A Cinderella for all times

‘We feel lucky — and a bit traumatized’: Tornado confirmed in River Heights Sunday

Tanner Lemieux wasn’t surprised to learn the violent winds that tore through River Heights and reached their peak near his home Sunday night have been classified as a tornado.

While driving back to his Lindsay Street home from a shopping trip with his wife Sunday, it became clear they were not in the middle of an ordinary thunderstorm when rain and wind started coming from every direction and hit every side of their truck.

The forceful wind made it impossible for him to open his door after they had parked. He climbed through the window, over the top of his vehicle, and the couple struggled to fight the whipping winds to make it into the house.

“As we were running in, the wind started pulling me backwards out of the door,” he told the Free Press while cleaning debris from his yard Thursday.

Education minister’s reasons for revoking teacher’s licence ‘not good enough,’ judge decides

A Manitoba judge has rejected the education minister’s decision to end a teacher’s career because he repeatedly messaged with a 13-year-old girl on social media.

Manitoba has recorded 15 tornadoes this year, roughly twice the annual average

It’s been a whirlwind year for tornado researchers in Manitoba.

“It’s the busiest we’ve ever been, by far,” John Hanesiak, a professor in the department of environment and geography at the University of Manitoba, says.

Hanesiak is a collaborator with the Northern Tornadoes Project, a national research program based at Western University in London, Ont., that aims to better understand tornadoes in Canada.

Since late May, Hanesiak and his team have spent 43 days in the field surveying damage caused by tornadoes and severe weather events across Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Previous seasons have required a maximum of 19 days on the road.

‘Dynacare sucks’: premier muses about bringing lab services back into public system

Premier Wab Kinew says Manitoba may bring Dynacare’s diagnostic lab services back into the public system rather than continue to sign contracts with the for-profit company.

“Dynacare sucks. They’ve made an absolute mess of this situation,” the premier said Wednesday, the day the company’s 350 employees reported back to work after the labour board halted their strike after just one day.

Kinew first made the remark about Dynacare in a CBC radio interview Wednesday morning and added he is “not happy with them.”

Dynacare performs the majority of non-emergency blood and urine tests in the province.

South Winnipeg neighbourhood will be first to go geothermal

A new neighbourhood in south Winnipeg will be Manitoba’s first to use a shared, large-scale geothermal system to heat and cool hundreds of homes over coming decades.

The province is giving up to $4 million to the developers of Southwood Circle, just north of the University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry campus, for a district geothermal system as part of the NDP’s goal to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

“It means a whole neighbourhood can tap into geothermal, which means low-carbon heating and cooling for at least 1,000 homes,” Premier Wab Kinew said at a news conference Wednesday.

Geothermal systems, equipped with pumps and pipes, use underground temperatures to heat and cool one or more buildings. Proponents point to long-term energy and cost savings compared with conventional heating and cooling systems.

A Cinderella for all times

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet got its groove on Wednesday night as it closed its 2021-22 season with A Cinderella Story, throwing off more flash than a ballroom mirror-ball while showing the opening night crowd a ring-a-ding-ding of a good time.

Not staged locally since 2016, the San Francisco-based choreographer Val Caniparoli’s funky fairy-tale ballet whisks viewers back to the 1950s halcyon days of TV dinners and Desert Flower body lotion, inspired by an actual television broadcast of Broadway icons Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Cinderella, in turn based on a libretto by Sheryl Flatow.

The 135-minute work (including intermission) also showcases the inestimable talents of legendary Winnipeg jazzman Ron Paley, still swinging as hard as he did during the show’s RWB premiere in October 2004. A 24-piece big band tucked onto a raised orchestra pit performed Paley’s masterfully crafted arrangements of Rodgers’ hit songs including This Can’t Be Love, Thou Swell and My Romance.

Soloist Elizabeth Lamont brought requisite innocence to her lead role as the bespectacled Nancy, a.k.a. Cinderella, who solves all of life’s woes with nifty body isolations and a can-do spirit. Her transformation into a more glamorous version of herself during the Starlight Ballroom’s “big reveal” scene proved this always-radiant dancer’s chameleonic acting abilities, able to stir our hearts as during her truly tender pas de deux performed on pointe with her pilot Father (second soloist Liam Caines) prior to his tragic death — or inspire gales of laughter as she cavorts with her BFF (best fur friend), Dog.