Province adding loads of lipstick on its orthopedic surgery pig By: Tom Brodbeck Posted: 3:19 PM CST Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022 Last Modified: 3:13 PM CST Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022 Updates

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.

Sharp script worthy of legendary large-nosed lead at Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Cyrano de Bergerac

Cyrano de Bergerac can pick his nose, but he didn’t get to choose it.

Even if given the option of rhinoplasty, would the dashing, witty and macro-schnozzed 17th-century Frenchman (played with ardent panache by Jack Davidson) go under the knife? How about you?

Regardless of his preference that his work — his rapier wit, his legendary bravery and his mastery of swordplay — should earn him renown, it’s a bulbous bit of extra cartilage that obscures his inherent qualities.

For Cyrano de Bergerac, it’s not only a chip on the shoulder that shapes his self-perception and thus his erratic and entertaining behaviours, the nose is the leading sentence to a timeless underdog story written in playwright Jessy Ardern’s indelible ink.

Building new addition to bouldering community

If you can’t find your footing, try climbing.

It worked for David Kalmakoff. Now, almost 10 years after taking up the sport, he’s opened the Kal Climbing Gym, a bouldering facility in Winnipeg where climbers can practice their skills.

It’s not the first bouldering facility he’s owned, but it’s the first one the public can visit. When the entrepreneur purchased a two-bedroom house a few years ago, he turned the extra bedroom into a climbing space.

“It’s this tiny little wall that doesn’t look like anything at all, but it’s led to hours of enjoyment,” Kalmakoff said. “It’s kind of what sparked the idea that I could do the same thing on a scale that involves other people.”

Sex offender who changed name sent back to prison

The father of a boy repeatedly abused by convicted sex predator Ryan Knight said he believes his son would have been kept safe had there been a law in place preventing sex offenders from legally changing their name.

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.

A Rocky day on the mayoral campaign trail for Kevin Klein

Kevin Klein acknowledges it’s hard to foresee what he’ll wake up to each morning in the final weeks of a mayoral campaign.

But the seasoned politician, who has served as both a city councillor and a provincial cabinet minister, couldn’t have predicted the events — what he describes as “drama” — that unfolded last Sunday.

Fellow mayoral candidate Mike Vogiatzakis accused Klein’s campaign team of offering him a job to drop out of the race, while a guest writer’s column in the Winnipeg Sun that questioned the deaths of Indigenous children at residential schools, just days after the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, sparked condemnation from a prominent Indigenous organization. (Klein is the CEO of the Klein Group, the company that owns the Sun. He has maintained he is not involved in its operations while running for mayor.)

The Free Press had already been scheduled to join Klein on the campaign trail Monday, intending to document a day in the life of the front-running candidate to unseat incumbent Scott Gillingham, before the controversies hit.