Blue Bombers get their Simpsons moment

City crews cleaning up drug paraphernalia, weapons having some impact on inner-city life

A three-person crew, employed by the city as part of its recently expanded proactive cleanup program, allowed the Free Press to follow along last week while they worked to make the Freight House Recreation Centre's property safe to play in.

Daycare, family centre addition will turn care home into intergenerational community hub

Seven-year-olds and 70-somethings will socialize daily when a 152-spot daycare opens inside of a seniors’ residence in Winnipeg in a couple of years.

Construction on a new wing of the Saul and Claribel Simkin Centre is scheduled to begin this fall, it was announced Monday.

The project won’t be complete for at least 22 months, but it’s already being touted as a made-in-Manitoba model for intergenerational community hubs across the country.

“It’s a real good idea to mix the younger generation with the older generation,” said Allan Rutherford, a 79-year-old resident of the 200-bed personal care home in Linden Ridge.

Pair of banks abandoning Brandon’s downtown

Two of Canada’s major banks are set to relocate from their longstanding downtown Brandon locations in October.

‘You vote with your bike’: cyclists celebrate freedoms, call for increased safety

Patty Wiens got dressed up in her sparkly, hot pink cowboy boots to pedal and talk politics with more than 100 other people on Sunday.

The founder of Winnipeg’s Fancy Women Bike Ride called on attendees of the 2026 event to ask candidates in the upcoming civic election — a half-dozen of whom were in attendance — about their active transportation platforms.

“We’re here today, in an election year, to remind you that you vote with your bike,” Wiens told a crowd of nearly 120 cyclists gathered on the legislature grounds for the group ride.

“When (city council) candidates come to your door and ask what’s important to you, you’re going to say, ‘I want to ride my bike safely in the city. What are you going to do about it?’”

Indigenous peoples are deeply invested in Canada

Elections Canada released a report this week that stated that, in the 2025 federal election, approximately 41 per cent of eligible First Nations, Inuit and Métis voters cast a ballot and contributed significantly to the federal Liberals and Prime Minister Mark Carney making a political comeback.

For anyone curious about how Manitoba fared, the numbers in this province were slightly lower — but still very strong, with 34 per cent participation.

This is a far cry from the highest rate of Indigenous participation in a federal election — that would be the 60 per cent who cast a ballot in 2015, when Justin Trudeau’s Liberals defeated Stephen Harper’s Conservatives — but it’s still higher than the abysmal numbers seen in decades previous.

First Nations voters have only been allowed the legal right to cast a ballot in Canadian elections since 1960, but many in the past — perhaps rightly — felt a sense of complicity in the country’s colonization or, worse, that voting didn’t make a difference.