Monstrosity Burger to call it quits

Province orders ban on private teacher-student messaging

Manitoba teachers are no longer allowed to text or use social media to contact a student – regardless of whether they coach a school sports team or supervise other activities outside typical instruction times.

‘Savage and brutal’ Erickson home invasion nets 17-year sentence

BRANDON — A woman who fought off the man who slashed her throat in a random home invasion in Erickson described the violent assault as the worst day of her life and a nightmare she can’t seem to shake off.

“I feel like a shell of the person I used to be. Not every second of every day, but definitely every day. It comes in waves,” Candace Richardson said as she read from a victim impact statement in a Brandon courtroom on Friday.

Carter Prince, 21, who pleaded guilty to attempted murder for the June 2023 attack, sat in the prisoner’s box as Richardson spoke.

“I’ll be completely fine, laughing, having fun or just relaxing with my family,” she told the court. “Then time goes so slowly, like you’re floating away, but instead of floating, I’m pinned to the ground, being stabbed over and over again. There’s blood everywhere and darkness surrounding me.”

Mayor Gillingham poised for repeat

Incumbent mayoral candidate Scott Gillingham remains in the lead among decided voters in a new poll that suggests a majority of Winnipeggers want change ahead of Wednesday’s election.

Gillingham was backed by 36 per cent of decided voters in an Abacus Data survey released Friday, followed by candidates Kevin Klein (19 per cent) and Mike Vogiatzakis and a surging Noah Redden, who were tied for third (both at 14 per cent).

While a majority of respondents expressed a desire for a new mayor, Curtis Brown, a vice-president with Abacus, said “none of the other candidates has convincingly made the case that they represent the best change.”

“In the absence of that, Scott Gillingham definitely has the advantage. He looks likely to be able to win,” Brown said.

Eadie faces crowded field — including former councillor — in bid for fifth term in Mynarski

The city’s most crowded council race has a little bit of everything: a long-serving incumbent, a former ward councillor in the 1980s, an unsuccessful candidate in the last municipal election seeking a rematch and three political newcomers.

Mynarski has long been led by Coun. Ross Eadie, who was first elected in 2010 and is seeking his fifth term. Five challengers want the job: Natalie Smith, who ran in the ward in 2022 and came in second, Terry Wachniak, Harold Brazil, Laurie Kozak and Ayaz Noor Mohammed.

It’s the city ward with the largest number of candidates this year.

Eadie describes himself as “a dancer, a singer and a city councillor” who has made inroads on garbage pickup, back-lane cleaning and earning the respect of his fellow council members by being the first Mynarski councillor to be appointed to executive policy committee, the mayor’s inner circle, in decades.

Opening of Portage and Main shows even seemingly insurmountable impasses can be overcome

There are places in a city that become more than places. Portage and Main is one of them. For generations of Winnipeggers, the intersection has represented downtown, traffic, development and civic identity. Its reopening to pedestrians in 2025, after 46 years of closure, was about more than crossing a street. It was a reminder that decisions made by one generation can shape the choices available to another — and that even seemingly permanent decisions can be reconsidered.

I have spent much of my professional life thinking about Winnipeg as a planner, working in public, private and non-profit settings. My PhD research gave me an opportunity to examine Portage and Main differently: not simply as a debate about cars and pedestrians, but as a window into how power operates in a city. I reviewed 569 archival documents spanning the 1960s to the present, interviewed 48 planners with experience in Winnipeg, and mapped the relationships between planners, politicians, developers, engineers, residents, businesses and advocacy groups.

What emerged was a story about how planning decisions become embedded in a city’s institutions, agreements, infrastructure, professional practices and political expectations — shaping not only what gets built, but who gets to influence what gets built.

The closure of Portage and Main in 1979 did not remain a decision confined to a particular political moment. Over time, it was reinforced by development agreements, physical infrastructure, property relationships, traffic-engineering practices, administrative routines, and public narratives about mobility and downtown revitalization. The people who made many of those original decisions eventually left office. The arrangements they created remained. Later planners inherited them.

First Crumbl cookie shop opens in Winnipeg

The early birds got their cookies.

Klaudia and Jayson Ballantyne were the first in line for the grand opening of Winnipeg’s first Crumbl location at 1570 Regent Ave. West, arriving at 2 a.m. Friday — six hours before the cookie chain was set to open.

The brother and sister brought their lawn chairs and blankets and hunkered down.

Roughly 90 minutes later, by their count, the next customers arrived.