Mondragon closing doors for good this month

Security guard in stable condition after grocery store assault

A security guard was taken to hospital after an assault at a Sargent Avenue FreshCo Friday, just days after another guard was stabbed during a robbery at a St. James Dollarama.

Oddities market fills the gap in macabre curiosities

The dolls Katherine Blahut designs are the ones from your childhood — with a macabre twist.

There’s the Nosferatu-inspired “NosferaTOT,” complete with fangs, pointed ears and another doll’s severed leg, and “ScAriel,” a demonic, Disney-inspired mermaid more interested in taking human souls than gaining one.

“I get a lot of questions like, ‘Are they haunted?’” Blahut said Sunday at An Oddly Curious Market in Winnipeg, where she was one of 45 vendors.

The sight of sinister-looking baby dolls brought some marketgoers to a dead halt at Blahut’s table. Some were curious or commented on how impressed they were by her work. Some visitors appeared a tad uncomfortable.

Manitoba Hydro’s strategy: Deny, deny, deny

Here’s a good story…

A man walks into your office and says, “Have I got a deal for you! I want $3 billion (plus perhaps a bit more) to build you something that you might use three or even four times a year, for maybe 30-60 hours each time. Sign here.”

You might respond… “and I’ve got a lovely bridge for sale…”

That is exactly what Manitoba Hydro wants — $3 billion or more, plus the fossil fuel bonus for peak load events that happen a few times each year. They assure us that the gas turbines will only be used very occasionally. At the same time, they tell us that we are headed for a crisis of energy supply by 2030.

Making mentoring magic one child at a time

When Bree-Ann Jubinville first met the eight-year-old she was going to mentor, she had no idea how much the child would go on to alter the course of her life.

Rare and tough to notice, sarcomas may lurk in the body

Last summer, Michelle Finley was going about a normal day.

She had just dropped her car off at a garage and was walking back to her office building downtown when, suddenly, she was stopped in her tracks by a searing cramp on the bottom of her right foot.

“It was so painful it took my breath away,” says Finley, now 52. “I stopped and held on to the side of a building for a second — like, it was bringing tears to my eyes.”

Finley thought she had a really bad case of plantar fasciitis. Nine months later she would lose her foot to sarcoma.

Mondragon closing doors for good this month

The Mondragon cafe and bookstore, Winnipeg’s anarchist icon, will close in one week, ending an 18-year run of lefty politics, co-operative management and southern fried tofu.

“We’ve had a rough year, a rough couple of years, financially,” said Cora Wiens, one of Mondragon’s remaining workers. “I think a lot of people are really sad about it and are now realizing what this place has meant.”

A series of slow changes conspired against the Exchange District institution. Everyday costs increased, foot traffic declined and competition from new restaurants and coffee shops in the area is on the rise. Mondragon’s alternative bookstore, which traditionally bolstered the cafe’s bottom line, also saw shrinking sales, as bookstores across the continent have.

And where once the co-op had a dozen members to share the work, now only five remain. The five have been talking seriously about closing all month, and Jan. 26 will be the business's last day.