The Social Page: Art on the edge

Hurricane Simon pounds resorts and vulnerable towns along Mexico’s Pacific coast

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico (AP) — Hurricane Simon pounded Mexico’s Pacific coast as a Category 3 storm on Sunday, its eye remaining just offshore as its most powerful winds and rain slammed people living between the Sierra Madre and the ocean.

The hurricane's center swirled parallel to the coast, closing in on the Puerto Vallarta area, where its most damaging winds and rain were expected to hit around midnight and continue through Monday morning. Its maximum sustained winds weakened late Sunday to 115 mph (185 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, but it was still expected to remain a dangerous hurricane.

That’s not good news for people in and around Puerto Vallarta, a popular tourist destination in the state of Jalisco. Just inland and uphill from the resort areas, many Mexicans live in communities where housing might not stand up to the storm.

By late Sunday, Simon's eye was moving northwest about 45 miles (75 kilometers) south of Cabo Corrientes at about 5 mph (7 kph). A senior hurricane center specialist, Philippe Papin, said this westernmost tip of mainland Mexico is the area most likely to get a direct hit from the system. Cabo Corrientes is at the southern tip of Bahia de Banderas, the wide bay where Puerto Vallarta looks out to the Pacific.

The Social Page: Art on the edge

The Exchange District’s Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art centre hosted the opening of the exhibition Floe Edge: Contemporary Art and Collaborations from Nunavut on Sept. 8.

The unconventional Inuit art show, which runs until Oct. 14, features works ranging from photography, drawings and sculpture to sealskin stilettos and the metamorphosis of painted sea-ice walls captured on time-lapse video.

For more information, visit urbanshaman.org.

Backstreet Boys extend Toronto residency to 11 nights

TORONTO - Hit '90s boyband The Backstreet Boys are adding more tour dates to their Toronto residency.

What was first announced as a four-night run at Rogers Centre has swelled to 11 shows, with the band's recent announcement they're adding concerts on March 5 and 6.

The band says on its website the new dates were added "due to overwhelming demand."

Dubbed “Into the Millennium – Homecoming: Live in Canada,” the residency will kick off on Feb. 12.

A Life's Story: Writer built bridges with genuine curiosity, compassion for diversity of religious practices

Brenda Suderman knew how to make people feel comfortable. For a journalist, that character trait is a real strength, and it made people trust and appreciate her.

Whether covering musicals, worship spaces, the effects of pandemic shutdowns, death rituals and practices of different traditions, the discovery of the burial of 2,284 infants in unmarked graves, or any other of the countless topics she wrote about in her four- decade career, Suderman did it with genuine interest and care.

Born and raised in Winkler, Suderman grew up on a farm. Much of her childhood was spent in gardens and sugar beet fields.

Baptized at 16, she became a member of the Winkler Bergthaler Mennonite Church. The restrictions against women at the time contributed to planting the seeds of Suderman’s feminist perspective.