If art is worth protecting, so is the future of Earth

Chopped trees will leave a ‘blight’ on Windsor Park

Robert Gordon has watched the trees grow along a popular Windsor Park walking path for nearly six decades.

Now, as Manitoba Hydro cuts them down to protect nearby power lines, he says a familiar part of his childhood neighbourhood is disappearing.

Although he no longer lives in the area, Gordon regularly returns to walk or cycle along the tree-lined path, which runs parallel to Archibald Street.

He was concerned when he recently spotted crews clearing vegetation near the entrance to the path, but initially assumed they were removing brush. When he returned, he discovered the clearing had extended farther along the corridor.

Landlords will face fines for breaching confidentiality

The province is amending legislation to allow landlords to be penalized if they breach the confidentiality of tenants who break their lease by obtaining a domestic violence certificate.

“Hopefully, now there’s going to be measures in place so that if this happens again, and God forbid it happens again to anyone else, that there would be penalties imposed on landlords who do that,” said one victim whose concerns were published on the front page of the Free Press last month.

Under current legislation, landlords must ensure that any information received from those tenants regarding the termination of the tenancy is kept confidential, but there are no penalties for landlords who violate that section of the act. After hearing from victims put at risk when landlords broke the law by violating their confidentiality, the government announced Monday that it is amending the Residential Tenancies Act to allow for penalties.

The young woman who spoke to the Free Press showed that her landlord copied her alleged abuser in email correspondence that included her personal email address and the domestic violence certificate she obtained in 2025 to end a tenancy agreement early and leave an abusive relationship.

Longtime voice of the Blue and Gold marks major milestone

Bob McGregor made his debut as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ public-address announcer on June 7, 1997, during a pre-season game at Winnipeg Stadium between the hometown Blue Bombers and their western rivals, the Calgary Stampeders.

McGregor will be behind the microphone again this Saturday, detailing the action on the field in addition to leading a boisterous Princess Auto Stadium crowd through what has become his signature call, “And that is another Winnipeg Blue Bombers first down!”

The Bombers’ final home date of the 2026 regular season will mark a major milestone for McGregor, and the former newscaster feels it’s only fitting the same two teams as 10,717 days ago — the Bombers and Stampeders — will be the ones butting helmets.

“I knew at the start of the season I was closing in on 300 games as the PA guy, only it wasn’t until I went through the schedule that I realized my 300th would be Winnipeg-Calgary, which struck me as kind of cool,” McGregor says, seated in a St. James breakfast nook, dressed in dark trousers and a blue-and-gold Blue Bombers golf shirt.

Careful work goes into preserving vintage threads at costume museum

Every Friday morning seven retired women — Diane Zakala, Helen Leeds, Margaret Mills, Melinda Barr, Therese Leneveu, Karen Eastwood and Letizia Sandron — make their way from homes across the city to a nondescript warehouse in downtown Winnipeg.

The group members troop in right at 9 a.m., as they have been doing every week for the last eight years, towards the back of the brightly lit warehouse where the bulk of the collection of the Costume Museum of Canada (410-70 Arthur St.) is stored.

The vintage fashion pieces — some dating back to more than a century — have been carefully packed away in long, flat garment boxes, stacked on rows of shelves.

Some clothes are in mint condition, impeccably taken care of by their owners, while a few show signs of wear and tear and need little bit of care courtesy of expert seamstress Barr, who lovingly restores items which have incurred minimal damage.

Late philanthropist, family fill Harvest’s Empty Bowls with record-setting $5-M donation

It was a record-breaking night for Harvest Manitoba made possible by a genuine Winnipeg hero and his family.

The organization’s annual Empty Bowls Celebrity Auction Dinner on Thursday raised $6.5 million to support Manitobans facing hunger and food insecurity.

And it was a $5-million legacy donation from late city philanthropist Doug Harvey and his family that will see the event go down in the history books as the largest gala fundraising total ever recorded in Manitoba.

“There was literally nothing that lit my dad up more than contributing himself, but even more so, inspiring others to give,” his daughter Lauren Harvey said Friday.

If art is worth protecting, so is the future of Earth

On Friday, two young English activists walked into the National Gallery in London and threw tins of Heinz tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, one of the most well-known paintings of all time.