B.C. moves to accelerate process for thousands needing a family doctor

Letters, Oct. 23

The Free Press reported that a subject of (the Oct. 21) debate between mayoral candidates was the above-ground opening of the Portage and Main intersection to pedestrians. The will of the people had been expressed, said one candidate, when in 2018 a majority of voters (in the plebiscite on the issue) said they wanted the intersection to remain closed.

Chief medical officer quits, cites work environment ‘challenges’

Manitoba’s provincial chief medical officer is resigning from his position at Shared Health, citing the role’s demands and work environment challenges in an email viewed by the Free Press.

Dr. José François, who’s held the executive position since April 2024, sent an email to provincial medical specialty leads that said his final day will be Jan. 17, 2027, after he submitted his resignation Wednesday. Several other senior leaders have departed the provincial health authority in recent months.

“Serving in this role has been a privilege,” François, a longtime family physician from Ste. Anne, wrote in the email.

He said his “greatest pleasure” was working alongside and supporting an “exceptional group” of provincial medical specialty leads and chief medical officers.

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: Avoid shopping (except food and gas) and important decisions after 10 p.m. today. The moon is in Pisces.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

This is a great day to make art, which is good news for your sign as so many of you are artisans. (You can do anything with your hands, even without training.) Enjoy time alone and give yourself the luxury of doing what you want to do.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Family history, solo sojourns paved path for celebrated author’s latest novel

It’s 1967 and Lee Clarke has just been kicked out of UCLA when he receives his draft letter in the mail. Rather than report for basic training, he hops in a car and sets off across America on an amphetamine-fuelled road trip to bid farewell to his fractured, dysfunctional family before crossing the border into Canada.

Such is the premise for B.C.-born, Portland-based Patrick deWitt’s sixth novel Dodge City, published in September by House of Anansi. He’s in Winnipeg tonight at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location to launch the book.

The 51-year-old deWitt came to prominence with his sophomore novel, 2011’s The Sisters Brothers. The book was a critical and commercial success, winning the author the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and was adapted for the big screen in a film starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix.

His 2018 novel French Exit was also adapted for cinema, and his 2023 novel The Librarianist won deWitt the Leacock Medal for the second time. Dodge City is deWitt’s fourth novel to make the Giller Prize long list.

Hutterite colonies embrace the manufacturing business – while staying faithful to their way of life

Tucked away at Oak Bluff Hutterite Colony, past rows of communal housing and farm buildings, Aaron Maendel tinkers in a laboratory.

Black-and-white sheets smeared with grey-test formulas cover a counter. A Thermotron — a refrigerator-looking machine — is powered off but standing by to simulate any desired temperature.

Maendel moves to a worktop littered with partly full mixing cups. He pulls out a small, rectangular sample — a sheet showing the drying time of his new fixation, floor coatings.

“Very simple, actually. Very simple machine. Drags a stick through the mud,” Maendel says.