Meridian Prize launched

Mayor flip-flops on cutting tree-planting budget after intense criticism

Public opposition has prompted Mayor Scott Gillingham to change his mind about chopping $1.2 million from the city’s tree-planting program.

Tanmaxxing trend leaving gen Z cooked

Picture it: a tanning salon, 2009.

An endless loop of Pitbull’s I Know You Want Me — uno dos tres quatro — is thumping while I, marinating in a lotion with a scent best described as Coconuts N’ Chemicals, am getting a base tan.

I am going to Lollapalooza in Chicago again and do not want to burn the way I did the year before. My fellow millennials will know the true torture that is a gladiator-sandal sunburn at a summer music festival that requires hours of standing. And don’t even get me started on the tan lines after. Like a trussed turkey.

That very same summer, international cancer experts moved tanning beds into the highest risk category for cancer, alongside tobacco smoke, the hepatitis B virus and, memorably, mustard gas. After two or three sessions, I quit going to the tanning salon and never returned.

Winnipeg high school football coach subject of hazing investigation

Manitoba’s independent teacher commissioner is investigating the head coach of the Grant Park Pirates football program amid allegations of team hazing.

The AAAA varsity team is at the centre of a probe into allegations student-athletes who played for Doug Kovacs during the 2025-26 school year drew blood while carrying out a locker room ritual.

Multiple sources confirmed Kovacs was put on leave from Grant Park High School in the spring in response to a complaint about his coaching style.

“There’s a lot of different red flags here,” said one parent of a football player who was recently contacted about the case by the office of commissioner Noni Classen.

Westman residents fear power project’s wind turbines will sully their idyllic landscape

POLONIA — Leonard Kaspick can list just about every household in the valley.

“There’s someone living right across the northeast, someone living behind here, about a quarter mile there’s a house there, then a half mile there’s another house there, I’m here, and then on top of the hill there’s someone else there,” he says, standing in the heart of the hamlet — a community hall just off the main drag.

Besides the hall and the smattering of homes, there’s a historic (though out-of-commission) church next door and a single general store further down the road.

“There’s less people here now than there was in 1885,” Kaspick, 83, jokes as he wraps up a condensed history of the western-Manitoba community.

An evening in the emergency room

This situation needs immediate intervention. Anything less means nothing.