Counting on fans for countdown to 60th Festival du Voyageur

Eva Wasney By: Eva Wasney Posted:

Advertisement

Advertise with us

Festival du Voyageur is seeking memories and memorabilia to help celebrate an upcoming milestone anniversary.

Read this article for free:


or

Already have an account? Log in here »

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Subscribe and receive a limited-edition Free Press branded hat or tote.

Digital Subscription

One year of digital access for only $205*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles

*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional

$1 for the first 4 weeks*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles
Start now

*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/10/2025 (346 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Festival du Voyageur is seeking memories and memorabilia to help celebrate an upcoming milestone anniversary.

Organizers are looking for donations of vintage photos, programs, merch and other items of interest to be displayed during the francophone winter festival’s 60th birthday in 2029.

It’s a project that started at this year’s festival with the debut of L’shed à Léo, a gallery of archival ephemera onsite at Voyageur Park.

SUPPLIED The 2025 display of Festival du Voyageur memorabilia was the start of L’shed à Léo.

SUPPLIED

The 2025 display of Festival du Voyageur memorabilia was the start of L’shed à Léo.

“We went through our basement at the festival office and found a bunch of cool stuff,” says Colin Mackie, director of the festival’s heritage and education programs.

“It really struck a chord with our visitors and longtime volunteers and people involved in the community.”

Anything and everything is on the table, from vinyl records to medals from festival-sponsored sporting events to branded T-shirts.

Fitting donations will also be shared in themed L’shed displays over the next three festivals leading up to the anniversary.

Next year’s gallery will focus on Festival du Voyageur-related art, including music, dance, snow sculptures and crafts; while the 2027 and 2028 iterations will focus on heritage and community, respectively.

In his role, Mackie typically focuses on educating the public and school groups on Voyageur, Indigenous and Franco-Manitoban history. He’s looking forward to turning that focus inward and celebrating the founders, volunteers and supporters of the long-running festival through the displays and an accompanying oral history project.

“The festival is getting kind of historic as well. We have people who have been building Voyageur Park for 25, 30 years and their perspectives are equally important to anyone who’s worn a suit and stood in front of a camera,” Mackie says.

SUPPLIED The colleciton ‘struck a chord with our visitors and longtime volunteers.’

SUPPLIED

The colleciton ‘struck a chord with our visitors and longtime volunteers.’

Donors can drop off their wares at Festival du Voyageur’s main office at 233 Provencher Blvd. and will be asked to fill out a questionnaire for archiving purposes.

The organization is unable to accept loans of items, except in special circumstances.

The 2026 festival takes place Feb. 13 to 22 at Whittier Park. Visit heho.ca for more information.

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com

If you value coverage of Manitoba’s arts scene, help us do more.
Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project.

Eva Wasney

Eva Wasney
Reporter

Eva Wasney covers environmental issues in Manitoba for The Narwhal in partnership with the Winnipeg Free Press. Read more about Eva.

Every piece of reporting Eva produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.

Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.

Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.

If you value coverage of Manitoba’s arts scene, help us do more.
Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project.

Eva Wasney

Eva Wasney
Reporter

Eva Wasney covers environmental issues in Manitoba for The Narwhal in partnership with the Winnipeg Free Press. Read more about Eva.

Every piece of reporting Eva produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.

Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.

Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.

Advertisement Advertise With Us

Report Error Submit a Tip

Advertisement

Learn more about Winnipeg Free Press Advertising solutions

More Stories

Photos by Ruth Bonneville / Free Press From left: Volunteers Helen Leeds, Diane Zakala, Margaret Mills, Therese Leneveu and Melinda Barr go through the vintage collection at the Costume Museum of Canada.

Careful work goes into preserving vintage threads at costume museum

AV Kitching 6 minute read Preview

Careful work goes into preserving vintage threads at costume museum

AV Kitching 6 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

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.

Read
Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Puppies, stocks — ‘zoomies’ abound

Andrew Froese 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM CDT

This spring, I adopted a three-month-old rescued German Shepherd mix. To say she is easily excitable is an understatement.

