From Tatooine, with love New Star Wars miniseries’ score features strings by longtime fan, Brandon violinist James Ehnes By: Kyle Darbyson Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Friday, May. 6, 2022

‘Dynacare sucks’: premier muses about bringing lab services back into public system

Premier Wab Kinew says Manitoba may bring Dynacare’s diagnostic lab services back into the public system rather than continue to sign contracts with the for-profit company.

“Dynacare sucks. They’ve made an absolute mess of this situation,” the premier said Wednesday, the day the company’s 350 employees reported back to work after the labour board halted their strike after just one day.

Kinew first made the remark about Dynacare in a CBC radio interview Wednesday morning and added he is “not happy with them.”

Dynacare performs the majority of non-emergency blood and urine tests in the province.

Letters, Sept. 10

So, Coun. Browaty, do tell, when should we start to panic? What is your magic number? Is there one?

Time to revamp Hydro’s water licence

On Sept. 1, Manitoba Hydro’s 50-year licence to divert 85 per cent of the flow of the second largest river in the province and flood the fourth largest lake expired. How different will the next 50 years of the Churchill River Diversion look?

The northern project is a cornerstone of the engineering wonder that provides Manitoba with inexpensive and reliable electricity.

Using control structures and a nine-kilometre channel blasted through granite, the project backs up the Churchill River — which carries five times more water than the Red — as it flows through Southern Indian Lake, a lake 50 times larger than West Hawk and Falcon lakes combined, causing it to overflow southward toward the huge dams on the distant Nelson River.

After touring Southern Indian Lake in 2022, Wab Kinew — then opposition leader — referred in a statement to witnessing “islands disappearing into the lake, shorelines eroding quickly, a landscape covered with debris, (and) fish spawning grounds lost….”

Star Wars miniseries’ score features strings by Brandon violinist James Ehnes

As a lifelong Star Wars fan, Brandon-born violinist James Ehnes is thrilled his name is attached to the new Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries, scheduled to debut on Disney+ May 27.

Ehnes said the show’s composer, Natalie Holt, admires his work and pitched the idea that they should collaborate after the pair finally met late last year.

While the project was initially shrouded in secrecy, Ehnes eventually discovered Holt was hired to compose the score for the latest live-action Star Wars series, and he was more than happy to travel to Los Angeles in March to lend his expertise.

“The timing worked out beautifully,” he says over the phone. “I actually had a concert out in Orange County (California) that night, but during the day, I went into the Fox Studios where they did the scoring and I spent the day there and had a great time.”

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: There are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions today. The new moon is in Virgo.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

Discussions with partners and close friends will intensify in the next few weeks and financial discussions will favour you. In fact, money might come your way. The new moon is perfect for making resolutions to improve your health.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Is ‘tornado alley’ moving north?

There’s a famous fictional story in which a ruby-slippered, tornado-tossed traveller takes a wide-eyed look around and declares, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

There are probably some residents of south River Heights, on the other hand, who looked out their windows last Sunday and felt as if Kansas — the U.S. state that lies smack-dab in the middle of meteorological maps outlining the area known as “tornado alley” — was exactly where they’d somehow ended up.

There is now confirmation of a tornado touching down within Winnipeg, after several residents reported seeing funnel-shaped clouds during the intense thunderstorm, and the magnitude and extremely localized nature of the damage — including felled trees, snapped hydro poles, scattered fences and the deposit of a random automobile on one resident’s front lawn — certainly shows forces more formidable than strong wind gusts were at play.

As Manitoba Hydro and City of Winnipeg crews continued the days-long effort to clean up the mess and restore power to thousands of homes affected by the long-weekend weather blast, some of the conversation related to the storm focused on how extreme events such as this have become more commonplace in a region where tornadoes were long considered a rarity.