Gallery: 2024 Winnipeg Folk Festival Posted: 11:34 AM CDT Sunday, Jul. 14, 2024 Last Modified: 12:58 PM CDT Monday, Jul. 15, 2024 Updates

Gallery: 2024 Winnipeg Folk Festival

The 49th annual Winnipeg Folk Festival featured acts as hot and varied as the weather, which ranged from scorching on Friday to threatening thundershowers periodically throughout the weekend.

Soaring daytime temperatures saw spectators clinging to shaded areas at the workshop stages, but many remained undaunted, dancing to acts from places as far-flung as South Africa, Niger, Tennessee and Prince Edward Island as volunteers roamed through the crowds, encouraging people to stay hydrated.

Here are some of the moments captured by our photographers.

Brandon senior hockey player files suit against opponent, league, Hockey Manitoba over serious injuries, lost income

A Brandon man is taking a fellow hockey player and two sport organizations to court after he was seriously injured on the ice, alleging it caused him hardship and lost income.

In 2024, Devon Leblanc played for the Virden Oil Kings, a senior amateur team in the Tiger Hills Hockey League, which is a member of the Hockey Manitoba association.

Leblanc’s age is not made clear in the court filing, but an online roster suggests he’s 38.

Leblanc alleges Bryce Enns, a member of the Killarney Shamrocks, bodychecked and assaulted him during a game between the two teams on Nov. 28, 2024.

Campaign blunder: Klein features wrong city in election video

A paid ad from mayoral candidate Kevin Klein on his commitment to Winnipeg has been pulled after commenters noticed one small error: the footage used in the ad was actually of Edmonton.

Police HQ report ‘outrageous’: Kinew

Premier Wab Kinew says public inquiry findings that taxpayers were overcharged more than $40 million for the Winnipeg Police Service headquarters project and two city leaders broke the public trust are “outrageous.”

Inquiry commissioner Garth Smorang’s report, which was released Monday, concluded former mayor Sam Katz “violated the public trust” and council code of conduct, while the city’s former chief administrative officer Phil Sheegl suffered from a “complete lack of a moral compass.”

Smorang also found the city was overcharged $43.3 million for the project, with $42 million of that going to key contractor Caspian Projects.

“It’s outrageous that people who were elected betrayed the public here in the city. It’s outrageous that there were people in business who ripped you off, ripped me off — I was paying property taxes in Winnipeg at the time — and ripped all of us off to the tune of $43.3 million. That’s crazy,” said Kinew.

Multiple safety concerns in final report on fatal 2025 mid-air collision near Steinbach

A federal investigation into a mid-air collision that killed two student pilots near Steinbach last year identified concerns about radio calls, situational awareness and visual detection methods.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s final report, released Wednesday, said the two planes, belonging to Harv’s Air Service, became entangled and crashed while both pilots were on their final approach to Steinbach airport on the morning of July 8, 2025.

The victims were identified by their families as Savanna May Royes, 20, and Sreehari Sukesh, 23.

Investigators concluded the crash highlighted the limitations of the “see-and-avoid” principle (a basic method used by pilots for visual surveillance and collision avoidance), and why it is important for pilots to actively listen to radio calls from other planes to maintain situational awareness.

Breaking bread, building bridges

Last Friday, as the setting sun shone into the high windows of Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, Cantor Leslie Emery opened a pair of sliding brass doors at the front of the sanctuary to reveal six scrolls wrapped in coverings embroidered with Hebrew letters.

Five of the scrolls contain the complete Torah — the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — handwritten with a quill and ink on parchment. Some of the scrolls are more than 100 years old.

The congregation reads aloud from these scrolls several times a week.

“When we read the stories of the Bible, when we read the stories of the prophets, when we observe Jewish holidays, we’re actually recounting the history of our ancestors,” Emery said.