It is not really her fault. A puppy’s frontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps with decision-making and impulse control, is still developing. When an older dog, or a human, gets tired, we generally understand we should rest. Puppies have not quite figured that out. They often interpret tiredness as a signal something is wrong, which makes them more alert, more reactive and harder to settle.

That creates a feedback loop. The puppy gets tired, which makes her frantic, which makes her more tired, which makes her even more frantic. Eventually, this becomes what people call the “zoomies”: frantic sprinting, biting, jumping and general chaos.

From the outside, it looks like the puppy has too much energy. In reality, the opposite is true. The zoomies are not a sign of excess energy. They are a sign the puppy is overtired and does not know it yet.

Final hurdles are moving on in your mind and life

Maureen Scurfield 3 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM CDT

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I just ran into my former husband with his new woman. It was a shock. She looked nothing like me — not nearly as good. In fact, she’s the opposite of me — red-haired, freckled, tall and skinny like a rake. I’m short, dark, with golden skin from my Italian background. That was what my husband used to say he loved in a woman.

Does that mean he lied — that he really didn’t like my looks and secretly longed for the opposite? That seems crazy to me. But I should mention that in our last miserable years together he didn’t even want to hold me in his arms and look at me. He sometimes slept at his office (or so he said) because he was “too tired to drive home.”

He could have been elsewhere — like in some other woman’s home — because he always used his cellphone to call me, not his office line.

How can I forget about the man I loved so much and finally move on?

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Public Service Delivery Minister Mintu Sandhu.

Landlords will face fines for breaching confidentiality

Carol Sanders 4 minute read Preview

Landlords will face fines for breaching confidentiality

Carol Sanders 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

The province is amending legislation to allow landlords to be penalized if they breach the confidentiality of tenants who break their lease by obtaining a domestic violence certificate.

“Hopefully, now there’s going to be measures in place so that if this happens again, and God forbid it happens again to anyone else, that there would be penalties imposed on landlords who do that,” said one victim whose concerns were published on the front page of the Free Press last month.

Under current legislation, landlords must ensure that any information received from those tenants regarding the termination of the tenancy is kept confidential, but there are no penalties for landlords who violate that section of the act. After hearing from victims put at risk when landlords broke the law by violating their confidentiality, the government announced Monday that it is amending the Residential Tenancies Act to allow for penalties.

The young woman who spoke to the Free Press showed that her landlord copied her alleged abuser in email correspondence that included her personal email address and the domestic violence certificate she obtained in 2025 to end a tenancy agreement early and leave an abusive relationship.

Read
Friday, Oct. 9, 2026
JOHN WOODS / THE CANADIAN PRESS Winnipeg Jets’ Kyle Connor (81), Dylan DeMelo (2), Mark Scheifele (55) and Cole Perfetti (91) celebrate Connor’s goal against the Colorado Avalanche during third period NHL hockey action in Winnipeg on Wednesday.

Jets encouraged by play through first five games

Mike McIntyre 6 minute read Preview

Jets encouraged by play through first five games

Mike McIntyre 6 minute read Yesterday at 4:21 PM CDT

Turkey. Stuffing. And a heaping helping of rest and recovery.

The Winnipeg Jets have plenty to be thankful for this holiday weekend, including a solid 3-1-1 start to the NHL campaign. Players and coaches are also counting their blessings at finally getting a breather after a busy stretch of five games in eight days.

“We don’t have another (break like this) until a week before Christmas. So we’re going to take advantage of it,” head coach Scott Arniel said following the club’s first regulation loss, a 5-1 stinker on Friday night against the visiting Anaheim Ducks.

To borrow a funny old Thanksgiving-related phrase from former defenceman Nate Schmidt, the hockey club was “leaking gravy.” They looked like a group that could use a timeout — which they’ll get since they don’t play again until hosting the Minnesota Wild on Tuesday night.

Read
Yesterday at 4:21 PM CDT
SUPPLIED Security footage showing Cody Lamb’s car being stolen on Sept. 11 in Douglas, Manitoba.

Towing company hands stolen car back, but not to owner

By Matthew Frank 4 minute read Preview

Towing company hands stolen car back, but not to owner

By Matthew Frank 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

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.

Read
Friday, Oct. 9, 2026