A bit of openness has a nice ring to it

Men cycling across Canada for charity have bikes stolen in Winnipeg

Thomas Clark and Valentin Duquenne were devastated after their bikes went missing outside CBC Manitoba’s headquarters, but uplifted by the outpouring of support from Manitobans afterward.

A Life's Story: Beloved matriarch, kindergarten teacher lived a musical life

Phyllis Dana faced a choice: leave Winnipeg to study opera at a prestigious Philadelphia school, or marry the man she loved.

She chose the latter.

Now, her Juno-winning granddaughter cherishes a Happy Birthday voicemail sung by Phyllis. Three generations of Dana women — Phyllis, her daughter, and granddaughter — would sing in Winnipeg’s prominent Jewish spaces. And hundreds of Manitobans know the matriarch as their kindergarten teacher.

“My mom said, ‘A sheet of music won’t keep you warm at night,’” Karen Dana recalled.

Automation reaches new heights on farm

LANGHAM, Sask. — The thousands of farmers from across the Prairies who flock to the annual Ag in Motion show every July seem oblivious to the possibility the technology on display could one day replace many of them.

Families with children in tow, Hutterite colony workers, grandparents and young couples just starting out roamed through the 600 or more exhibitor displays, amazed at how everything about farming just keeps getting bigger, more efficient and increasingly more automated.

It’s now possible to seed using a 100-foot-wide drill — a 12-foot jump over the widest available a few years ago — provided the farmer can afford a tractor with enough horsepower to pull it. Those sell for around $850,000 and up.

Granted, the number of farms with enough acres to justify that kind of width and drawing power is still relatively small, but farms continue to grow. And it’s no secret the number of people who have the interest, skills and financial wherewithal to run them continues to shrink.

Convicted sex offender awaits latest sentence

Prosecutors are seeking a 15-year prison sentence for a Red Lake, Ont., man who groomed two Indigenous girls online and drove nearly 500 kilometres to Winnipeg to sexually abuse one of them.

Scott Christopher Alcorn, 50, has pleaded guilty to one count each of child luring, sexual interference and possession of child sexual abuse material.

Alcorn was still on parole for child sex offences at the time of his April 2025 arrest, having been convicted four years earlier of providing a 16-year-old girl a bottle of alcohol in exchange for sex.

“Despite this (prior conviction)… Mr. Alcorn egregiously reoffended, this time to lure two children online and successfully groomed, manipulated and commodified one of (the victims),” Crown attorney Dayna Queau-Guzzi told provincial court Judge Robert Heinrichs at a sentencing hearing Thursday.

Selfie part of investigation into Grant Park football coach

A selfie of a high school football coach grinning beside a Free Press front-page story about the investigation into his professional conduct has become part of the case.

Doug Kovacs, a resource teacher at Grant Park High School who runs the Pirates football program, was put on leave in the spring.

The Winnipeg School Division employee is the subject of an investigation into allegations that athletes on his AAAA varsity team engaged in hazing that led to at least one player getting injured last year.

The Free Press has learned that on July 8 — the day it was revealed in print that Manitoba’s teacher commissioner had launched a third-party probe — a photo of Kovacs posing with a newspaper began circulating in the football community.

Cross Lake pro blueliner walks away from sport he loves to live and work in northern community he loves even more

CROSS LAKE — It’s a hot, hazy Tuesday evening in northern Manitoba, and Jericho Blacksmith and his buddies are gathered inside a baseball dugout.

There isn’t a glove or bat in sight.

Instead, the young men are engaged in a loud, good-natured race to see who can get blackout drunk the fastest, passing around bottles and cans purchased from the local vendor, which had just been restocked when the weekly truck rolled into town earlier that day.

“Honestly, everything can be pretty brutal around here,” says the 26-year-old lifelong resident, pointing to isolation, a lack of opportunity and relentless boredom.