Brendan Fraser wins best actor Oscar in career comeback

Blown lead spoils Jets opener

Younger. Faster. Stronger.

They may still be a long ways from a finished product, but it’s safe to say the new-look Winnipeg Jets made a mostly favourable first impression on Friday night in front of a sold-out crowd at Canada Life Centre.

Sure, a 4-3 overtime loss to a hard-nosed Boston Bruins outfit is going to sting a little, especially since the home team was just 98 seconds away from a regulation victory.

But if the Jets can bottle up this kind of energy and effort, they should enjoy plenty of success over the course of the 84-game campaign.

Brendan Fraser wins best actor Oscar in career comeback

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Brendan Fraser won the best actor Oscar for “The Whale,” a transformative role in which he revived a career that was once so bright.

“I started in this business 30 years ago and things didn’t come easily to me,” said an emotional Fraser, breathing heavily on stage Sunday night. “I just want to say thank you for this acknowledgement.”

Fraser was one of five first-time nominees in the category, the first time that had happened since 1935. Fraser beat out Austin Butler of “Elvis,” Colin Farrell of “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Paul Mescal of “Aftersun,” and Bill Nighy of “Living.”

Fraser figures the role of Charlie, a 600-pound reclusive gay English teacher who tries to restore his relationship with his teenage daughter, found him at the perfect time.

Retired guidance counsellor defends explicit 2025 sex-ed presentation to high school football team in disciplinary hearing

Gus Watanabe, a former employee of Oak Park High School in Winnipeg, was the subject of a public disciplinary hearing on Thursday.

Broadening prediction-market gambling a bad idea

Let’s make a prediction: sooner or later, when Canadian governments find a way to take their own cut of the action, prediction-contract gambling on everything from sports to entertainment to political decisions is going to come to Canada.

And that’s a horrible, dangerous, pernicious idea.

Unless you have particular access to information — either inside information or strategic information based on skills or education — you’re not likely to make money at it. In fact, structurally, you’re likely to lose. In prediction markets, you basically pay an amount, plus fees from the company involved, to bet on whether something will or will not happen within a certain time frame. The amount you pay for your contract depends on how other people are also betting.

As Wealthsimple describes it, “You buy whichever side you think is right. Prices move with demand, so if the market leans towards one outcome, the more that side costs. If a lot of people are backing the TSX to finish above 38,000, yes gets more expensive and no gets cheaper.”

Morning-show veteran swaps microphone for macchiatos at new Corydon café

Good news if you were used to having your morning coffee with Terri Gale, who earlier this summer signed off from CTV Your Morning, after 15 years on the job.

Gale, the three-hour program’s longtime weather expert, and her husband Rob Gale, the ex-head soccer coach of Valour FC and co-founder of the Northern Super League’s new Winnipeg franchise, are the owners of Golden Hour Café and Bar at 775 Corydon Ave.

Gale (formerly Apostle) nods when she is asked who would know more about caffeinated beverages than a person who, for the last decade and a half, set her alarm to go off in the wee small hours.

“I do love coffee and take mine black. Except because I hate burning my tongue — not a good thing when you speak for a living — I got into the habit of throwing a couple of ice cubes in my cup, to be on the safe side,” Gale says, seated on the second level of their attractive, 2,100-square-foot premises, which officially opened in mid-September.