Older and wiser

Province orders ban on private teacher-student messaging

Manitoba teachers are no longer allowed to text or use social media to contact a student – regardless of whether they coach a school sports team or supervise other activities outside typical instruction times.

Brown to rescue

Don’t let the final score fool you.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers clinched a playoff berth with a 34-10 victory over the B.C. Lions on Friday night in Vancouver, but it was anything but pretty.

Had they not been facing a lineup loaded with second- and third-stringers, the Bombers might be preparing for the off-season instead of another game right now.

Luckily for them, they survived three horrendous quarters to prevail. A loss would have ended their season and handed a playoff spot to the Calgary Stampeders instead.

Security under magnifying glass after suspicious death on Mountain Avenue

Homicide detectives are investigating the suspicious death of a 70-year-old man at a seniors high-rise on Mountain Avenue.

Forensic investigators and detectives have been at the building, at 595 Mountain Ave., and questioning residents about the death of Richard Boychuk, whose body was found in his second-storey suite Tuesday morning.

The 70-year-old, who used a wheelchair, had lived in the Winnipeg Housing Rehabilitation Corp. apartment for several years, said close friend Angela Abdilla.

She would clean, shop and take care of Boychuk, a former Elvis impersonator.

Older and wiser

Hiromi Goto has no time for stereotypes of little old ladies as weak, confused, boring and prim.

In her breakout 1994 novel, Chorus of Mushrooms, Goto brought three generations of Japanese-Canadian Alberta women to life and gave us Obachan Naoe, one of the most memorable octogenarians in contemporary Canadian literature.

In Shadow Life, a graphic novel illustrated by Ann Xu, we meet Kumiko, a grumpy, magical and thoroughly endearing elderly Japanese-Canadian woman who attracts people and spirits alike, even when she doesn’t want their attention.

Told primarily from Kumiko’s point of view in dynamic, silent sequences punctuated occasionally by thoughts and dialogue, Shadow Life depicts the everyday joys and frustrations of old age, including encroaching illness, meddling family and rekindled friendships. This story is on the cusp between reality and something more fantastical, as death appears to Kumiko in a series of morphing black shadows, shapes and creatures. But, with practicality and defiance, she traps it inside her old vacuum cleaner, wards it off with salt and fights it with all her strength, because it is not yet her time to go.

Opening of Portage and Main shows even seemingly insurmountable impasses can be overcome

There are places in a city that become more than places. Portage and Main is one of them. For generations of Winnipeggers, the intersection has represented downtown, traffic, development and civic identity. Its reopening to pedestrians in 2025, after 46 years of closure, was about more than crossing a street. It was a reminder that decisions made by one generation can shape the choices available to another — and that even seemingly permanent decisions can be reconsidered.

I have spent much of my professional life thinking about Winnipeg as a planner, working in public, private and non-profit settings. My PhD research gave me an opportunity to examine Portage and Main differently: not simply as a debate about cars and pedestrians, but as a window into how power operates in a city. I reviewed 569 archival documents spanning the 1960s to the present, interviewed 48 planners with experience in Winnipeg, and mapped the relationships between planners, politicians, developers, engineers, residents, businesses and advocacy groups.

What emerged was a story about how planning decisions become embedded in a city’s institutions, agreements, infrastructure, professional practices and political expectations — shaping not only what gets built, but who gets to influence what gets built.

The closure of Portage and Main in 1979 did not remain a decision confined to a particular political moment. Over time, it was reinforced by development agreements, physical infrastructure, property relationships, traffic-engineering practices, administrative routines, and public narratives about mobility and downtown revitalization. The people who made many of those original decisions eventually left office. The arrangements they created remained. Later planners inherited them.

Connor Hellebuyck breaks silence after trade from Jets

It took until the very end of his introductory news conference Saturday — right around the 15-minute mark — before Connor Hellebuyck was finally asked the question that hockey fans back in Winnipeg were likely waiting for.

“Is there anything you’d like to say to Jets fans?” a reporter who covers Hellebuyck’s new team, the New Jersey Devils, put to him during the session held inside the Prudential Center in Newark.

A short pause followed.

“I mean, there’s a lot. There’s a lot that I need to say,” Hellebuyck began, no doubt raising plenty of eyebrows around here and the hockey world in general.