Swedish Victor Borge mixes seriousness with silliness

Sisters relieved hospital takes accountability after mother’s death

Eight months after losing their mother, two Winnipeg sisters say an internal hospital review has finally given them something they had been seeking since her death: accountability.

Chelsea Mann and Samantha Burns said St. Boniface Hospital officials acknowledged mistakes were made in the care of their mother, Judy Burns, during a recent meeting to discuss the findings of a critical incident review into her death.

The acknowledgement marked a significant departure from an earlier meeting with hospital officials, when they felt their concerns were largely dismissed.

Burns, 68, died on Jan. 21, three days after being admitted, after experiencing rectal bleeding.

Man who killed two Indigenous women, was accused of killing third, back in prison less than year after statutory release

A Winnipeg man convicted of killing two First Nations women more than a decade ago — with charges stayed in a third slaying — has been sent back to prison less than a year after he left under conditions.

Parole Board of Canada officials revoked 67-year-old Shawn Lamb’s statutory release after a hearing last week.

“Your actions are not beyond your control, yet you continue to wilfully make poor decisions that place the public at risk,” board member Arun Kundu-Thomsen wrote in a decision released this week.

Lamb gained statutory release — a legislated conditional release most federal inmates automatically qualify for after serving two-thirds of their sentence — in November last year and lived in several Ontario facilities for federal offenders.

Gillingham talks trash, pledges big bin boost

Scott Gillingham says he would add hundreds of locked garbage bins downtown to prevent unsightly trash piles if re-elected as mayor.

Safety upgrades completed at Whiteshell park falls where brothers drowned

Safety improvements have been completed at Sturgeon Falls in Whiteshell Provincial Park, where two brothers from Winnipeg drowned in July, the province announced Friday.

The Sturgeon Falls trail was closed for upgrades after Maximo Au Ramirez, 10, and Aaron Au Ramirez, 13, disappeared in the fast-moving rapids. Their bodies were recovered days later.

The trail and viewing areas have reopened. Viewing areas are now fenced to prevent people from walking onto hazardous slippery rocks. Signs were installed to warn visitors of drowning hazards.

A new portage gives canoeists and kayakers access to and from safe shoreline areas adjacent to the falls, the province said.

Clock ticks down on destruction of records documenting residential school abuses

In less than a year, a private company is set to destroy the largest cache of records detailing the widespread abuse of Indigenous children at residential schools in Canada.

The destruction, which was ordered by an Ontario court in 2014 and later upheld by the Supreme Court, is set to take place on Sept. 19, 2027.

This countdown is igniting emotional conversations that seek to balance the immense historical value of the records alongside the confidentiality survivors were promised as part of the process of providing detailed testimony about abuses they’d suffered.

The records were created as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a class-action settlement stemming from survivors who began suing the federal government in the late 1990s over the harm they’d been subjected to at residential schools.

Swedish Victor Borge mixes seriousness with silliness

When Magnus Martensson was a 14-year-old growing up in Malmö, Sweden, he snuck into a concert by Danish pianist-comedian Victor Borge.

The classically trained Borge was a genius at spoofing the high-brow conventions of the concert hall with his quips and keyboard antics.

"I was a big fan of his," recalls Martensson, now a 42-year-old freelance conductor and composer who leads the Scandinavian Chamber Orchestra of New York.

Martensson managed to see Borge perform a few more times before the master passed away in 2000. Their roots are similar, the Swede says by phone from New York, because Borge's home of Copenhagen and Malmö are separated only by a strait.