO

John Mahli Lawa’ Hampton has been selected to take the helm of Canada’s oldest civic art gallery, WAG-Qaumajuq announced Thursday.

Krahn returns, Boyko primed to lead as University of Manitoba Bisons serves squad depleted of vets

Rowan Krahn has been told most of his career that he couldn’t do it. And recently, injuries wouldn’t let him.

For the first time in two years, Krahn gets to prove he can.

The Manitoba Bisons’ fifth-year outside hitter is undersized for his position.

It’s always been that way. Since he was a teen, talent evaluators have recommended that he play libero, a conventional position for a shorter player. That advice has largely fallen on deaf ears.

Outbreak should never have happened

The headline offered a vague sense that something had been accomplished, but it most certainly did not describe anything worth celebrating:

“Manitoba declares measles outbreak over.”

The news item in the Oct. 17 Free Press noted provincial public health officials had confirmed Manitoba’s last laboratory-confirmed case of measles was identified in August, and that the absence of any new cases since had allowed for the aforementioned declaration.

The end of the outbreak — which began in February 2025 and included a significant stretch this year during which Manitoba experienced more measles cases than any other province — is certainly worth noting. But it bears reminding that the real story here is that this province, and others across Canada, experienced a resurgence of this highly communicable but successfully eradicated disease in the first place.

October perfect time to put on a sweater, drink something warm and crack open a book

With Halloween around the corner, spooky season is in full effect.

But October is more than ghosts, goblins, Jack-o-lanterns and other things that go bump in the night. Not entirely, anyway. October is also a time of harvest, of change and renewal.

Pull on a sweater, pour something warm to drink and follow along as the Free Press arts and life team presents a literary tour through October Country…

Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray BradburyFew authors write so frequently, so passionately about October as Ray Bradbury did. From his earliest work throughout the rest of his career, Bradbury returned again and again to the October Country as the settings of short stories, poems and novels.