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Seven years sought for serial harasser

Alexander Beaton finished serving a two-year jail sentence for criminally harassing six women and didn’t last two days in the community before he was back at it, sending unwanted obscene messages and videos to a dozen women.

Now prosecutors are seeking a seven-year prison sentence for the 30-year-old Winnipeg man, whose latest string of victims includes a police officer who investigated his earlier crimes.

“He essentially continued (offending) unabated,” Crown attorney Brett Rach told provincial court Judge Malcolm McDonald at a sentencing hearing Friday. “It caused more than a nuisance to these victims — it caused them to fear for their safety.”

Beaton pleaded guilty to 14 charges of criminal harassment, sending indecent communications and breaching court orders for a campaign of harassment waged between 2015 and 2025.

Powerful personal drama provides both bark and bite

Well before playwright Rafaella Marcus’ words have the chance to entangle us in the stickiness of Sap, the performance space initiates the task in director Elio Zarrillo’s staging of this discomfiting and affecting story of restraint and liberation.

Shortly after the audience takes its seats in four segments surrounding a central channel — a shimmering tunnel containing cellist Grace Morningstar — it becomes clear as actors Hera Nalam and Liz Whitbread make their way around the tight corners of David Oro and Hazel Venzon’s set that certain actions will go unseen unless viewers keeps their heads on a swivel: in a production meant to uproot understanding, a fixed perspective will never do.

In this vulnerable and powerful production from Theatre by the River (105 minutes) the actors meet the excellence of Marcus’s twisty script, which calls for emotionally draining and jolting depictions of a relationship headed down a rocky road.

Nalam plays a young communications pro for a women’s aid charity whose dating life is a work in progress. She’s bright and optimistic, taking notice of elements of nature that nobody else seems to recognize. On her daily commute, she looks out from the bus window in awe of a home overflowing with branches and leaves.

Man, 21, killed in animal attack on Manitoba First Nation

The family of “a kind and gentle giant” is grief-stricken as officials try to determine what kind of animal killed the 21-year-old man in western Manitoba.

Moses Campeau was walking on a road to a friend’s house in Sapotaweyak Cree Nation, about 600 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, when he was fatally injured Sept. 9, his mother, Paula Campeau, said Monday.

“Moses was a kind and gentle giant,” she said. “He was a person who (people) would ask to come and help them, and he would go without even hesitating.”

Manitoba RCMP said officers from the Swan River detachment responded to a report of a suspicious death at about 3:10 a.m. The scene was held and the RCMP’s major crime services took over the investigation.

Suspension on the horizon for Hellebuyck as pre-season set to start

In this high stakes game of chicken, Kevin Cheveldayoff, Connor Hellebuyck or any of the potential suitors for the Winnipeg Jets franchise netminder appear ready to blink.