Fringe festival sets daily, overall attendance records

Winnipeg’s challenge: preparing for weather extremes

A new United Nations report warns the world will exceed the 1.5 C Paris limit by 2030.

Winnipeg’s string of extreme weather events in recent years — this summer’s intense rainstorms that caused flash flooding, basement damage, power outages, prolonged heat waves, last summer’s wildfires, and the freakish October 2019 wet snowstorm — underscores the urgent need for stronger emergency plans and climate resilience in the face of the UN’s new report.

As the city enters an unknown era from increwasing extreme weather events, it must also confront this haunting truth or face future unprepared consequences.

Winnipeg faces persistent challenges, including limited library hours during the summer (they could act as cooling places for the most vulnerable), and gaps in public and active transportation which make it harder for many residents to reach essential services.

Hero fought to remember children lost at residential school

The story of the gravesites of students who attended the Brandon Indian Residential School underneath the Turtle Crossing Campground is truly a Manitoba tragedy.

Fringe festival sets daily, overall attendance records

IT'S official. The 26th annual Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival set another indoor attendance record, it was announced Monday.

Total ticketed attendance was 101,488, up from 100,621 in 2012 when there were 53 more performances. Daily attendance records were smashed on seven of the 12 days of the alternative theatre festival. Both Saturdays broke the 10,000-ticket mark for the first time.

There were 197 sellouts among the 1,410 performances, another fest best, as was the $705,553.75 in box office revenue that was returned to the 169 companies.

"The fact that we were able to not only maintain, but surpass the record we set at last year's 25th anniversary fringe shows that Manitobans have a real passion for the festival," said executive producer Chuck McEwen. "There's a real appetite for independent theatre in our community that seems to grow every year, and that's really encouraging for the future of the fringe."

Ferraro gets call-up to the Jets

Landon Ferraro vividly recalls the moment his NHL career came to an extremely painful end — Oct. 20, 2017, in downtown Winnipeg.

“My last play was a breakaway on Connor Hellebuyck,” Ferraro told the Free Press this week.

“I tried to poke the puck past the first D. It was me and (Dustin) Byfuglien chasing it down. I thought he was going to throw me across the ice, so I tried to cut in on him, and he moved. I overextended, and I literally ripped my abductor off the bone and gave myself a hernia.”

Ferraro — at the time playing forward for the visiting Minnesota Wild — said he managed to get off a weak shot that hit the Jets goaltender square in the chest. But his 77th appearance in the big leagues would be his last following previous stops with Detroit (which drafted him 32nd overall in 2009) and Boston.