Get some brownie points with these tasty treats Homemade Holidays
By: Eva Wasney Posted: 2:00 AM CST Monday, Dec. 15, 2025

50 years of rare tall grass prairie celebrated

Kristin Bestvater is always glad when she heads to Winnipeg’s St. James neighbourhood and visits the Living Prairie Museum.

“It’s beautiful,” Bestvater said of the 13-hectare site, which is one of the last remaining tall grass prairies in North America. “I don’t know how many other cities would have something like this.”

The Island Lakes resident and her nine-year-old son were among the hundreds of people who gathered at the museum on Saturday to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Designated a park in 1974, it officially became the Living Prairie Museum in 1976 with the opening of an interpretive centre which houses a gallery of exhibits, a gift shop and an observation deck.

South Osborne: doing it right

Every year, Time Out, which publishes listings magazines, websites and apps for 333 cities around the world, creates a list of the world’s coolest neighbourhoods.

Memories of East Selkirk evoked on Zoon Monkman’s new album

At the dawn of the MP3 era, an adolescent Zoon Monkman didn’t have the money for an iPod or a Microsoft Zune, the short-lived competitor to Apple’s revolutionary personal-listening device.

What the recording artist from Brokenhead Ojibway Nation did have in his backpack was the catalogue for the Scholastic Book Club, where only one product demanded attention: an AM-FM radio pen that scoured the airwaves for connection with every click.

For Monkman — a Polaris Music Prize-nominated musician who records as Zoon and pioneered the “moccasingaze” genre, which blends the dreamy textures of shoegaze with the rhythms and energies of Indigenous song — his mother’s gift of the ballpoint pen was a means of both self-discovery and the development of his musical taste.

During lonely days as an elementary student at East Selkirk’s Happy Thought School, the device was also a recess-hour tether to distant worlds, where artists such as Feist, Avril Lavigne and Broken Social Scene were introduced by the enthusiastic voice of a man who called himself Ace Burpee.

Ex-Winnipegger taking second shot at Grand Beach-to-Gimli fundraising swim

Jonathon Fenton has some unfinished business in Lake Winnipeg.

Last summer, the 62-year-old attempted to swim from Grand Beach to Gimli, making it 16 kilometres before shoulder problems forced him to stop.

Now, the two-time cancer survivor, who lives in Alberta but grew up in Winnipeg, is returning for a second try — hoping to complete the crossing while raising money for cancer care and research through the second year of his Jonny’s Big Swim fundraiser.

Fenton will get at it Saturday morning, weather and water conditions permitting. The full route from Grand Beach to Gimli is about 26 kilometres, though Fenton said he may stop at Willow Point, just south of Gimli, which would shorten the swim to roughly 22 kilometres.

City emergency crews to administer drug that stops opioid withdrawal symptoms

Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service crews will soon give out a new medication that stops withdrawal symptoms after someone is treated for an opioid overdose.

WFPS confirmed Monday its emergency workers will soon begin using a drug called buprenorphine. A spokeswoman said Health Canada has given the service permission to use the drug, which is a controlled substance.

The Canadian government describes buprenorphine as an opioid medication that prevents withdrawal symptoms, reducing opioid cravings without causing a person to feel high or sleepy.

The new treatment comes after WFPS overdose calls soared this year. The service previously confirmed it had responded to 2,447 opioid-related incidents during the first five months of 2026.

Get some brownie points with these tasty treats

Karn Sandy’s brownies — adapted from an aunt’s recipe — are a point of familial pride.

“I’m sort of an indifferent cook and baker and I have a sister who’s very much a baker, but she has been unable to replicate the success of my brownies,” Karn says. “She still holds that these are the best brownies ever.”

So good, in fact, that her sister entered the recipe in a country fair bakeoff.

“She won first prize, for which I took all the credit,” Karn says with a smile.