Pope Francis baptizes 21 babies in an annual ceremony at the Sistine Chapel

Building new addition to bouldering community

If you can’t find your footing, try climbing.

It worked for David Kalmakoff. Now, almost 10 years after taking up the sport, he’s opened the Kal Climbing Gym, a bouldering facility in Winnipeg where climbers can practice their skills.

It’s not the first bouldering facility he’s owned, but it’s the first one the public can visit. When the entrepreneur purchased a two-bedroom house a few years ago, he turned the extra bedroom into a climbing space.

“It’s this tiny little wall that doesn’t look like anything at all, but it’s led to hours of enjoyment,” Kalmakoff said. “It’s kind of what sparked the idea that I could do the same thing on a scale that involves other people.”

Stuart-Stevenson tandem gives Jets time for best Hellebuyck trade deal

A weekly lap around the NHL by Free Press hockey writers Ken Wiebe and Mike McIntyre

The New York Islanders are first-overall. The Calgary Flames are in the league basement.

We’re talking about goaltending, specifically the metric of “goals against above expected” as tracked by the Money Puck website which factors in shot quality and location and is a much better measure than traditional numbers such as goals-against-average and even save percentage, which can be heavily influenced by team factors.

In a nutshell, you want to be as high as possible on this list, suggesting your masked men are doing their job by stopping everything they should — and hopefully a few more. The lower you are in the 32-team league, the more likely you have a leaky crease.

Dog feces vandalism shuts down food pantry

A few shelves set up beneath a West End community notice board were meant to offer a place where neighbours could leave food for anyone who needed it.

PCs renew calls for CFS inquiry

The Progressive Conservatives renewed calls to put Manitoba’s child and welfare system under the microscope Thursday, tabling a motion that urged the province to appoint a commissioner to lead a public inquiry.

Families critic Jodie Byram’s opposition day motion, which was ultimately defeated by the NDP majority, reiterated demands for an inquiry into the systemic failures of Child and Family Services, more than 20 years after the death of Phoenix Sinclair first prompted demands for answers.

“We have seen far too many children die under the care of CFS, and we need to determine where the gaps are in the system in order to make the system a safer place for children,” Byram told reporters before the motion was defeated in the legislature.

Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said in an interview that her department, CFS agencies and authorities are “doing good work” and won’t call an inquiry.