You’ll move on faster if you confront heartbreak

Foreign workers at Manitoba hotel are owed $138-K in unpaid wages and fees, labour board rules

BRANDON — The Manitoba Labour Board has ordered the Western Star All Suites Hotel to pay nearly $138,000 in unpaid wages and administrative fees after it dismissed the appeals involving three foreign workers employed by the company.

In a decision dated Aug. 25, the board ordered 6692452 Manitoba Ltd. (doing business as Western Star All Suites Hotel), 1638185 Alberta Ltd. and company director P.X. to pay a total of $137,915.79 to the Employment Standards Branch for wages owed to foreign workers S.J., J.B. and G.R.

The decision was edited to protect the personal information of the employees, who worked at a hotel, reportedly in Melita, at different times and also lived there during their employment.

The board stated the employees were owed wages after hearing evidence about long working hours, irregular payments, inadequate employment records and working conditions.

Council candidates call out vandalism after campaign signs defaced in Waverley West

A council candidate in Waverley West said she will not be intimidated after 16 of her campaign signs were vandalized this week — some with apparent gang symbols.

Nafiya Naso is the second candidate in the ward whose signs were defaced this month. Jasmine Brar, who is also running for the council seat, had some of her signs broken on Friday along Kenaston Boulevard and signs near Naso’s that were also defaced on Saturday.

Earlier this month, Eaglewood Park in the nearby Prairie Pointe neighbourhood was also vandalized with graffiti that included homophobic slurs, anti-India messages and repeated references to “3LK” — a symbol Naso believes is associated with a gang.

Naso’s signs, located along Waverley Street near Tim Sale Drive and across from École South Pointe School in southwest Winnipeg, were spray-painted with apparent gang signs, crude drawings and other messages, including “loser” and “Ur not winning” written across her name and photograph.

Doctor pays $500K to revamp courtyard at care home where he works

Fifty years after Dr. Pravinsagar Mehta began caring for residents at Actionmarguerite, a courtyard he had long watched deteriorate is getting a new life after he and his wife committed $500,000 to its redevelopment and long-term maintenance.

Security guard in stable condition after grocery store assault

A security guard was taken to hospital after an assault at a Sargent Avenue FreshCo Friday, just days after another guard was stabbed during a robbery at a St. James Dollarama.

Winnipeg police said officers were called to a store in the 600 block of Sargent Avenue shortly after 1 p.m. for a report of an assault.

An 24-year-old male victim was taken to hospital in critical condition, later upgraded to stable. Charges against a 23-year-old man were announced Sunday. The suspect had tried to leave the grocery store without paying for merchandise before a confrontation broke out and he pulled out a knife outside of the store, the Winnipeg Police Service stated in a news release Sunday.

Peter Edwin Morrison Black, 23, has been charged with robbery, assault with a weapon and possession of a weapon. He was detained in custody. He was arrested Aug. 29, the day after the stabbing, in the area of Ellice Avenue and Sherbrook Street.

Beware invasive, ‘frightening’ waterhemp

There’s a threat lurking on the edge of Manitoba farmers’ fields this fall that’s even scarier than the escalating trade war with their biggest customer.

Provincial extension advisers are warning farmers to watch for a weed known as “tall waterhemp,” which, true to its name, may already be towering above ready-to-harvest crops.

Those wispy tentacles waving in the breeze look pretty innocuous from a distance. But this highly invasive member of the pigweed family produces hundreds of thousands of seeds that are just itching for dispersal through farmers’ combines and across their fields.

Each of those tiny seeds — one small pill container filled halfway holds 44,000 — can produce plants with stems the width of saplings and heights of two to five metres. One or two plants can quickly turn into a patch. If waterhemp takes over a field, it can choke out the growing crop and cut yields by more than 90 per cent.