Loblaw launching No Name Mobile cellphone plans at all No Frills stores

‘We’ll get there’: retired sportscaster Scott Oake determined as fundraising for women's addictions treatment facility enters home stretch

For now, the patch of land just east of the Victoria Hospital doesn’t look like much: just a field of rocks, mounded dirt, and concrete piles driven into the earth. Yet when Scott Oake looks over the site, he can already imagine how it will look in just over a year’s time, when the new Anne Oake Family Recovery Centre is expected to open.

It’s easier to picture this time around. In 2020, when the recently-retired CBC sportscaster and his late wife, Anne, were building their first labour of intermingled grief and love, the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre for men, it was hard for him to wrap his mind around how a raw construction site could transform into a welcoming addictions treatment facility.

When that centre opened in 2021, Oake found it looked “almost identical” to the architect’s renderings. So it’s easy to hope the Anne Oake Centre will be the same. It will be the first facility of its kind, its founders believe, not only in Canada but in North America: a place where 50 to 70 women can pursue sobriety while staying with their children.

“At Bruce Oake there’s a culture of love, and most of all a culture of hope,” Oake said, speaking at the site Thursday after a media conference to announce the final push of the centre’s fundraising campaign. “I can feel it every time I walk into that building. And I know it will be the same here.”

Loblaw launching No Name Mobile cellphone plans at all No Frills stores

Loblaw Cos. Ltd. is launching low-cost cellphone plans under its No Name brand, offering prepaid mobile sim cards for purchase at all No Frills locations across the country within the coming weeks.

The company says its new No Name Mobile cellphone plans are powered by its PC Mobile carrier, which has been around since 2005 and runs on Bell Canada's network.

“No Name Mobile is here to show Canadians that quality mobile plans don’t need to cost more," said Loblaw spokeswoman Catherine Thomas in an emailed statement.

"No Name is known for quality without sacrifice — giving customers freedom and flexibility in their mobile plans, without the frills."

‘We feel lucky — and a bit traumatized’: Tornado confirmed in River Heights Sunday

Tanner Lemieux wasn’t surprised to learn the violent winds that tore through River Heights and reached their peak near his home Sunday night have been classified as a tornado.

While driving back to his Lindsay Street home from a shopping trip with his wife Sunday, it became clear they were not in the middle of an ordinary thunderstorm when rain and wind started coming from every direction and hit every side of their truck.

The forceful wind made it impossible for him to open his door after they had parked. He climbed through the window, over the top of his vehicle, and the couple struggled to fight the whipping winds to make it into the house.

“As we were running in, the wind started pulling me backwards out of the door,” he told the Free Press while cleaning debris from his yard Thursday.

Bumps in the road as students collect free bus passes

Alexis Enns left her guidance counsellor’s office empty-handed, but no less excited about starting Grade 12 — even though she still didn’t know how she would get there or her timetable — on Tuesday.

First Manitoban to win national senior’s title within reach for White, Fanning

Who doesn’t love a good comeback story?

Todd Fanning, one of the most decorated golfers in Manitoba history, is attempting to author one heck of a compelling tale at his home course this week.

After falling a whopping 10 strokes off the lead at one point in the opening 18 holes of the Canadian Men’s Senior Championship, Fanning has roared back to life and heads into Friday’s fourth and final round at Niakwa Country Club with a puncher’s chance.

He followed up Tuesday’s six-over 78 — a performance he told the Free Press was “kind of embarrassing” — with rounds of 71 and 70 on Wednesday and Thursday. That has him at three-over for the event, five shots out of first place.

Manitoba gains doctors for third straight year, but loses at pandemic-level rate: report

Manitoba is adding doctors at a record clip — but it’s also losing them at a rate not seen since the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, a physicians advocacy organization cautioned Wednesday.