Little to like about writer turned smuggler

Reading the city in its buildings

Cities reveal what they value. Their buildings are the evidence.

Long after today’s debates have ended, buildings remain. They record what a community believed was worth building, what it considered beautiful, what it chose to preserve — and, perhaps most revealingly, what it allowed to disappear. Architecture is history written in brick, stone, concrete, glass, steel and wood.

Architecture is not only about the past. It is also about the future. Every building we preserve, every building we construct and every building we demolish says something about who we are — and what kind of city we hope to become. Our built environment forms part of our collective cultural memory. It tells the story of where we have been while shaping where we are going.

A city is a manuscript that every generation revises. Our responsibility is to leave the next chapter better than the one we inherited.

Spike in safety concerns doesn’t feel like harm reduction

It’s after dinner when a couple of young boys appear on my porch. I recognize them from the neighbourhood, but they’re not here to ask my kids to come out for a game of basketball. Instead, one asks, “Is it OK to come in for a little bit. There’s a guy out there and he’s scaring us.”

Health care and economic growth

PLEASE do not ask how my algorithm delivered this news.

Still, apparently, embalmers are finding that “tough, white, rubbery, fibrous masses resembling strips of calamari … are turning up in body after body across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.”

According to this news source, these fibrous entities emerged after the COVID pandemic and subsequent vaccine rollout.

Citing research published in the International Journal of Innovative Research in Medical Science by a retired U.S. Army officer, the news presenter weaves a horror story of an unsuspecting public being duped into accepting harmful vaccines. The YouTube video I viewed is just one example of the anti-vaccination lobby’s toolkit.

Little to like about writer turned smuggler

In his compelling but ultimately flawed new memoir, former Canadian music journalist Slava Pastuk — or “Slava P” as he was known through Vice Media — chronicles his journey from music writer at a hip, trendy media outlet to convicted drug smuggler.

Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Pastuk grew up in Barrie, Ont. and developed a passion for hip-hop and online videos by then-upstart media group Vice. At the time Vice specialized in guerrilla-style videos featuring reporters buying guns in Liberia or trying mind-altering drugs in Brazil.

“I was obsessed with their gritty style: each video immersed me in the action, making me feel like I was participating in something illegal,” he writes.

At 19, he left a promising job in marketing to work for Noisey Canada, Vice’s music news division. It was his dream job and led to a life of exclusive parties in Toronto’s music scene.

Winnipeg Fringe Festival: 2026 show reviews

Not sure what to see at this year's Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival? All of the Free Press’s reviews will be published here.  Find a show and click to read its review.

Small business group says immigration cut makes it tough to hire workers

Canada’s immigration clampdown has put employers in remote and rural places in a bind and put fear into employees from abroad who want to stay.

Yi (Rick) Zheng and his family from China, who’ve been working in Thompson for two years and hope to gain permanent residency, said they fear their work permits will expire and they’ll have to leave the country.

Zheng, 41, says he works as a restaurant cook and his wife works at a hotel in the northern city, where their two children, ages 10 and 12, are thriving in school.

“I work very hard every day. Our kitchen doesn’t have enough staff.”