Bergen wins book of the year a fourth time

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: Avoid shopping (except food and gas) and important decisions after 3:15 p.m. today. After that, the moon moves from Sagittarius into Capricorn.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

This is a poor day to challenge anyone because you won’t be pleased with the results. (You might come off worse than when you began.) Nevertheless, it’s in your best interest to work hard. You can also make improvements at home. Romance and finances are blessed.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Province rips Bell over second 911 outage

A 911 outage that lasted about 90 minutes in Manitoba and other provinces early Thursday morning was caused by a problem with Bell’s next-generation network amid concerns about recurring disruptions.

Bergen wins book of the year a fourth time

For the fourth time in his literary career, Winnipeg author David Bergen took home the top prize at the 2021 Manitoba Book Awards.

Here the Dark, a collection of short stories and a novella published by Biblioasis, won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year award, which Bergen also won for his debut novel A Year of Lesser (1996) as well as 2005’s The Time in Between and 2009’s The Retreat. Here the Dark was also a finalist for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Among the competition for the top prize at this year’s Manitoba Book Awards, announced online on May 20, was David A. Robertson’s Black Water: Family, Legacy, and Blood Memory (HarperCollins), which won the 2021 Alexander Kennedy Isbister award for non-fiction as well as the Carol Shields Winnipeg book award, as well as Lara Rae’s Dragonfly, published by J. Gordon Shillingford, which won this year’s Chris Johnson award for best play by a Manitoba playwright.

Jonathan Ball added to his Manitoba Book Award collection, winning the Margaret Laurence award for fiction for his debut collection of short fiction, The Lightning of Possible Storms, published by Book*hug Press. Ball previously won in the poetry category, as well as the 2014 award for most promising Manitoba writer.

Kinew delivered what most of us wanted; now we’ll have to deal with the consequences

Premier Wab Kinew has decided to adopt permanent daylight savings time, which means a permanent end to the spring forward, fall back tradition of adjusting our clocks. And absolutely no one is surprised.

A quick look at where provinces and territories stand on time changes

WINNIPEG - Manitoba's government said Thursday the province will be sticking with daylight time year-round, making it the latest jurisdiction to move away from twice-annual time changes. Here's a look at where things stand across Canada:

British Columbia said in March that it was moving to permanent Pacific daylight time. The change also means that parts of northeastern B.C., which have been on mountain standard time year round, are now in alignment with the rest of the province.

Alberta also switched to permanent daylight time this year in what it calls Alberta time. The change means it now has the same time as Saskatchewan year round.

Saskatchewan has been on permanent central standard time since 1966.

Siloam Mission, WFPS discussing on-site paramedic to reduce staggering number of emergency calls

Winnipeg’s fire-paramedic service and its largest homeless-serving organization are discussing what it would look like to station at least one paramedic at Siloam Mission, as emergency calls to the downtown facility surge.

The ongoing discussions come as Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service crews were dispatched 1,771 times during the first eight months of the year to the two adjacent Siloam properties at 303 Stanley St. and 300 Princess St.

WFPS said most of the calls were related to overdoses or other consequences of substance use, with the total nearly double the 854 calls recorded over the same period last year. By comparison, there were 831 calls during the same span in 2024, and 591 in 2023.

“The number of emergency calls isn’t sustainable for us as a service, but it’s certainly not sustainable for them as an agency trying to provide services,” WFPS chief Ryan Sneath told the Free Press. “And they recognize that they’re impacting emergency services, not them specifically, but the site in a significant way.”