Grit and gore

What does the PC stand for in party’s name? Seems to be Pretty Confused

It should have been obvious from the beginning that the Manitoba Progressive Conservative party was going to have trouble holding itself together under Obby Khan.

Well-balanced western packs propulsive plot — and plenty of monsters

Alex Grecian, graphic novelist and author of the bestselling Victorian murder mystery series Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad, shifts his focus to the American West with a fantasy-inflected bounty hunt for a witch that also features ghosts, werewolves and at least one demon.

Red Rabbit joins a bit of a trend of work blending the weird or fantastic with the conventions of a western — think of books such as Cruel Angels Past Sundown by Hailey Piper or Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and films such as Bone Tomahawk and Ravenous. Though the legacy of classic westerns is mostly clean adventures and gun-slinging, contemporary westerns play against this trope to engage with the extreme violence of the actual historical era. As such, readers of Red Rabbit should be prepared for a fair bit of gore.

At her mother’s insistence, Rose Nettles, a school teacher in Philadelphia, answers an ad seeking a wife in Kansas. She leaves her entire life behind to marry Joe Mullins, an agreeable if unremarkable farmer.

After Joe’s unexpected death, Rose encounters a group of drifters placing a hex over his grave. Tom Goggins, a professed witch hunter, assures her the hex will kill the witch Sadie Grace in nearby Burden County. Tom is travelling with a mute child he has named Rabbit as well as two cowboys with no destination in mind and they invite Rose to come along with them to the town of Riddle where they can collect the bounty on the witch.

Acquisition of former residential school grounds will help educate future generations: premier

Premier Wab Kinew says a former Brandon-area campground acquired by the province will help educate future generations about the horrors of residential schools.

“We live in an era where people are trying to deny what happened in residential schools,” Kinew said during a Tuesday afternoon visit to Turtle Crossing Campground, near the former Brandon Indian Residential School. “It’s an important part of our national history, and keeping that truth alive.”

Kinew officially announced the province’s plan Tuesday, in partnership with the City of Brandon, to acquire and protect the site where the bodies of more than 50 Indigenous children are located.

The premier said the property has “huge national significance” for education about residential school history because it is one of the “most documented” in the country. He carried photographs, and some 20th century newspaper clippings from the Brandon Sun around the site Tuesday.

Now-independent ex-Tory leader skips legislature’s first question period in four months

Crime rates, the cost of living and the state of health care were on the agenda Tuesday when the legislature’s fall sitting began a day after Obby Khan’s abrupt resignation from the Tory caucus.

Obsessed stalker who shot, killed young woman at bus stop in 1993 dies behind bars at age 74

A Winnipeg man who stalked a woman for several years before shooting her dead in the street in 1993 has died in Stony Mountain prison.

On Monday, 74-year-old Ronald Edd Bell died of apparent natural causes at the federal prison just north of Winnipeg, the Correctional Service of Canada said.

Bell had been in prison since May 30, 1994, when he was given a life sentence with no chance of parole for 18 years for killing Terry-Lyn Babb, 25, on Jan. 21, 1993.

Bell walked up behind an unsuspecting Babb, who was waiting at a bus stop at Sherbrook Street and Wolseley Avenue, and shot her in the head with a pistol in front of horrified witnesses, says the Free Press report of his sentencing hearing.