Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi welcome first child via adoption

Eadie faces crowded field — including former councillor — in bid for fifth term in Mynarski

The city’s most crowded council race has a little bit of everything: a long-serving incumbent, a former ward councillor in the 1980s, an unsuccessful candidate in the last municipal election seeking a rematch and three political newcomers.

Mynarski has long been led by Coun. Ross Eadie, who was first elected in 2010 and is seeking his fifth term. Five challengers want the job: Natalie Smith, who ran in the ward in 2022 and came in second, Terry Wachniak, Harold Brazil, Laurie Kozak and Ayaz Noor Mohammed.

It’s the city ward with the largest number of candidates this year.

Eadie describes himself as “a dancer, a singer and a city councillor” who has made inroads on garbage pickup, back-lane cleaning and earning the respect of his fellow council members by being the first Mynarski councillor to be appointed to executive policy committee, the mayor’s inner circle, in decades.

Goblin:Macbeth is a monstrously entertaining show

Screw your courage to the sticking point, for Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre has just unleashed a gaggle of goblins at the Tom Hendry Warehouse in its ghoulishly theatrical Goblin:Macbeth.

The darkly subversive, 95-minute (sans intermission) production is the brainchild of Spontaneous Theatre’s Bruce Horak and Rebecca Northan (also serving as director), with Ellis Lalonde (sound designer).

It stars a trio of larger-than-life, pointy-eared goblins, Wug, Kragva and Moog — fie on anyone seeking to determine their tightly guarded mortal identities — who cavort and kibbitz with audience members before stumbling across The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

After indignantly declaring “we are not Tolkien goblins,” and sharing a bit of goblin-lore (who knew these demons had 17 genders?) they vow they will attempt to “do theatre” to better understand our culture, choosing the Bard’s superstition-riddled Scottish Play for being the shortest and bloodiest.

A life's story: From wartorn Poland to Winnipeg’s streets, Kazimierz Patalas worked to help others

Kazimierz Patalas left Poland in the late 1960s to make a new life for him and his family elsewhere, but he never forgot the lessons he learned as a young man in the country of his birth.

Perhaps no one lesson stuck with him more than the importance of giving back to the community. It was something he first endeavoured to do as a teen in his native Poland and continued to do for many decades after arriving in his adopted home of Winnipeg in 1967.

“He was always trying to do good for the community. I guess that was sort of ingrained in him from Poland,” says son Jacek, one of three children born to Patalas and his wife Józefa.

“Everything you did you kind of did for the community, for making sacrifices. Your life was geared towards or focused on helping society or the community where you live.”

Province orders ban on private teacher-student messaging

Manitoba teachers are no longer allowed to text or use social media to contact a student – regardless of whether they coach a school sports team or supervise other activities outside typical instruction times.

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.