The Social Page: Art on the edge

Icy relationship with U.S. beginning to thaw at border, data shows; American visits to Manitoba hit five-year high

As Canadians begin to lower their elbows and start to cross the U.S. border again, Americans are coming to Manitoba in numbers not seen in years.

Strike mandate for Dynacare workers

Nearly 350 laboratory technicians and technologists at Dynacare’s 22 laboratory and health services centres in Manitoba have voted in favour of a strike.

The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, which represents the employees, said in a news release that 99 per cent of members who voted supported going on strike. A strike notice has not been served to the employer. If and when that occurs, the union is required to give two weeks’ notice.

The collective agreement between the union and Dynacare ended March 31. Negotiations between the parties began in February and they have been in mediation since July 15. They’ve been unable to reach a tentative agreement through mediation, and there are no further bargaining or mediation dates scheduled, the union said in a news release.

Dynacare became Manitoba’s only private outpatient provider for laboratory services in 2017, after purchasing competitor Unicity Labs. The union said Manitoba government records show Dynacare members completed more than 15 million laboratory tests in the 2024-25 fiscal year.

Trailblazing Western Scrap Metals heavy-equipment operator relishes role at massive crane’s control

Less than five per cent of heavy-equipment operators in the country are women but that number is trending upward, according to a study conducted by trade magazine Crane & Hoist Canada.

It was reported that in Ontario roughly eight per cent of jobs in the transport and heavy-equipment field are currently held by women. Furthermore, in 2024 almost 20 per cent of graduates at an Edmonton-based heavy-equipment operator training school were female, the article stated.

That brings us to Harmony Guspodarchuk, the first female crane operator in the 70-year history of Western Scrap Metals, a family-owned business at 18 Sutherland Ave. Three years ago, Guspodarchuk literally stepped into the driver’s seat of a 27,500-kilogram, Liebherr C 924 Heavy Lift Litronic crane. The 29-year-old hasn’t looked back much since. Well, except to ensure that her machine’s 900-kilogram, five-claw grappling hook isn’t releasing a derelict air conditioner or bed frame on top of anything valuable.

“There are seven (metal) scrapyards in the city and unfortunately, I don’t know of any other women doing this,” says Guspodarchuk, dressed in a bright-orange T-shirt, dark pants and scuffed pair of steel-toe boots, her shoulder-length hair tied back in a ponytail. “That’s a shame because if you’re asking me, scrapyards could definitely use a woman’s touch. I like to think I’m very organized and one of my goals has been to clean up the yard to make things more efficient, which a lot of people tell me is now the case.”

Fusion pop-up coming to street food festival

After surviving breast cancer and watching her husband live through a brain tumour, Marilyn Magtoto decided it was time to take a chance.

Inman launching new album at WECC

Give Richard Inman a moment and a surface, and he’ll cover it with a story.

“I’ve scribbled down lyrics on paper plates, McDonald’s bags — whatever you got,” says Inman, who grew up in southern Manitoba but now lives in a three-bedroom ranch house near Twin Butte, Alta., so close to the American border that he says he can spit into Montana from his backyard.

“The other day I had a line in my head for seven hours before I wrote it down,” says the songwriter, who managed to remember the phrasing after driving home from a music festival in Idaho. “That certainly was lucky.”

Though Inman, 35, first starting sharing his Americana concoctions with crowds at Winnipeg’s Times Change(d) High & Lonesome Club in the late 2000s, learning how to play his compositions with his band, the Mad Trappers, he has spent the bulk of the past decade out west, splitting time between the stage and the sale barn.

Manitoba supports MAID delay: Asagwara

The number of Manitobans receiving medical assistance in dying in 2026 is on track with previous years while the plan to extend it to those suffering from mental illness is delayed indefinitely by the federal government — a move Manitoba’s health minister supports.

“There’s so much more work that needs to be done,” Uzoma Asagwara said.

The parliamentary committee that issued its recommendation in June was the third special committee of Parliament struck to assess the eligibility of people with mental illness since 2021, when MAID eligibility was expanded to include people who were not at the end of their lives.

A key condition for MAID eligibility is that a patient must be suffering from a grievous and irremediable medical condition.