Shot-in-Manitoba films ready to screen, stream

Former host/VJ Rick Campanelli revisits his gambling addiction in new memoir

To many Canadians, veteran media personality Rick Campanelli is better known as Rick the Temp, the energetic, baby-faced intern-turned-VJ on MuchMusic in the 1990s and early 2000s.

But behind that winning smile was a much darker reality.

In his new memoir, Tempted: My Story, released last month via HarperCollins Canada and co-written with John Meyer, Campanelli, 56, opens up for the first time about his struggles with a serious — and secret — gambling addiction, which reached its nadir in 2008 when the then-host of Entertainment Tonight Canada was detained by U.S. Homeland Security for unpaid casino debts on a flight back from Las Vegas.

The Free Press caught up with Campanelli in advance of his Winnipeg launch Monday evening at McNally Robinson Grant Park. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Modern myths: RWB updates classic Slavic folk tales as part of Stravinsky-based double bill

Two stories, two choreographers, one composer: the Royal Winnipeg Ballet opens its 2026/27 season with a double bill that celebrates the influential works of Igor Stravinsky.

Stravinsky Stories, which runs Thursday to Sunday at the Centennial Concert Hall, pairs veteran Russian-Ukrainian choreographer (and former RWB principal dancer) Alexei Ratmansky’s The Fairy’s Kiss with the world première of emerging Chicago-born choreographer Houston Thomas’s Firebird.

Much like Tchaikovsky before him, Stravinsky was a composer who took commissions for ballets, but there are actually no definitive versions of either of these works, says RWB artistic director Christopher Stowell.

“Unlike Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty, where there’s sort of a blueprint of a classical production that most people follow, there have been famous productions of both The Fairy’s Kiss and Firebird, but there isn’t one that everyone’s following at all,” he says.

Shot-in-Manitoba films ready to screen, stream

This has been a big year for film and TV shot in Winnipeg, with fare such as the comedic gangster film Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice topping the streaming charts when it debuted in March on Hulu/Disney+, with more than 300 million views worldwide.

Smaller indie films, such as Johnny Ma’s The Mother and the Bear, and James McLellan and Alexandre (Sasha) Trudeau’s dramatic feature Hair of the Bear also got long-awaited screen time in the first quarter of the year, as did Rhayne Vermette’s experimental feature Levers.

After the Bob Odenkirk thriller Normal becomes available Tuesday, expect more locally shot fare to come to cinemas, or your TV screen, in the months ahead.

The election of our discontent: City at a crumbling crossroads, grumbling residents say in poll

There’s an undercurrent of unhappiness running through the Winnipeg electorate as the municipal election day approaches.

One-half of Winnipeggers believe the city is heading in the wrong direction, according to a new Abacus Data poll, with nearly one-third unsure if Winnipeg is regressing or progressing.

Only 21 per cent of residents believe the city is on the right track, the Free Press-commissioned poll found.

That discontentment extends to how the city spends its tax dollars, with four in 10 Winnipeggers believing they receive poor value for what they pay in property taxes.

Bombers on outside looking in after beatdown from Als

The visitors’ locker room at Percival Molson Memorial Stadium was eerily quiet late Saturday night.

Many of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers sat in their stalls with dejected looks on their faces, trying to wrap their heads around what had just transpired: a 37-10 beatdown at the hands of the Montreal Alouettes.

“(That game) felt like s—-, honestly,” receiver Tim White told the Free Press postgame.

And the Bombers have plenty of reason to feel that way, especially when looking at the West Division standings.

Transgender air force member fined for 17 Wing Winnipeg protest

A transgender military member has been fined in a case where she was Tasered while fighting to have her gender identity changed on her file.

Royal Canadian Air Force Sgt. Athena Morris was fined $2,000 for unlawfully entering a restricted area at 17 Wing Winnipeg on March 31, 2025, when she demanded the gender marker on her file be changed. Morris, a transgender woman, said she had been trying to get her gender identifier changed since January of that year.

The incident was a culmination of “months of friction,” defence counsel Maj. Carlos Da Cruz told military judge Stephen Strickey Monday during a hearing at HMCS Chippawa, a Royal Canadian Navy Reserve division in Winnipeg.

Da Cruz told court Morris was misgendered by colleagues and superiors and told she wasn’t allowed to use the women’s bathrooms or showers.