Northern reflections

Concrete doc befits brutalist Winnipeg

Moviegoers across North America are pounding the pavement and lining up around the block to see The History of Concrete, small-screen documentarian John Wilson’s feature-length debut.

How confusing; seems there’s more than one candidate in Hanover named Shayne Barkman

It’s not entirely clear when or why Hanover trustee Shayne Barkman became one of Manitoba’s best-known anti-LGBTTQ+ crusaders.

Back in 2022, when he ran as a candidate for Hanover school board for the first time, there was nary a hint that socially conservative culture wars were going to be a large part of his identity as an elected official.

In a Steinbach Online profile published before the 2022 municipal elections, Barkman highlighted his background as a successful farmer. He said he was entering politics to be a “listening ear” who could promote understanding.

“I would love to kind of just be a voice of reason amongst all the problems coming down the pipe,” Barkman said

Positive anticipation is growing about major housing developments underway in Winnipeg’s downtown

If traffic is light and the wind is down, Somia Sadiq is able to hear the roar of Winnipeg Jets fans twice: first through her window, then on TV.

From her apartment view high above downtown, she can look out at Graham Avenue’s painted pedestrian landscape, see construction cranes and hear the heavy equipment at work as massive housing projects take shape at The Forks, at what used to be Portage Place shopping centre and at the former Hudson’s Bay building.

Sadiq has lived at 300 Main for 2 1/2 years, a few steps from the city’s famous, windy and reopened-to-pedestrians Portage Avenue intersection. At 42 storeys, it’s the tallest building in Winnipeg.

She is among 18,000 downtown residents who will soon be joined by thousands of others attracted to the city’s core by the new wave of major construction projects.

Aglukark recalls struggles, trauma of loss on her unlikely path to stardom

For many of us living in urban Canada during the 1990s, our first introduction to Inuit culture was through the songs and videos of Susan Aglukark. The four-time Juno-Award winning musician had her first breakout success in 1995 with the re-release of an album called Arctic Rose. The hit single O Siem turned the humble singer into the first Inuit performer to achieve a Top 40 hit.

Yet as Aglukark’s musical career grew by leaps and bounds throughout the ‘90s and early aughts, her private life told another story. She was waging an internal battle against trauma after losing a friend at a young age to suicide — an unfortunate theme that would underscore much of her early adult life — and the unrelenting loneliness that stemmed from being an adolescent sent hundreds of kilometres away from home just to stay in school. As a kid growing up in the Kivalliq Region (now known as Nunavut), there was no other choice but to move to Yellowknife if she wanted to earn a high school diploma.

Further, the forces behind Aglukark’s love of music was also once a relentless source of bullying. Her parents were preachers in a community unaccustomed to Christianity, and while the gospel music that filled her home may have influenced the talent that would propel her to stardom, it also made her school days a living hell.

“Our religion made us a bit of a target,” the 57-year-old artist recalls in her new memoir Kihiani: A Memoir of Healing, co-written with Andrea Warner.

Unhappy Dynacare staff refuse OT shifts; doors could be closed at clinics with Saturday hours

Some Winnipeg Dynacare sites normally open on Saturday were closed last week, and may continue to be because staff are refusing to pick up overtime shifts after they were forced back to work amid a labour dispute with the company.

Blue Bombers whiff on their opportunities to put game away

In theory, Bryce Perkins has a simple job.

When it’s third and short, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers trot out the short-yardage quarterback, and all he has to do is plunge forward for a yard or two to make everyone on his sideline happy.

But on Friday night against the visiting Toronto Argonauts, he went above and beyond his job description.

The Bombers, down 24-21 with six minutes left, faced a third-and-one from their own end when Perkins found a hole and burst through it for a 76-yard touchdown to put the home team in front 28-24 late.