Real Love Summer Fest shares the good vibrations

Hydro Québec faces issue we should avoid

You might be tempted to call it a canary in an electric power generation coal mine.

Real Love Summer Fest shares the good vibrations

As a concert promotion company, Real Love Winnipeg works year-round to make Winnipeg a more frequent tour stop for indie bands from all over the world, a mandate it’s carried over into its festival programming for Real Love Summer Fest.

This year, the three main headliners are all out-of-town acts: pop-punk band Remo Drive from Minnesota; singer-songwriter Molly Burch from Austin, Texas; and 1970s-lovin’ Los Angeles-based Drugdealer, led by songwriter Michael Collins.

“I think there are a lot of festivals that are booking strictly local bands, which is awesome, but we try to expand it and bring other people into Manitoba so they can see the local bands and so that local bands can play with touring acts,” says Adam Soloway, the festival’s co-director and artistic director.

That doesn’t mean Real Love is forsaking local talent, though; Soloway says an effort is made to keep the lineup 50 per cent local — this year, it includes notable acts such as Begonia, Dill the Giant, Mulligrub, Jaywood and nearly a dozen others.

Stevenson set for first Jets start against Penguins

DETROIT — Clay Stevenson, the stage is yours.

As the Winnipeg Jets wrap up a two-game road trip on Monday against the Pittsburgh Penguins, the newest member of the team will be between the pipes after Stuart Skinner got the call in the first two outings of the campaign.

There will be an element of familiarity for Stevenson, as PPG Paints Arena is where he made his first NHL appearance with the Washington Capitals on April 17, 2025.

“There is some comfortability in that building,” said Stevenson, who made 33 saves in a 5-2 loss to the Penguins in that NHL debut. “It’s always a great challenge to play against (Sidney) Crosby and (Evgeni) Malkin and those guys. It’s an honour to get into the crease anytime.”

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.

Amazon in the weeds over damage to tall grass reserve

Patricia Dutchak was devastated when she first saw the wide swaths of crushed grass and upturned soil at Winnipeg’s Rotary Prairie Nature Park, a municipal heritage site.

“This is a very rare ecosystem, a remnant of tall grass prairie, there’s barely any left in the world, and to come here and see all this damage was heartbreaking,” Dutchak, chair of the Transcona Rotary Club’s parks committee, says.

The club is responsible for maintaining the protected green space, which was significantly damaged this summer when a fence between the park and the neighbouring Amazon distribution centre was relocated.

The 20-acre nature preserve is situated on a narrow tract of land on Regent Avenue West in the commercial heart of Transcona. The park received its municipal heritage designation in 1992 and is, today, surrounded by high-traffic streets, industrial warehouses and car dealerships.