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Winnipeg Book Festival starts a new chapter

Once known as Thin Air, the 2026 Winnipeg Book Festival marks a new chapter heading into its 29th year celebrating fiction, non-fiction and poetry with a new name, new staff and a shorter, more streamlined fest based at The Forks.

Netminder no stranger to heavy workload as Jets new No. 1 readies for regular-season start

Stuart Skinner is quick to admit that he wasn’t always wired this way.

As the Winnipeg Jets new starting goalie prepares for his fifth NHL season, Skinner conceded that the accountability aspect that is now synonymous with his character took some time to build up.

“As I grew up and got older, you go through certain things in life that either build character or make things worse for you. It depends on your choice and your decision,” Skinner said during a recent conversation with the Free Press. “I learned it through trial and error. I learned that, sometimes, it’s hard to get honest with yourself… For me, it’s definitely been a road for me to get to a place like this.

“It definitely is one of my pillars. Accountability is so important because that brings you into a spot of what you’re going to do next. It’s easy to let yourself off the hook. I’m more in the business of putting myself on the hook.”

Jets new backup Stevenson ‘stoked’ to be in tandem with Skinner

It didn’t take long to get the dirt on the newest member of the Winnipeg Jets.

Meet Clay Stevenson, who has no problem if you prefer to refer to him by his long-standing nickname of “Mud.”

“You know, Clay is in the mud, and there you go. That’s it, right there,” Stevenson said Wednesday with a laugh. “I got it in juniors when I was playing in Coquitlam, and kind of stuck ever since.”

Stevenson is now hoping to make a name for himself in a city that, quite fittingly, translates to “muddy water” in Cree. The 27-year-old from Alberta was placed on waivers by the Washington Capitals and claimed by the Jets, who were looking to clarify a goaltending situation which was as murky as the Red River.

Now-independent ex-Tory leader skips legislature’s first question period in four months

Crime rates, the cost of living and the state of health care were on the agenda Tuesday when the legislature’s fall sitting began a day after Obby Khan’s abrupt resignation from the Tory caucus.

Obsessed stalker who shot, killed young woman at bus stop in 1993 dies behind bars at age 74

A Winnipeg man who stalked a woman for several years before shooting her dead in the street in 1993 has died in Stony Mountain prison.

On Monday, 74-year-old Ronald Edd Bell died of apparent natural causes at the federal prison just north of Winnipeg, the Correctional Service of Canada said.

Bell had been in prison since May 30, 1994, when he was given a life sentence with no chance of parole for 18 years for killing Terry-Lyn Babb, 25, on Jan. 21, 1993.

Bell walked up behind an unsuspecting Babb, who was waiting at a bus stop at Sherbrook Street and Wolseley Avenue, and shot her in the head with a pistol in front of horrified witnesses, says the Free Press report of his sentencing hearing.