That’s all she wrote for library gift shop

First Crumbl cookie shop opens in Winnipeg

The early birds got their cookies.

Klaudia and Jayson Ballantyne were the first in line for the grand opening of Winnipeg’s first Crumbl location at 1570 Regent Ave. West, arriving at 2 a.m. Friday — six hours before the cookie chain was set to open.

The brother and sister brought their lawn chairs and blankets and hunkered down.

Roughly 90 minutes later, by their count, the next customers arrived.

Goblin:Macbeth is a monstrously entertaining show

Screw your courage to the sticking point, for Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre has just unleashed a gaggle of goblins at the Tom Hendry Warehouse in its ghoulishly theatrical Goblin:Macbeth.

The darkly subversive, 95-minute (sans intermission) production is the brainchild of Spontaneous Theatre’s Bruce Horak and Rebecca Northan (also serving as director), with Ellis Lalonde (sound designer).

It stars a trio of larger-than-life, pointy-eared goblins, Wug, Kragva and Moog — fie on anyone seeking to determine their tightly guarded mortal identities — who cavort and kibbitz with audience members before stumbling across The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

After indignantly declaring “we are not Tolkien goblins,” and sharing a bit of goblin-lore (who knew these demons had 17 genders?) they vow they will attempt to “do theatre” to better understand our culture, choosing the Bard’s superstition-riddled Scottish Play for being the shortest and bloodiest.

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.

That’s all she wrote for library gift shop

FRIENDS of the Public Library is closing the book on its fundraising gift shop after 17 years.