Winnipeg Folk Festival 2014 – July 12

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.”

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.

Clock ticks down on destruction of records documenting residential school abuses

In less than a year, a private company is set to destroy the largest cache of records detailing the widespread abuse of Indigenous children at residential schools in Canada.

The destruction, which was ordered by an Ontario court in 2014 and later upheld by the Supreme Court, is set to take place on Sept. 19, 2027.

This countdown is igniting emotional conversations that seek to balance the immense historical value of the records alongside the confidentiality survivors were promised as part of the process of providing detailed testimony about abuses they’d suffered.

The records were created as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a class-action settlement stemming from survivors who began suing the federal government in the late 1990s over the harm they’d been subjected to at residential schools.

Sisters relieved hospital takes accountability after mother’s death

Eight months after losing their mother, two Winnipeg sisters say an internal hospital review has finally given them something they had been seeking since her death: accountability.

Chelsea Mann and Samantha Burns said St. Boniface Hospital officials acknowledged mistakes were made in the care of their mother, Judy Burns, during a recent meeting to discuss the findings of a critical incident review into her death.

The acknowledgement marked a significant departure from an earlier meeting with hospital officials, when they felt their concerns were largely dismissed.

Burns, 68, died on Jan. 21, three days after being admitted, after experiencing rectal bleeding.

Winnipeg Folk Festival 2014 – July 12

This year's 41st Folk Fest runs at Birds Hill Park from July 9 to July 13 with 10 stages for dozens of musicians.

Winnipeggers witness unveiling of Japanese Canadian monument in B.C.

As Miki Stewart gathered with her family at the Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba on Saturday afternoon, she was thinking of her parents, Yoshimaru and Yoshi Abe.

Both Stewart, 80, and her sister Yumi Falk, 81, alongside an older brother, were born in the Tashme internment camp in British Columbia. They were among more than 2,600 Japanese Canadians who were forcefully removed and interred at the camp following the bombing of Pearl Harbour and Canada’s declaration of war on Japan in 1941.

“They didn’t talk much about how they suffered,” Stewart said of her parents. “But they did.”

She was amongst a group of more than 150 people who gathered at the association’s McPhillips headquarters on Saturday afternoon to watch the unveiling of the Japanese Canadian Monument in Victoria B.C.