Swept away Folk artist works to keep craft of traditional broom making alive The Creators
By: AV Kitching Posted: 4:30 PM CDT Friday, Apr. 12, 2024

Brotherly bond boosts local Amazing Race competitors

Sacha has a feeling and Sébastien has a plan — together they’ll work it out.

Poor drainage also blamed for flooded fields

RURAL MUNICIPALITY OF ROCKWOOD — Looking out at his fields Monday afternoon, Curtis Campbell likened his normally green and lush land to retention ponds.

Out of the 3,000 acres of canola and cereal grains he usually farms, he only has about 300 acres left of salvageable crops after a June 9 storm dumped 255 mm of rain in the area. The 37-year-old farmer guesses it will be another month before floodwaters recede.

Even once the water is gone, Campbell estimates he’ll have losses of $600,000 — that’s with crop insurance — and his fields won’t return to normal for another four or five years because of nutrient loss and erosion.

“I won’t make an income for three years,” Campbell said.

What can you do with $200 million?

Let’s see if I’ve got this right. In the article Carbon capture project gains support (June 30). Julia-Simone Rutgers writes that the direct carbon capture facility proposed by Deep Sky for construction in southwestern Manitoba will cost $200 million to build.

The company claims the facility will scrub 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year and inject it 1,000 metres into the ground. To do this, it will need to draw up to 15,000 megawatts of power from the Manitoba Hydro grid for the first stage of the project. The project will be financed by selling carbon credits.

To put this into perspective, the Canadian industrial carbon price is set at $130 per tonne. At that price, Deep Sky will have to sell more than 1.5 million tonnes of carbon just to cover the upfront cost of building the plant. That’s over 51 years’ worth of carbon credits. And that doesn’t even cover the everyday operating costs, such as the electricity needed to run the plant.

Some studies suggest it requires about 2,000-2,500 kilowatt hours to electricity to capture one tonne of CO2 and inject it into the ground. To capture 30,000 tonnes, that’s about 60 million kWh. Even if Manitoba Hydro sells it to the facility for only $0.035/kWh, that’s an additional $70 per tonne.

‘Easy decision for me:’ longtime city councillor Chambers not seeking re-election

Coun. Markus Chambers has announced will not run for a third term on city council, instead stepping away to spend more time with his family.

On Tuesday, Chambers told reporters he won’t seek re-election in the St. Norbert-Seine River ward.

“This has actually been an easy decision for me. My family is growing. My son has announced that my wife and I will be grandparents in December. And other priorities … have emerged that require my undivided attention,” he said.

The councillor said health concerns played a key role in his decision, as his wife has battled cancer for two years.

Imperialist crusades: 21st-century style

In the 11th century and lasting into the 13th, the papacy launched a series of at least eight military campaigns we now refer to as the Crusades, or Holy Wars. They were an imperialistic call to arms for Christians to retake Jerusalem, which was at the time under Muslim rule.

Spiritual rewards for participation were implied, and other incentives offered, to dull the extra taxation demanded to fund the campaigns. Over time, the “crusades” morphed to become massacres of not only Muslims but also Jews and Christian dissidents — in other words, any enemies of the papacy. If today’s news sounds like déjà vu all over again, it probably should.

The stories keep repeating themselves in many forms. We now know that two 20th century world wars, global in scope, were caused by imperialistic ambitions, changes in the balance of international powers and corresponding arms races. The first was attributed to the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a Bosnian Serb, a kind of “regime change” initiative. The second resulted from rising tensions between Allied and Axis powers, triggered by the rise of European fascism and Japanese militarism. The human toll of both was unimaginable.

In the First World War, 15 to 22 million people, including soldiers and civilians, were killed and another 23 million were wounded. These numbers do not account for those otherwise affected — victims of chemical warfare whose compromised health shortened their lives; of the subsequent Spanish flu epidemic amplified by the displacement of peoples; others who died from other diseases caused by war conditions; and those who were malnourished or starved. Nor do they account for the ongoing trauma and resentments passed on intergenerationally to this day.