Forcing the romance can be counterproductive

Letters, Aug. 12

Manitoba’s Bill 43 finally gives e-scooters legal status, but I fear we are regulating our cheapest, cleanest transportation into a corner. The new rules ban riders under 16, ban sidewalk riding nearly everywhere, and ban these vehicles from faster roads, before Winnipeg has built a bike lane network that gives them anywhere safe to go.

Poilievre’s simplistic bluster a desperate bid for attention in a serious moment for nation

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s suggestion that Mark Carney needs more “backbone” to negotiate with Donald Trump would be easier to take seriously if anyone had actually figured out how to negotiate with the U.S. president.

Fun drop-in last chance to mentor grads of inner-city school with excellent track record

Summer break may be in full swing, but Gonzaga Middle School invited graduates back to the building for water balloon fights and academic, employment and support services this week.

Roughly 30 alumni, including teenagers and twentysomethings, stopped by the grades 6-8 school in North Point Douglas on Tuesday afternoon. They were greeted with slime-making kits, ice cream sundaes and staff ready to answer questions.

The initiative — the final grad drop-in organized this summer — is a new extension of the mentorship and holistic programming baked into the funded independent school’s mandate.

“We have 22- and 23-year-olds coming back and checking in and asking for help on their university papers,” principal Rex Ferguson-Baird said.

The circle of life — garden-sized

“The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives.” — Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), horticulturalist

It’s a chilly day for August — more like fall — but in the garden things are progressing as nicely as if every day this summer had been the perfect combination of sun and showers.

The peonies are spent, their heavy heads with a hangdog look. Soon the petals will fall, revealing the jester-hat seedpods within. The lilacs, too, their beautiful, fragrant blossoms now transformed into brown scruff.

But the day lilies are plumping up, ready for their big reveal. And the roses are still magnificent — dozens and dozens of fuchsia, red, white and coral blooms that turn our stone circle into a heavenly scented bower. It is here where we come after a hard day’s work in the garden, newly scrubbed and wearing fresh clothes, to sit at a little bistro table and have a glass of wine and enjoy the results of our labour.

Jarvis brings Stanley Cup to where it all began

Seth Jarvis and Lord Stanley had quite the homecoming celebration with thousands of fans lining up for their arrival — some even before the sun graced the sky.

The Winnipeg community showed up to cheer on one of their own, wearing memorabilia of all of Jarvis’s achievements, with Tuxedo Lightning, Team Canada, and Carolina Hurricane jerseys aplenty in the crowd.

The Tuxedo Community Centre — where Jarvis’s storied career all began — had fans from all walks of life lined up, circling the building and fields, for the opportunity to meet the Stanley Cup champion and touch the trophy themselves.

Throughout the line, lawn chairs were assembled, picnic blankets were spread out, and umbrellas were opened — all prepared for the long wait ahead of them.

Frustrated owners won’t rebuild demolished Boujee

The co-owner of a former Main Street restaurant vows he will not rebuild in Winnipeg’s downtown, owing to constant crime and vandalism in the area.

Kanish Sood, who is one of three partners of the now-demolished Boujee Restaurant and Bar, said he did everything he could to keep the building safe from vandals after it was hit by arson last October.

“After that (fire), there is about already 15, 20 times there has been break-in in the property,” Sood said Monday. “We have been informing police continuously that there is continuously break-ins. People are trying to go inside the building and stealing things, but there was no action.”

After Boujee was torched, Sood and his partners locked the building and boarded it up. They also hired private security to monitor it. The break-ins continued.