‘If I can do it, you can do it’

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: We love our grandchildren, but now we’re sick of them. The two sets of parents — our adult children — have been parking their kids out here on the farm with us while they take back-to-back road trips to see their friends. We’ve had enough.

Grandma and I want them to come back and get the “brats” (just joking, they’re nice kids) so we can relax.

You have to be so careful with city kids around the farm who don’t know when they’re going to make a mistake and get hoofed by an animal or run over by a farm implement.

How do we tell our kids the party is over early, and they really need to come back before grandma and I give out?

As a non-Jewish Canadian, I have watched our public conversation about Israel and Palestine become increasingly polarized. One feature of that debate has particularly caught my attention—not the disagreements themselves, but the moral courage required of Jewish Canadians who publicly dissent from influential voices within their own community.

Ironically, many non-Jewish Canadians who may have little familiarity with Jewish history assume that disagreement is somehow un-Jewish. The opposite is true. Debate has been central to Jewish intellectual life for centuries. The Talmud itself preserves arguments rather than erasing them.

To outsiders, minority communities can easily appear to speak with one voice. In Canada, organizations such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), Jewish Federations of Canada (UIA) and B’nai Brith are often perceived as representing the Jewish perspective on Israel and antisemitism. They undoubtedly represent many Canadian Jews. But they do not represent them all.

There are also Jewish organizations and individuals — including Independent Jewish Voices Canada, the United Jewish People’s Order, the recently formed Jewish Faculty Network and others — who reject the notion that any single institution or political perspective can define what it means to speak as a Jew in Canada. They frequently offer perspectives that differ from those advanced by many established Jewish organizations about Israel; defend the importance of free expression on university campuses; and argue that criticism of the actions of the Israeli government should not automatically be equated with antisemitism.

U.S. authorities say a Manitoba man falsely claimed he had been kidnapped and taken across the Canada-U.S. border over the weekend.

Roderick Garson, 37, is being held in a county jail near Alexandria, Minn., after he was arrested and charged with falsely reporting a crime.

The arrest stems from a report police received Saturday that a man had been abducted with a weapon in Manitoba and taken across the border into the United States.

The investigation led U.S. authorities to Alexandria, about two hours northwest of Minneapolis, where police located the reported victim and suspect after the latter ran into a local store claiming he had escaped from his 31-year-old unnamed captor.

It’s back and it’s better than ever.

National non-profit ogranization motionball will be returning for its annual event — the 2026 Marathon of Sports Winnipeg — at the Dakota Community Centre Sept. 19. This fundraising event will help support the Special Olympics Manitoba and Canada foundation in hopes of reaching their goal of $100,000.

Local Special Olympic athletes, including the province’s own Alec Baldwin, as well as registered participants will join together to play a variety of team sports such as basketball, kinball and bocce ball.