Reel Pride film fest set to celebrate 35 years

Safety officers responded to three assaults in first 4 1/2 months at downtown Hydro HQ

Manitoba Hydro Place beefed up its security after an employee was assaulted in the main-floor gallery while leaving work in January leading the Crown corporation to close the building to the public for several weeks while it hired and trained institutional safety officers.

Reel Pride film fest set to celebrate 35 years

One of the oldest queer film festivals anywhere, Reel Pride is celebrating its 35th anniversary of the founding of the Winnipeg Gay and Lesbian Film Society this year. And a little thing like a pandemic isn’t going to stop it.

But like many festivals facing this particular crisis, it is going online, with a selection of 23 films that span from local/contemporary (Madison Thomas’s feature Ruthless Souls) to venerable European groundbreakers (the 1974 Dutch film A Very Natural Thing) with numerous, decades-spanning docs in between, such as the 1992 National Film Board documentary Forbidden Love and the recent Sex, Sin & 69 (2019), a look at how homosexuality was de-criminalized in Canada in the year 1969.

Festival programmer Derek Bowman says the selections reflect the diversity of a very diverse audience, interested in both classics and new discoveries, such as the documentary Pier Kids (2019), about homeless queer and trans youth living on the Christopher Street Pier in New York City.

Bowman, who works in the library system by day, is a cinephile who just joined the programming committee this year.

‘Extremely disappointed’: hunters being turned away near Bloodvein First Nation, Manitoba Wildlife Federation says

The Manitoba Wildlife Federation says hunters are again being refused access to land near Bloodvein River First Nation, a year after leadership told court it would let them through.

Baruchel soulful in role as frustrated Canuck daredevil

For better and worse, the name of the barely famous Canadian stunt driver Ken Carter (a.k.a. The Mad Canadian) will always be associated with the name of his much more famous American counterpart Evel Knievel.

Both men made their livings cheating death, jumping vehicles over a series of ever-more-daunting barriers, breaking records and bones in equal measure.

Carter’s career was, well, just more Canadian, which is to say obscure. After Knievel unsuccessfully tried to fly a motorcycle over Snake River Canyon in Idaho, Carter got the notion of flying a Lincoln Continental a whole mile over a stretch of the St. Lawrence River as the ultimate challenge of his career.

What followed was not so much a test of courage but endurance, as Carter kept cancelling the jump over a period of years, determined to do it without killing himself in the process.

No more Jets 1.0 or 2.0: League announces all eras of Winnipeg’s club to be merged

Mark Scheifele’s goal was always to chase down his mentor and former Barrie Colts head coach Dale Hawerchuk, no matter what the official record book said.

So when the NHL and the Winnipeg Jets announced on Thursday morning that they were consolidating the franchise history to include the 1.0 and 2.0 eras (including the Atlanta Thrashers chapter of the club), Scheifele was among those to give the move two thumbs up.

“Yeah, it clarifies it for you guys more, not as much (for) me,” said Scheifele. “It’s really cool to bring in the old Jets records, and especially Dale. Chasing him down was always on my mind. So, it’s cool to do it actually in the record books.”

Scheifele remains the franchise leader in games played (961) and he’s likely to eclipse Hawerchuk in goals (Scheifele has 372 to Hawerchuk’s 379) and points (Scheifele has 907 to Hawerchuk’s 929) this season. He now has Thomas Steen’s 553 assists in his sights after amassing 535 heading into 2026-27.