Canadians cool on some Caribbean hot spots after U.S. strike on Venezuela

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My mother is coming to visit and our little kids want her to sleep in their bedroom, where there’s a double bed and a single. My husband thinks this idea is ridiculous and says grandma needs her sleep, but I disagree.

I remember sleeping with my grandma — who’s now with the angels — and she told us grandkids (two girls) some wonderful bedtime stories she made up herself. She even put our names into them, making us the stars of the stories.

The best part was getting into our pyjamas with our grandmother, who showed us the magic cord from the little thing that ran from her near-deaf ear down to the secret battery pocket hidden in the bra of her slip. It made her hear us better in the daytime. We thought, “Wow!”

Not surprisingly my own mother has inherited her mom’s fantastic storytelling talent and who knows what else she has to teach the kids when she’s alone with them? I want them to be close.

BRANDON — A Brandon man has been found guilty of killing his 71-year-old mother with a hatchet in the fall of 2023 after his lawyers argued he should be held not criminally responsible.

Court of King’s Bench Justice Elliot Leven found 47-year-old Gabriel Heymans guilty of second-degree murder on Monday.

Heymans, who listened to the hearing by phone from the Brandon Regional Health Centre, will be sentenced at a later date.

During the April trial, court heard Heymans lived with his mother, Maureen Heymans, for seven years in a two-bedroom apartment in Brandon and hadn’t spoken to her for more than a year before her death.

Building for the future

It’s hard to argue with Tom Brodbeck’s column Carney cashes in standing to U.S. bully, Free Press, Sept. 12, because everything in the article makes sense.

But I think Canada is cashing in as well.

The rather depressing environment created by Trump has given impetus to an aggressive slate of policies promulgated by Prime Minister Mark Carney that with a little luck (that’s code for preparation, opportunity and hard work) will position Canada for a much brighter future once the tin-pot dictator is gone.

Winnipeg, the capital of ‘Friendly Manitoba’, is becoming far less friendly to anyone who is struggling to survive. The city is also less and less supportive of the not-for-profit sector which struggles to support those struggling to survive.

Municipal politicians have long insisted that social services are provincial responsibilities. However, the city charter makes it clear that mayor and council are “to promote and maintain the health, safety and welfare of the inhabitants.”

Mayor and council are empowered to decide how they do that. Every four years, we citizens get to vote on what we think and feel about those decisions. That’s our democracy, weighted against the disenfranchised though it is.

In 2022, only 37.17 per cent of eligible voters, the lowest percentage since 1989, voted. Recent Probe Research data demonstrates that only one-third of Winnipeggers believe the next mayor and council will make even a minor difference in addressing Winnipeg’s challenges, and another third believe they will make no difference at all.

A rural Manitoba physician is warning that Ste. Rose du Lac could face significant emergency department closures after its doctors were stretched thin helping absorb the fallout from the flooding and prolonged shutdown of Dauphin Regional Health Centre.

When Dauphin was evacuated July 1, Ste. Rose expanded its emergency department to 24-7 service and nearly doubled its in-patient load. But with Dauphin’s ER reopening last week and staff that had been temporarily working in Ste. Rose returning to their regular posts, Dr. Ashley Blais says her hospital, located about 50 kilometres southeast of Dauphin, has been left without enough physicians to maintain reliable emergency coverage.

“We answered the call when Manitoba’s health-care system needed us,” Blais said Monday. “Now we are asking the Manitoba health-care system to answer ours.”

Blais, who penned an open letter to Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara, is calling on the province, Shared Health and Prairie Mountain Health to urgently develop a sustainable staffing plan for Ste. Rose, with direct input from physicians working there.