Your forecast
Cloudy with a 30 per cent chance of light snow this morning, then a mix of sun and cloud. Wind from the northwest at 20 km/h becoming light this morning. Temperature falling to -15 C this afternoon. Wind chill near -24.
What’s happening today
The Winnipeg Jets host the Los Angeles Kings at Canada Life Centre, starting at 7 p.m.
Ken Wiebe takes a deep dive into a subject players take very seriously: choosing the best stick. As Ken writes: “Long gone are the days of walking into the local sporting-goods store, pulling a Sher-Wood PMP 5030 off the rack, eyeballing the curve, checking its length and flex, as stiff as it was, and plunking down $20 for the (actual) piece of lumber.
“In today’s ultra-competitive hockey world, a stick, costing upwards of $400, is often a custom-made, carbon-fibre piece of equipment tailored specifically to a player’s size, shape and position.” Read the full story here.
Jets top-line centre Mark Scheifele was able to lock in his stick preference after consulting NHL Hall of Famer Adam Oates. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Free Press)
The three-day We Are Winter celebration begins today at Assiniboine Park. Snowshoeing, skiing, skating and sing-alongs are all promised on and around the Riley Family Duck Pond rink overlooked by the iconic pavilion. Events are free.
Today’s must-read
Buffeted by embers, choked by smoke and enveloped in the glow of the most destructive wildfire in modern Los Angeles history, Lt. Romeo Petit faced a reality closer to hell than the paradise of Pasadena he’d known just hours before.
“You could see the hue of orange and the flames — it was just — I’ve never seen a fire that big in my life and I’ve been a firefighter for 22 years. It was a pretty scary scene; it’s just surreal,” said the senior Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service member, speaking by phone from California Thursday afternoon.
Nightmare blazes have engulfed parts of coastal California this week, razing homes from the Pacific Coast to Pasadena, causing nearly 200,000 evacuations and killing at least five people. Tyler Searle has the story.
WFPS Lt. Romeo Petit (Supplied)
On the bright side
Ice crystals clung to the eyelashes, parka hood, beanie hat and headscarf of Ruqayah Nasser as she took a break after her first-ever snow tubing runs in a Minnesota park on a subzero (-18 C) January morning.
She had joined two dozen other members of a group founded by a Somali-American mother in Minneapolis to promote all-seasons activities among Muslim women, who might otherwise feel singled out in the great outdoors, especially when wearing hijabs.
“They understand my lifestyle. I don’t have to explain myself,” said Nasser, who recently moved to the Twin Cities from Chicago and whose family hails from Yemen. “My religion is everything. It’s my survival kit.” The Associated Press has more here.
Nasrieen Habib, centre right with green coat, and some of the members of the outdoors group she founded for Muslim women at a snow tubing hill at Elm Creek Park Reserve in Maple Grove, Minn. (Mark Vancleave / The Associated Press)
On this date
On Jan. 10, 1966: The Winnipeg Free Press reported in Ottawa that according to background papers presented by the RCMP to the federal/provincial conference on organized crime, criminal syndicates were growing in Canada. In Nigeria, riot police dispersed demonstrators in Lagos on the eve of a conference of Commonwealth premiers. The United States’ diplomatic effort to settle the war in Vietnam looked doomed to failure, as none of the powers involved were prepared to make significant concessions to achieve peace. Read the rest of this day’s paper here. Search our archives for more here.
Today’s front page
Get the full story: Read today’s e-edition of the Free Press.
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