Language, identity flow through essays

Childfree Winnipeg group gives women without kids a place to gather

Katelyn Sawatzky founded Childfree Winnipeg Women in 2021 to bring together women who don’t have kids — be it by choice or circumstance — and do not plan on raising children.

The group is designed to help them share experiences and build meaningful friendships.

The community welcomes cisgender, straight, transgender, bisexual and lesbian women. Parents, including empty nesters and men, are turned away.

“Our group is a safe space where women can hang out with other women without being asked when you’re going to have kids or why you don’t have kids … where you don’t feel like you have to validate or defend your choices in any way, because everyone gets it,” Sawatzky says.

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: There are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions today. The new moon is in Virgo.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

Discussions with partners and close friends will intensify in the next few weeks and financial discussions will favour you. In fact, money might come your way. The new moon is perfect for making resolutions to improve your health.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Supportive housing operator sued after man with dementia walks away

The Public Guardian and Trustee of Manitoba is suing a health services company after a man with dementia under its care allegedly wandered away from an apartment it operates for vulnerable people and was later found face down in a puddle — unresponsive, hypothermic and severely injured.

The public trustee — a provincial government agency that, among other duties, makes financial and personal care decisions for vulnerable adults who cannot do so themselves — filed the lawsuit against Cambridge Health Inc. and a related numbered company in the Court of King’s Bench earlier this month.

The agency did so on behalf of a now-38-year-old man, who has been under its care since 2018, as a result of his frontotemporal dementia. The disease often starts in mid-life, rather than old age, as is the case with most other forms of dementia.

The lawsuit alleges the man, who resided at a Henderson Highway apartment complex where Cambridge Health operated a supportive residence for people with complex behavioural health issues, was in a common area of the home at about 4:30 p.m. on April 3 last year.

Language, identity flow through essays

In this collection of personal essays, 26 Canadian writers explore their relationship with language. The language in question could be Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, Italian, Cantonese, Norwegian, Punjabi, Anishinaabemowin, English, French, sign language or a dialect spoken by only a few. Or it could be their connection to the range of English words used to describe race or gender. But in most cases they are writing about their relationship with their mother tongue or the mother tongue of their parents.

All these writers excel in English and earn their living writing, translating or teaching in English. Indeed, the quality of the writing here is as impressive as the range of experiences. While a few of the essays in Tongues explore issues of particular interest to writers, such as a debate on the use of italics for non-English words or the challenges of translating Anishanaabemowin to English when the languages have developed in such different contexts, most of the essays focus the experiences of first-generation Canadians.

The subtitle of the book, On Longing and Belonging Through Language, is a good summary of the themes. Language isn’t simply a means of communication; it’s about identity and connection as well. Often the cost of perfecting your second language is the deterioration of your first. The phenomena of first-language attrition may not seem important when you are young, but eventually the fallout registers.

In the opening essay Tongue-Tied, Kamal Al-Solayee, the director of journalism at UBC, tells of leaving his Yemeni family for the U.K. at age 18. He knew he could never be comfortable as a gay man in the Arabic-speaking world. Now, 30 years later, he tells how little Arabic he spoke on a recent trip home. “In my mind, regaining a forgotten language has always been a drama in which I was the leading man and my family the supporting cast. It feels more and more like a one-person show, a one-sided expression of longing and memory.”

Vote for your local trustees

It’s the start of a new school year, but not just any school year. It’s also school board election year. Nominations are public knowledge and close on Sept. 22 and, on Oct. 28, new or continuing trustees will be elected, re-elected or acclaimed.

South Winnipeg neighbourhood will be first to go geothermal

A new neighbourhood in south Winnipeg will be Manitoba’s first to use a shared, large-scale geothermal system to heat and cool hundreds of homes over coming decades.

The province is giving up to $4 million to the developers of Southwood Circle, just north of the University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry campus, for a district geothermal system as part of the NDP’s goal to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

“It means a whole neighbourhood can tap into geothermal, which means low-carbon heating and cooling for at least 1,000 homes,” Premier Wab Kinew said at a news conference Wednesday.

Geothermal systems, equipped with pumps and pipes, use underground temperatures to heat and cool one or more buildings. Proponents point to long-term energy and cost savings compared with conventional heating and cooling systems.