Cake-ology pastry chef headed to national culinary finals

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: Avoid shopping (except for food and gas) and important decisions after 6 p.m. After that, the moon moves from Taurus into Gemini.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

Discussions about home repairs and family matters, especially with respect to project costs, might occur. It’s an excellent day to make plans about the education and care of your kids. Some however, will plan out a vacation — every detail.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Where is Mark Carney going with Senate changes?

A decade after Justin Trudeau dropped Liberal Senators from the party’s national parliamentary caucus and introduced a new appointment process based on non-partisan criteria, his successor, Prime Minister Mark Carney, has recently reintroduced partisanship as a possible basis for appointment to the 205-member Senate.

Commentators were quick to offer immediate, mostly negative assessments of the Carney move. My view is that before rushing to judgment, we need to know more about what Carney has planned for the future partisan makeup of the Senate and its independence from government control.

In law, the Governor General appoints senators, but in practise they are selected by the prime minister.

Historically, appointment was mostly based on past or anticipated future service to the governing party. Trudeau broke with this tradition by making non-partisanship a criteria for appointment. He also created independent advisory committees to identify potential nominees.

‘This is Mommy’s park’: city honours two-time Olympic champion curler Lawes

When Kaitlyn Lawes drives through her childhood neighbourhood, she’ll now be able to point to a park bearing her name — and tell her daughters that anything is possible.

Walking past history — and understated renewal

Several times each week I walk, cycle, or drive along Taché Avenue in St. Boniface.

It is one of Winnipeg’s most remarkable streets. Within a few hundred metres stand St. Boniface Cathedral, the cemetery where Louis Riel is buried, the archbishop’s residence, St. Boniface Hospital, La Vérendrye Park, and the Musée de Saint-Boniface. Few places in Canada bring together so many layers of history within such a compact landscape. This is where Manitoba’s story began. More than 175 years later, it remains one of the country’s most important historic precincts.

Yet it is always the museum that captures my attention.

It may be because I have spent much of my professional life working in museums and heritage institutions. More likely, it is because the old Grey Nuns’ convent has always struck me as one of those rare buildings that is far more than architecture. It has witnessed nearly two centuries of Manitoba’s history.

Steinbach ER nurses ask for triage help as wait-averse Winnipeg patients strain hospital capacity

Forty nurses from the hospital’s emergency department signed an open letter stating because of the current staffing ratio, nurses are witnessing “excessive and unacceptable safety risks on a daily basis.”