Governor General’s literary short list includes vermette, Edwards

Outreach centre rife with drug use, needles, but daycare, community members say safety concerns go unheard

Children at an Osborne Village daycare are routinely exposed to discarded needles, human feces and drug use, prompting growing safety concerns from parents, residents and business owners.

The concerns centre on Augustine Centre at River Avenue and Osborne Street, where SPLASH Child Care shares the building with Oak Table, a drop-in operated by 1JustCity that provides meals, wellness and addiction supports, along with programs that help people build skills, and secure housing and employment.

The daycare looks after 132 children, from just a few months old to age 12.

Lesley Massey, executive director of the daycare, said parents fear for their children’s safety.

Fringe reviews #13: Achievement unlocked, levelling up

Black Fish, East of Berlin, Green Grab, Rowena Riddle, On Tidy Endings, Saving the Station, The Taming of the Shrew, Nat King Cole, Where We Fly From Hospital Beds

Fringe reviews #9: Farming for fringe gold

Celine & Cher, The Commensality Project, Couch Surfers, False Profits, Martin Dockerty, The Game of Bluff, How Much Can you Change, Human$, The Mistress of Wholesome, Winnipeg is a Lie.

‘Heartbreaking loss’: Sandy Bay First Nation offers condolences after apparent dog attack

Leaders with the Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation are offering their condolences after an animal rescue worker died following an apparent dog attack in the community and say the “stray and aggressive” animals are a longstanding issue.

Amanda Nobiss, 37, was volunteering in the community on the shores of Lake Manitoba with K9 Advocacy. Her remains were discovered on Friday morning.

The Manitoba First Nations Police Service said in a news release that it had been contacted by a friend of Amanda’s who was trying to locate her, around 12:45 a.m.

Using her cellphone location, police determined she appeared to be in Sandy Bay, said the release. Resources were dispatched to the area, including a drone, but due to the large radius of the cellphone “ping,” no one was located until 6 a.m.

Mosque’s restorative justice program helps newcomers find their way

The Masjid Bilal is a chunky grey building just off Logan Avenue surrounded by warehouses and railyards. It looks more like a bunker than a mosque.

But on a summer Friday afternoon, its green-and-white carpeted interior is humming with activity. Two men in white robes and flat woolen caps are seated on the carpet poring over a copy of the Qur’an. A few young boys dodge through hallways, poking curious noses into open doors. At the back, next to a table piled with prayer mats, two girls in hijabs share schoolyard gossip. In the kitchen, women are cooking up pots of rice and chicken for people who will soon arrive for Friday prayers.

The Masjid Bilal is a community hub for members of Winnipeg’s African diaspora as well as Muslims from many other countries.

It’s also home to the Bilal Community and Family Centre, an innovative, community-centred nonprofit that is meeting vital needs for newcomers in this city.

Governor General’s literary short list includes vermette, Edwards

Winnipeg author katherena vermette has made the five-book short list for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Awards for fiction for her novel Real Ones.

Published in September 2024, the novel follows two Michif sisters whose white mother, an artist from whom they are estranged, is exposed as a “pretendian.” vermette won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry in 2013 for her collection North End Love Songs.

Also in the fiction category, Ebb and Flow First Nation author Kyle Edwards, now based in California (and formerly a Free Press intern), was named as a finalist for his debut novel Small Ceremonies, which follows the plight of two Indigenous teens in Winnipeg, and their struggling hockey team, over the course of a year.

The drama category also features a number of Manitoba connections. Both Catherine Banks’ Downed Hearts and Tara Beagan’s The Ministry of Grace were published by Scirocco Drama, an imprint of Winnipeg’s J. Gordon Shillingford. Beagan’s play Rise, Red River, also a finalist, was inspired by the 2014 Drag the Red movement in Winnipeg; the play was co-produced by Théatre Cercle Molière, Article 11 and Prairie Theatre Exchange in March 2024