Savage love story will have you wrestling with all the feels

Towing company hands stolen car back, but not to owner

A Manitoba man says he is dumbfounded after his car was stolen, impounded by a Winnipeg towing company and given back — to someone that wasn’t him.

Cody Lamb lives in the western Manitoba community of Douglas, about 18 kilometres east of Brandon, but spends weeks away from home working on oil rigs in Alberta.

The 24-year-old says on Sept. 11, while away for work, he heard from his girlfriend who told him his car wasn’t in their driveway. Lamb reported the car stolen to Brandon RCMP the same day.

After filing the report, he heard from Steinbach RCMP on Oct. 1 that his car was recovered that day in the community of Mitchell, roughly five km west of Steinbach.

Savage love story will have you wrestling with all the feels

Geoffrey Owen Hughes has more than 30 years of experience dressing up as wrestling superstar Macho Man Randy Savage, attending his first event as the “Macho Manitoban” at a screening of Wrestlemania 8 at a restaurant in 1992.

Is this the season of secession?

Canada has entered its season of secession. Like El Nino, the currents of grievance can blow hot and cold. Today, they are hot. But how hot for how long? The odds of Alberta and now Quebec separating from Canada are not high, but they are never zero.

After a year of waving the flag in a surge of national patriotism to confront Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada — economic and verbal — it is both jarring and frustrating for most Canadians to be reminded of the pervasive and persistent tensions that come with governing our federation.

When we need new national purpose to confront big economic sovereignty and security challenges from outside, that purpose is undermined and diminished by having to confront homegrown grievances.

We’ve seen and seen off two separation referendums in Quebec. Now we have a newly elected separatist party coming to power. In Alberta, voters will soon decide whether the independence road is one they want to travel.

Chopped trees will leave a ‘blight’ on Windsor Park

Robert Gordon has watched the trees grow along a popular Windsor Park walking path for nearly six decades.

Now, as Manitoba Hydro cuts them down to protect nearby power lines, he says a familiar part of his childhood neighbourhood is disappearing.

Although he no longer lives in the area, Gordon regularly returns to walk or cycle along the tree-lined path, which runs parallel to Archibald Street.

He was concerned when he recently spotted crews clearing vegetation near the entrance to the path, but initially assumed they were removing brush. When he returned, he discovered the clearing had extended farther along the corridor.

Bombers, Stamps rumble a can’t-miss must-win

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Calgary Stampeders and Saskatchewan Roughriders are playing musical chairs and pretty soon the music is going to stop.

One of them will be left without a seat at the post-season table, and Saturday’s clash between the Bombers (7-8) and Stampeders (8-8) at Princess Auto Stadium (6 p.m.) will go a long way toward determining who that will be.

You’re not going to want to miss this one.

“We’ve shown we can play great, we’ve shown we can play terrible. So, let’s try to play on the great side and really lock in,” said Bombers halfback Evan Holm on the team’s mindset this week.

Careful work goes into preserving vintage threads at costume museum

Every Friday morning seven retired women — Diane Zakala, Helen Leeds, Margaret Mills, Melinda Barr, Therese Leneveu, Karen Eastwood and Letizia Sandron — make their way from homes across the city to a nondescript warehouse in downtown Winnipeg.

The group members troop in right at 9 a.m., as they have been doing every week for the last eight years, towards the back of the brightly lit warehouse where the bulk of the collection of the Costume Museum of Canada (410-70 Arthur St.) is stored.

The vintage fashion pieces — some dating back to more than a century — have been carefully packed away in long, flat garment boxes, stacked on rows of shelves.

Some clothes are in mint condition, impeccably taken care of by their owners, while a few show signs of wear and tear and need little bit of care courtesy of expert seamstress Barr, who lovingly restores items which have incurred minimal damage.