Ottawa earmarks $20 million for Prairies arts groups

Almost 250 people moved from city encampments under provincial strategy

Nearly 250 people have moved out of Winnipeg encampments under the Manitoba government’s Your Way Home strategy, which is more than 70 per cent of the NDP’s goal for its first term in office.

Gimli Film Festival: Filmmaker’s new short tackles feelings around toplessness

When he’s hurtling down the highway for solo adventures on his Honda CB500X, Ande Brown often finds himself on Page 1 of an unwritten screenplay, drifting into imagined narratives about the interior lives of the men and women on the road around him.

“You go through any small town, and inevitably there’s a billboard for a real estate agent, so I’ll start making up a story about how they got into the business,” says Brown, a filmmaker who didn’t consider saying “cut” until his late 50s. “Hours will go by and I won’t even realize how far I’ve gone.”

Though he acknowledges that he’s a late bloomer in just about every way, Brown has used storytelling as escapism since he was raised by a devoted single mother in Arizona during the 1970s: at Phoenix’s airport, in an era of lax security, an adolescent Brown would sit in the terminal and concoct storylines about travellers’ comings and goings.

“There are ideas that float around, and they’ll find a head to go into, and if you reject it, they’ll find another one. There’s all kinds of inspiration out there, but you have to be open to it,” says Brown, whose latest short film, Half-Naked, premières Saturday at the Gimli International Film Festival.

Firefighter accused of violating protection order jailed for past harassment

A Winnipeg firefighter accused of violating a protection order this week has been jailed two times in the past decade for criminally harassing two different women, court records show.

In each case, Christopher Goethals was allowed to return to his job with the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service.

Goethals, 59, was arrested July 21 after breaching a protection order requiring he not come within 200 metres of a named protected person, police said.

Police allege Goethals was in full uniform and on “modified duties” driving a WFPS fleet vehicle at the time of the offence.

Bridgwater residents fed up with Manitoba Housing eyesore

A weed-covered plot of land in Bridgwater has been left to grow wild all summer, raising the ire of neighbours who say they were told the property is owned by Manitoba Housing and bylaw officers cannot intervene.

Vacant Bay store on road to redevelopment, St. Vital Centre owner says

Entertainment attractions are coming to fill the former Hudson’s Bay space in St. Vital Centre.

Montreal-based real estate firm Leyad, the south Winnipeg mall’s owner, says it is finalizing an agreement for the vacant property. Further details should appear in the next couple months, said president Henry Zavriyev.

“We’re looking at what other types of experiences we can bring to the mall that aren’t just typical retail,” he said during a visit to Winnipeg this week.

“We want to create an experience where you can just come to the mall, hang out here for hours, no matter if you’re a kid, an adult, a retiree.”

Telecom on defensive after about 90 emergency calls fail over several hours

Bell Canada — Manitoba’s 911 service provider — is facing questions about reliability and redundancy measures after an hours-long outage outside Winnipeg, caused by a severed fibre optic cable, prevented dozens of calls from getting through Wednesday.

Bell spokeswoman Elise von Scheel said backup systems that reroute 911 calls when an outage occurs due to equipment damage also experienced “issues” after a third party cut the cable during construction “near Winnipeg.”

“Manitoba’s 911 system relies on legacy architecture that does not support the failsafes that newer systems have, which is why Bell is in the process of upgrading the ecosystem to next generation 911,” von Scheel wrote in an email.

“All Manitoba public safety answering points are planned to be migrated to the new system by the end of 2026. Migration to NG911 is the fastest and most effective remediation to prevent instances like this in the future.”