Your forecast
A mix of sun and cloud with a 30 per cent chance of showers; risk of a thunderstorm. Wind becoming east at 20 km/h gusting to 40 near noon. High 23 C. Humidex 27. UV index 4 or moderate.
There’s nothing particularly odd about pumpkin pie in October.
Enjoying some pumpkin pie-flavoured ice cream outside, wearing shorts… in sweltering temperatures on Oct. 2 in Winnipeg? Odd, indeed.
Thursday’s heat followed Wednesday’s record-setting temperatures in some Manitoba locations, including Churchill — where it hit 24 C, a full six degrees higher than the previous record of 18 C set in 1977 — Thompson and The Pas. In Winnipeg, it hit 26 C, the fourth-warmest Oct. 1 in recorded history. Malak Abas reports.
Trish Farkas (left), Maria Farkas Freitas, and Lino Farkas Freitas enjoy an ice cream while walking across the bridge at Assiniboine Park on Thursday. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Free Press)
What’s happening today
Alberta author Thomas Wharton wants to see you at his book launch tonight — and your dog can come too.
Wharton’s new novel Wolf, Moon, Dog follows a dog named Wolf who reincarnates through the ages — from Alexandrian Greece to ancient Egypt, a climate change-riddled future and more.
At the event at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location at 7 p.m., co-presented by Plume Winnipeg, he’ll be joined in conversation by Free Press literary editor Ben Sigurdson. And yes, this is really a dog-friendly event.
Today’s must-read
Six years ago, at a spring meeting of Manitoba’s jail superintendents, plans were getting underway to start providing electronic tablets to inmates in a few correctional institutions — with the company set to supply them making an attractive deal to the province.
Synergy Inmate Phone Solutions, Inc., a small, San Antonio-based company, would provide the tablets at no cost. All the necessary wiring and charging stations would also be provided, according to meeting minutes summarizing the April 2019 discussions.
The tablets would have access to games, movies and a monitored messaging platform, and would eliminate physical mail, explained Ed Klassen, then the director of operations for Manitoba Corrections, according to the minutes.
In the United States, Synergy is a bit player in a roughly US$1.4-billion-per-year-prison-telecom industry that includes an expanding set of offerings, from phone calls and video visitation, to tablet-based entertainment and electronic messaging, to money-transfer services.
But in Canada, Synergy has come to dominate this niche — and growing — market. Marsha McLeod and Malak Abas have the story.
Synergy holds a near-monopoly on all telecommunications involving inmates in provincial and territorial jails in Canada.
On the bright side
A comet from another star system will swing by Mars today as a fleet of spacecraft trains its sights on the interstellar visitor.
The comet known as 3I/Atlas will hurtle within 29 million kilometres of the red planet, its closest approach during its trek through the inner solar system. Its breakneck speed: 310,000 km/h.
Both of the European Space Agency’s satellites around Mars are already aiming their cameras at the comet, which is only the third interstellar object known to have passed our way. NASA’s satellite and rovers at the red planet are also available to assist in the observations. The Associated Press has more here.
This image composed from multiple exposures and provided by NSF’s NOIRLab shows a comet streaking across a star field above the International Gemini Observatory on Cerro Pachon, near La Serena, Chile. (NSF’s NoirLab via The Associated Press)
On this date
On Oct. 3, 1951: The Winnipeg Free Press reported voters in Winnipeg would have 30 candidates to choose from in the upcoming civic election, including 16 people running for city council and 14 running for school board positions. In Korea, United Nations artillery roared across the Western front in one of the biggest bombardments of the Korean War thus far. In Gimli, a $75,000 fire that tore through the Thorkelson block destroyed the heart of the Lake Winnipeg fishing centre. 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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