Risk and reward

Five-day festival showcases the daring best of local music and theatre creators

Barrels of broccoli, babified boy bands and sword-wielding goblins invaded the Gargoyle Theatre Wednesday for the opening night of Inhibition Exhibition, the Village Conservatory for Music Theatre’s five-day festival of new Manitoban works.

Founded in 2021, the conservatory’s goals include providing both a testing and training ground for local theatre artists, who are encouraged to embrace risk and vulnerability on stage and in the rehearsal hall as they expand their worldviews, managing director Paul De Gurse told the audience as the festival kicked off.

Part of the beauty of the festival — which will also feature a staged reading of playwright Ethan Stark’s Sinking Ship, 11 new musical pieces and a live cabaret version of the conservatory’s podcast Monkeys and Playbills — is that audience members get the chance to see such a wide-ranging variety of performances, says associate producer Daphne Finlayson.

After focusing their wit on labour rights, mental health crises and a 19th-century world’s fair in their most recent productions, the Harry S. Rintoul Award-winning JHG Creative (Breaking Up With Me, The Mailroom) debuted the opening number from its upcoming original musical, a pop-music satire entitled Sugar Boyz!, due at the Gargoyle for this year’s Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. “We’re eating good tonight,” makes for a delicious refrain.

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: Avoid shopping (except food and gas) or important decisions until noon today. After that, the moon moves from Scorpio into Sagittarius.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

Your idealism is aroused, perhaps because you feel sympathy for the suffering of someone far away. Because you are proactive by nature, you might do something to help in any way you can. Pay attention to what you say and do. Expect detours.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Lauded Manitoba author chronicled life in the Interlake

Longtime Manitoba author, editor and professor David Arnason died on Monday at age 86.

Federal Court awards OCN $27M, 62 years after construction of hydro dam

The Federal Court has ordered Ottawa pay Opaskwayak Cree Nation $27 million over damages suffered due to the construction of the Grand Rapids hydro dam in the 1960s.

In a decision dated Sept. 3, Federal Court Justice Sébastien Grammond says the federal government had a fiduciary duty to protect the community from the impacts of the dam.

“When the Crown exercises a discretionary power over an Indigenous interest, it has a fiduciary duty and it must exercise the discretion in the best interests of the Indigenous group,” the ruling said. “Canada breached its fiduciary duty to OCN because it approved the (project) without ensuring that the impacts of the Grand Rapids dam on OCN’s traditional way of life were mitigated or compensated.”

The First Nation took the federal government to court in February over impacts on the community after the dam, located about 145 kilometres southeast of Opaskwayak Cree Nation, was installed on the Saskatchewan River in 1964. The case was heard over 14 days in a judge-alone trial in Winnipeg.

‘One of a kind’: CEO, philanthropist Doug Harvey dies at 72

Doug Harvey, a Winnipeg business titan and philanthropist, has died after battling cancer for more than a decade.

Harvey gave millions of dollars to Winnipeg organizations while he was CEO of DLH Group, a nationwide network of businesses that support heavy duty truck and trailer users.

Loren Remillard, CEO and president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, said the business community is mourning the loss of the influential businessman who helped shape Winnipeg.

“We are a transportation and logistics hub in Winnipeg and it was partly the result of geography, and a big part because of leaders and visionaries like Doug Harvey,” he said.

Day 1 of Jets training camp in the books with pairings essentially cemented

Nearly six minutes into his question-and-answer session, Scott Arniel took a welcome detour from the news of the day.

After exhausting the discussion around the goalie who wasn’t in training camp, the head coach of the Winnipeg Jets finally got a query about the line combinations and defensive pairings that were unveiled in training camp.

And unlike past years, when exhibition games were more frequent and the training camp wasn’t this condensed, Arniel conceded these groupings were intentional and were likely staying together for some time.

The expansion to an 84-game regular season brings with it a reduction to four pre-season games and a much shorter training camp, which could limit the amount of experimentation that Arniel can do during the next two weeks.