Kinsella’s Wedding Night a chuckle

Water-bus service relaunches with bigger boat

After staying docked last summer, the water-bus service stationed at The Forks is once again ferrying people up and down the Red and Assiniboine rivers.

Winnipeg Waterways launched the service for the season on Saturday, introducing commuters to the largest water bus the company has ever operated — a 10-metre-long, custom-made vessel designed specifically for scheduled passenger service.

Named after co-owners Will Belford’s and Griffin Hewitt’s fathers, the GTS (Gas Turbine Ship) Dave was built by a company in Quebec for $200,000.

“We see the rivers as being underutilized,” Belford said on Wednesday. “So we felt strongly about investing in the water bus.”

Drunk driver who killed cycling couple, orphaned their infant daughter, sentenced to eight years

A Winnipeg man responsible for a drunk-driving crash that killed two cyclists last summer and left their infant child an orphan has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

Kuldeep Singh Gill was arrested Sept. 13 after fleeing from a high-speed collision on Kenaston Boulevard that killed 31-year-old Egor Popov and his 25-year-old common-law partner Kerry Ashley Bonner.

Gill, 46, pleaded guilty earlier this year to two counts of impaired driving causing death and two counts of failing to stop at the scene of a collision.

Gill, who has a prior conviction for impaired driving, made a conscious decision to drive drunk, knowing it made him a danger on the road, provincial court Judge David Ireland said at a sentencing hearing Tuesday.

‘This is Mommy’s park’: city honours two-time Olympic champion curler Lawes

When Kaitlyn Lawes drives through her childhood neighbourhood, she’ll now be able to point to a park bearing her name — and tell her daughters that anything is possible.

Storm left $840M of insured losses across Manitoba, Saskatchewan

Severe weather spanning two days in June — hitting both Manitoba and Saskatchewan — has led to at least $840 million in insured losses.

The June 9 and 10 weather is the latest in an increasing number of “catastrophic” events with major insurance payouts, said Rob de Pruis, the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s national director of consumer and industry relations.

The Insurance Bureau didn’t share a breakdown of insured losses by province. Most of the claims cover hail and flood damage, including sewer backups, de Pruis said.

At the time of the storm, Manitoba saw grapefruit-sized hail, torrential downpours and at least one tornado.

Kinsella’s Wedding Night a chuckle

You don't pick up a Sophie Kinsella novel expecting stellar writing, critical insights or piercing analysis. Her newest, Wedding Night, is true to the franchise, offering nothing more (or less) than an amusing beach read.

The British blockbustress is the very successful author of, among other novels, the Shopaholic series, a set of books cementing the image of modern young women as avaricious, horny consumers of all things shiny and expensive.

Wedding Night also features a twit of a heroine in Lottie, a 33-year-old with a vague-ish career in magazines. As the novel opens, Lottie is expecting her boyfriend Richard to propose to her in a restaurant.

She's so certain he'll pop the question that she has bought an engagement ring for him. This being a Kinsella book, he does not propose, and Lottie goes off the deep end.

Accused extortionist denies working for terrorist gang in India, claims to be victim

A 36-year-old accused of extorting a Winnipeg man on behalf of a criminal organization operated from a prison cell in India has denied he’s a member of the gang, instead arguing he is one of its victims.

A civil forfeiture lawsuit filed by the province in Manitoba Court of King’s Bench last month alleges Arshdeep Singh Brar, who was arrested earlier this year, claimed to be a member of the Bishnoi Gang when he tried to extort cash from the victim, who’s identified in court papers as a man of South Asian descent.

The gang, headed by convicted gangster Lawrence Bishnoi from behind bars in India, has an “established and growing presence in Canada,” says the claim.

It has been blamed in extortion cases across the country, largely in British Columbia, southern Ontario and Alberta. Gang members seek to obtain money from Indian-Canadian community members and business owners by intimidating them. At times, the incidents have escalated to shootings and arsons.