Movie Review: ‘Finding Emily’ is the British rom-com we’ve been waiting for

Bison kicker Turner named captain, shows she belongs

Even on nights like this, Maya Turner can appreciate how far she’s come.

Though it feels like yesterday that the Manitoba Bisons kicker arrived on the scene with an unheralded right leg and a point to prove, these days the fifth-year student-athlete is lining up to split the uprights with a veteran boot and the added responsibility of being a team captain.

Getting to this point wasn’t easy, though.

It’s now four years ago that Turner ditched her NCAA Division 1 soccer career at Loyola University in Chicago to kick a different ball on the gridiron and signed with the Bisons, who were one of more than one hundred programs across North America that she sent tape to in hopes of realizing a new dream.

Respectful separation: an obvious oxymoron

“We want a fair and respectful relationship with Canada,” Alberta separatist leader Keith Wilson told the CBC commentator. He paused. Briefly. “On our terms.”

He followed up with a poorly-veiled threat. Trade goods moving east or west across Canada, especially to and from Vancouver, must pass through Alberta, he mused, so…

Wilson and his ilk are blackmailing Canada. If they win this referendum vote, he intends — with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s acquiescence — to pull the pin on a genuine separation referendum grenade. The separatists’ transition plan has been largely anonymously authored — much like Trump’s blueprint Project 2025.

Smith claims Albertans will vote against separation. She’s bluffing. Her precarious personal political survival tightrope as she tries to balance atop the UCP could easily carry Canada down a potentially disastrous road. All it will take is for separatists to turn out en masse (about 25 per cent of Albertans, if you believe the polls), and those supporting Canada to stay home because they think it’s in the bag for them.

Movie Review: ‘Finding Emily’ is the British rom-com we’ve been waiting for

Late August can be a depressing time at the movie theater, but there’s a gem to be found in the British romantic comedy “Finding Emily,” which opens in theaters Friday. Here, finally, is a smart, funny and sweet story about young love that moviegoing audiences deserve. Yes, the setup is contrived — it even fits almost entirely into a movie trailer — but it’s in a way that’s familiar and grounded enough, and unlike the insanely dystopian “One Night Only.” There are no ridiculous laws against premarital sex on this university campus in Manchester; Just regular young people getting in their own way.

The movie begins with one of those too-good-to-be-true meet cutes, where Owen (Spike Fearn) finds his dream girl (Sadie Soverall) who is dressed in a fairy costume and seems to be into him. Brit pop plays in the background and the world seems to fade away. The night takes her elsewhere with her friends, but not before she gives her number to Owen. He leaves on cloud nine, wondering how much time to let pass before he texts. But there’s a problem: The number is one digit short. Was it intentional? Was it a mistake? He chooses to believe the latter and sets off to find her, knowing only her first name, Emily.

No one is especially charmed by Owen’s desperate quest to find Emily on campus. Rachel Hirons’ script understands a fundamental truth about romantic comedies and the grand gesture — they only work if the other party is into it. If they’re not into it, at best, it’s creepy. At worst, it’s the beginning of a horror movie. But then another Emily ( Angourie Rice ) emerges and, after giving Owen a hard time and name checking the manic pixie dream girl trope, decides to help. What the audience knows, however, and he doesn’t, is that this Emily, an American, has an ulterior motive. She’s trying to prove, for a thesis that will get her a job and allow her to stay in the country, that love drives people mad. “He’s my very own Stanford Prison Experiment,” she excitedly tells a friend.

You can see where this is going, right? Even if it’s predictable, it’s also really quite sharp and charming under Alicia MacDonald’s direction, both nodding to the grand tradition of 90s Brit rom-coms (“Finding Emily” shares producers with “Bridget Jones’s Diary”) while also adding a grain of Gen Z salt to the proceedings. You can bet that there are some Serious Concerns raised by women’s groups on campus when Owen, who is not a student but an employee on probationary hire, emails all the Emilys.

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.

‘In Normandy, we remember’

Travelling nearly 7,000 km from his home in France to Winnipeg gave Gabriel Zaranski a new perspective on warfare.

“It’s very different to speak about war in school (than) to speak with real people who (have fought) in a war,” he said. “We can feel the emotion when they speak … The testimony has more impact when it’s real soldiers.”

Zaranski is one of 14 Grade 12 students from Bayeux, a town in France’s Normandy region, in Winnipeg this week for a learning tour.

The students, who attend Lycée Arcisse de Caumont high school, met on Saturday with veterans from the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, a local military regiment, to discuss their studies and the regiment’s role in the Second World War.