Words we’ve lived by

A small step among troubling signs

There’s no getting around the fact — to many people, downtown Winnipeg is unsafe. Period.

‘Eight credible threats’ against Hydro employees: CEO

Manitoba Hydro president and CEO Allan Danroth took aim at critics and revealed he and staff members have been threatened while defending the Crown corporation’s plan for three new combustion turbines Monday.

Without identifying individuals, Danroth said “constant, uninformed criticism” of Hydro and misinformation has eroded public trust and contributed to hostilities and an unsafe workplace for employees.

“Manitoba Hydro is currently managing eight credible threats against our employees, five of them directed at me personally,” Danroth told a Public Utilities Board hearing in Winnipeg.

“More troubling is these threats are increasingly affecting our front-line workforce. In the last year, my employees have been threatened with weapons, including guns, while performing their duties, and in one recent incident a homeowner directed his dogs to attack one of our meter readers.”

Pricey bronze plaques pilfered from Steinbach parks, city hall

The City of Steinbach is asking the public for help to find six expensive bronze plaques stolen from around the city, which it believes were lifted by scrap metal thieves.

City employees had noticed the commemorative plaques were missing from parks and gardens, as well as one installed beside the flag pole at city hall, beginning in April.

Removing the plaques would have been no easy task since they were affixed to boulders and benches, said parks and recreation manager Russ Dyck.

“The ones that were on big rocks were drilled and mortared in and somehow they ripped them out of there,” he said. “Others had tamper-proof screws, but somehow they had a tool. They weren’t the easiest things to get off.”

Bombers search for an offensive identity after Week 8 tailspin

Tommy Condell has been around long enough to know that criticism is part of the job, so you can understand why there were moments when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers offensive co-ordinator sounded a tad defensive when speaking to the media on Monday afternoon.

The Bombers were coming off a disappointing 52-30 loss to the Calgary Stampeders that dropped them to 4-3 on the season.

In many instances, a 30-point outburst would have been cause for celebration. But when you look under the hood of Friday’s outing — which included four interceptions for Bombers pivot Dru Brown — the picture wasn’t quite as rosy.

Compounding matters, star tailback Brady Oliveira went from making the longest touchdown run of his CFL career — a 45-yard scamper late in the third quarter — to being a mostly forgotten player in the fourth as the club mostly abandoned the run in an effort to rally from nine and eventually 12-point deficits.

Words we’ve lived by

“Global warming” is the phrase of the decade, according to the Global Lan­guage Monitor, as the term weighed heavily over both international political discourse and helped popularize the green movement.

The list of the Top 25 words contains a number that reflect the decade's challenges and tragedies -- 9/11, bailout, and evacuee/refugee are all in the top five -- and the increasingly connected lives we lead (Google, blog, Twitter, texting).

Followers of the evolution of English shouldn't be surprised that technology is so well-represented on the list. In June, the Austin, Texas-based company deemed the one-millionth word in the language to be "Web 2.0."

Other notables on the list, such as Chinglish (the growing English-Chinese hybrid language), Slumdog (referring to slum-dwellers in Mumbai, popularized by the film Slumdog Millionaire) and tsunami, point to a world increasingly aware of developing nations such as China and India.