Hybrid of essays, short fiction classic Coupland

Retired guidance counsellor defends explicit 2025 sex-ed presentation to high school football team in disciplinary hearing

Gus Watanabe, a former employee of Oak Park High School in Winnipeg, was the subject of a public disciplinary hearing on Thursday.

Mayoral candidate Vogiatzakis criticized for living outside Winnipeg

A mayoral hopeful took heat from other candidates Friday for living outside Winnipeg while running in the civic election.

Mike Vogiatzakis’s primary residence is in the Rural Municipality of St. Andrews, about 25 kilometres north of Winnipeg — a community with its own mayor and councillors.

But the funeral director said he owns a home in Winnipeg where he divides his time, and he would move to the city full-time if elected mayor.

“It doesn’t matter where a person lives. Why are we dividing St. Andrews and Manitoba and Winnipeg? I’ve met the criteria to run for mayor,” Vogiatzakis said Friday morning.

Creative powerhouse Perry Rosemond never lost Winnipeg roots

He created King of Kensington, directed the troops in the Royal Canadian Air Farce, and his creative eye was behind the lens for television shows starring Johnny Cash, Tom Jones, Mr. Dress-Up and the Friendly Giant.

He also wrote and developed the Canadian version of Sesame Street during his time as the head of school and preschool programming for CBC in Toronto, and directed a televised special in 2002 for Winnipeg sketch comedy troupe Royal Liechtenstein Theatre Company.

But before his name featured in the credits of some of the most iconic and influential pieces of the Cancon canon, Perry Rosemond was an only child living in a crammed, multi-generational home in Winnipeg’s North End, racing each day to beat the morning bell next door at William Whyte School.

In memoirs that have yet to be published, the late television producer recalled his childhood. “(T)here were 14 of us in the house at 193 Andrews St., and it wasn’t that big of a house,” he writes.

Clock ticks down on destruction of records documenting residential school abuses

In less than a year, a private company is set to destroy the largest cache of records detailing the widespread abuse of Indigenous children at residential schools in Canada.

The destruction, which was ordered by an Ontario court in 2014 and later upheld by the Supreme Court, is set to take place on Sept. 19, 2027.

This countdown is igniting emotional conversations that seek to balance the immense historical value of the records alongside the confidentiality survivors were promised as part of the process of providing detailed testimony about abuses they’d suffered.

The records were created as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a class-action settlement stemming from survivors who began suing the federal government in the late 1990s over the harm they’d been subjected to at residential schools.

Blown lead spoils Jets opener

Younger. Faster. Stronger.

They may still be a long ways from a finished product, but it’s safe to say the new-look Winnipeg Jets made a mostly favourable first impression on Friday night in front of a sold-out crowd at Canada Life Centre.

Sure, a 4-3 overtime loss to a hard-nosed Boston Bruins outfit is going to sting a little, especially since the home team was just 98 seconds away from a regulation victory.

But if the Jets can bottle up this kind of energy and effort, they should enjoy plenty of success over the course of the 84-game campaign.

Hybrid of essays, short fiction classic Coupland

A hybrid of Andy Warhol and Marshall McLuhan, Douglas Coupland sometimes works as a visual artist, other times as a writer. With 13 novels under his belt along with two collections of short stories and seven non-fiction books, he has created a great library of Canadian work.

In spite of his preoccupation with all things digital, this latest compilation has the feel of a mix tape — a self-consciously retro object (a book on paper, for Pete’s sake), put together lovingly with new stuff and some old faves. Among the 70 items within Bit Rot are social commentaries, personal recollections and Coupland’s characteristic brand of fiction, which at its best amuses and breaks your heart a little at the same time.

The short stories in Bit Rot are outnumbered by essays, but when we do stumble upon the little tales of unlikely folks such as Kimberly Kellog and Coffinshark the Unpleasant, they are like little treasures. It’s hard to get too emotionally invested in them, though, especially when these stories wrap up in four pages or so. As a fiction writer, Coupland is at his best in novels, where he can really let a character develop instead of setting up a clever way to make a point.

One endearing constant is that whether he’s writing fiction or non-fiction, Coupland peppers his writing with memorable factoids. For instance, he shares with us in the piece Smells that the artificial aroma of cinnamon candy works as the anti-smell of human death. “You learn something new every day, and this is what you learned today,” the author says, punctuating his trivium in that adorable way he has.