Northern reflections

Province invests $3.8M in culinary arts training facility for francophone high school students

A new dedicated culinary arts training facility will give francophone high school students a place to learn the trade in French.

The Manitoba government announced this week that it is providing $3.8 million toward the purchase of a property at 170 Marion St. and beginning design work for its renovation.

The facility will be the first dedicated vocational education site operated by Division scolaire franco-manitobaine, and the first fully French-language culinary arts program for Grade 11 and 12 students, preparing them for work in the restaurant and service sector.

“French-language education is a fundamental part of Manitoba’s identity and strength,” Education Minister Tracy Schmidt said in a news release. “It is an exciting step that will help strengthen both the francophone community and our skilled workforce.”

Restaurants ‘under pressure’

Happy hour outings are on Jackie Piggott’s calendar — but even those are fewer.

She and her husband might visit a restaurant once a month. It’s a change over the past year: earlier, they may go twice, thrice or weekly.

“It’s something that we’ve talked about, my husband and myself, just because the pricing is so expensive,” Piggott said, stopping during a grocery run in St. Vital. “It’s also better for our health.”

She’s in the majority: a new Restaurants Canada report found 80 per cent of Canadians are eating out less frequently because of higher living costs, up from 75 per cent in 2025.

WSO season kicks off with two fateful fifths

Saturday night’s Masterworks program, titled Beethoven 5 and Tchaikovsky 5 and led by Daniel Raiskin, also officially introduced the WSO’s new composer-in-residence, Kelly-Marie Murphy, to the weekend crowd of 1,720. She was met with enthusiastic applause and cheers upon taking the stage.

Blue Bombers whiff on their opportunities to put game away

In theory, Bryce Perkins has a simple job.

When it’s third and short, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers trot out the short-yardage quarterback, and all he has to do is plunge forward for a yard or two to make everyone on his sideline happy.

But on Friday night against the visiting Toronto Argonauts, he went above and beyond his job description.

The Bombers, down 24-21 with six minutes left, faced a third-and-one from their own end when Perkins found a hole and burst through it for a 76-yard touchdown to put the home team in front 28-24 late.

Is another goalie on Jets’ wish list?

Kevin Cheveldayoff and company are down to the short strokes.

With the opening-day roster due on Monday afternoon, the Winnipeg Jets took steps on the weekend to get down to the final number.

As it stood on Sunday, the Jets were down to 24 healthy players in training camp after centre Danny Zhilkin and defenceman Henry Thrun were placed on waivers.

With a maximum of 23 spots available, the only things left to determine are whether the Jets are interested in claiming a more experienced goalie to serve as the backup to Stuart Skinner and if centre Brayden Yager will break camp with the big club.

Aglukark recalls struggles, trauma of loss on her unlikely path to stardom

For many of us living in urban Canada during the 1990s, our first introduction to Inuit culture was through the songs and videos of Susan Aglukark. The four-time Juno-Award winning musician had her first breakout success in 1995 with the re-release of an album called Arctic Rose. The hit single O Siem turned the humble singer into the first Inuit performer to achieve a Top 40 hit.

Yet as Aglukark’s musical career grew by leaps and bounds throughout the ‘90s and early aughts, her private life told another story. She was waging an internal battle against trauma after losing a friend at a young age to suicide — an unfortunate theme that would underscore much of her early adult life — and the unrelenting loneliness that stemmed from being an adolescent sent hundreds of kilometres away from home just to stay in school. As a kid growing up in the Kivalliq Region (now known as Nunavut), there was no other choice but to move to Yellowknife if she wanted to earn a high school diploma.

Further, the forces behind Aglukark’s love of music was also once a relentless source of bullying. Her parents were preachers in a community unaccustomed to Christianity, and while the gospel music that filled her home may have influenced the talent that would propel her to stardom, it also made her school days a living hell.

“Our religion made us a bit of a target,” the 57-year-old artist recalls in her new memoir Kihiani: A Memoir of Healing, co-written with Andrea Warner.