Maraschino cherries, peanut butter a sweet surprise Homemade Holidays
By: Eva Wasney Posted: 2:00 AM CST Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025 Last Modified: 7:58 AM CST Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025 Updates

A 66-year-old Pembina Valley man is facing weapons charges after RCMP say he fired shots at people accused of stealing from his property twice in one day.

RCMP say four people went to a rural private property in the RM of Dufferin Saturday and then returned later in the day with two vehicles. The vehicles were later confirmed to have been stolen from Watrous, Sask., RCMP said in a news release Tuesday.

The property owner was alerted to the activity by a motion camera and went to the area, where he saw the suspects transferring fuel from a portable container into one of the stolen vehicles.

The man confronted the suspects with a firearm and fired shots towards the vehicles, RCMP said.

Manitoba’s liquor regulator has accused an Exchange District nightclub of exceeding its occupant capacity limit and hindering the work of inspectors.

Diablo, located at Main Street and Bannatyne Avenue, is scheduled to appeal two compliance orders, issued by the Liquor, Gaming and Cannabis Authority of Manitoba, at a Sept. 8 hearing.

An LGCA spokesperson said the compliance orders are part of an ongoing investigation.

The spokesperson said one of the orders was issued after the licensed club was over capacity April 26.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I am lonely to the bone. My girlfriend has been away working for the summer, and I promised I wouldn’t cheat on her. But now I have heard through the grapevine she’s seeing a guy who works at her kids’ camp.

I think the source can be trusted, because she’s a friend who cares about me, almost like a sister. Actually I think she kind of wants me herself, but never seems to cross that line. Should I believe her “inside information” when she might be wanting to go out with me herself?

My girlfriend won’t be back until the very end of August and the messages and phone calls back and forth have been less and less frequent. Maybe she’s just busy or getting rested up to see me — or maybe she’s seeing someone else. I’m feeling jealous and I hate it! Maybe I should see somebody else too. Please advise ASAP.

— Lonely and Suspicious, Transcona

If you spend any amount of time having deep conversations on sensitive subject matters, you will undoubtedly encounter patterns of thought and speech peppered into the discourse as if certain people were helpless but to utter them.

Perhaps you are trying to get to the heart of a complicated matter and the disagreement with your conversational partner starts to get a little heated. Often somebody will dust off the old diplomatic gem of “let’s agree to disagree” to extinguish further argument.

Or perhaps you are trying to console a grief-stricken person who has gone through a traumatic event. People in such a state will often rail against the state of the universe with powerful philosophical sentiments, demanding to know how such injustice could be permitted. You would not be the first person to misguidedly try to soothe them with something like “everything happens for a reason.” Or, less secularly, “God works in mysterious ways.”

These are known as thought-terminating clichés. Pithy little sayings that sound like folksy wisdom but serve mostly to sever a train of thinking, often because it is either uncomfortable or more complicated than the person is willing to engage. Admittedly, they often come from a good-natured place of keeping the peace, though it could easily be argued that they mostly serve to preserve to comfort or indulge the intellectual laziness of those who speak them.