Backyardigans add second Winnipeg show

Manitoba documentary focuses lens on environmental defenders, beauty of prairies

Everything We Need Is Here is the latest sumptuously shot Manitoba film rooted in the Prairie landscape.

Though totally unrelated in subject matter, the documentary recalls the 2024 Daughters of the Sun with its saturated and slow-mo sweeps across boreal forests and limestone tinted lakes.

But while Daughters has much murmured narration and arthouse flair, Everything is a plucky film, a can-do sort of doc about the land and its grassroots defenders.

Their voices resonate strong and clear across storylines that weave together the joys of foraging and local environmental protests.

Brandon flood protections solid as water recedes, officials say

BRANDON — Officials said water levels on the Assiniboine River continued to recede and flooding infrastructure held up Wednesday despite rainy weather in Brandon.

“The flood forecast hasn’t changed. The amount of rain that we did receive — we’ve been advised that the levels or flows will not be impacted,” emergency co-ordinator Tobin Praznik said.

The river level had dipped to 1,178.67 feet above sea level at 11:45 a.m., compared to the 1,179.49-foot crest on Monday morning.

“The flood protection system is in place and it’s doing what’s expected of it,” Praznik said.

Hydro’s planned outages turn out the lights for thousands across province

Business owners in the East Beaches area of Lake Winnipeg hauled out generators Wednesday after a planned Manitoba Hydro outage left thousands of residents and cottagers without power.

Lise Bourassa, who runs several stores in Grand Beach, had to rent generators to accommodate the eight-hour blackout, which affected the area from Beaconia to Victoria Beach as well as Sagkeeng First Nation, while Hydro crews fixed a pole that was damaged by fire in May .

Despite the spare power source, she was only able to open one of her stores during the outage and said it came at a bad time.

“I understand the importance of what Manitoba Hydro is doing, the problem all the businesses in this area are having is that our season is very short and to be shut down for a full day has a fairly big impact, plus they added cost of getting generators,” she wrote in a message to the Free Press. “We also had less than one week to make arrangements, find electricians and generators to be able to keep all the food safe.”

Jets mailbag: Breaking down the club’s off-season moves

One player seemingly can’t wait to get here. The other is looking for an exit route. Not surprisingly, these two Winnipeg Jets were featured prominently this month in our Free Press mailbag.

Nine years for man who kidnapped delivery driver

A delivery driver was kidnapped after the break-up of a business partnership involving “grey-market vapes” that were sold at Winnipeg convenience stores, a Manitoba judge has been told.

The Winnipeg Police Service said last week that investigators recently arrested a third suspect in the Oct. 11, 2024 incident, in which three men are accused of kidnapping the 22-year-old driver and holding him at gunpoint for hours as they stole merchandise from a storage facility.

One of the men arrested, 43-year-old Jonathon Ranger, pleaded guilty earlier this year to forcible confinement and two offences related to the stolen gun that was found when he was arrested in December 2024.

In June, he was sentenced to nine years in prison, minus time served, based on a joint recommendation from the Crown and defence as part of a plea bargain.