Strawberry Clouds

North Kildonan home on spacious property has everything you need to relax and entertain

Every home has a story, almost without exception.

That’s certainly the case with a sprawling bungalow situated amid a huge, beautifully treed lot in North Kildonan, says Glen MacAngus of Royal LePage Top Producers.

“When this home was built in 1957, it was a pretty good size,” he says of the home, which sports an impressively wide footprint. “Today, it checks in at 3,390 sq. ft. due to a pair of remodels. The first was in the early 2000s, while the second was in 2018.”

Suffice it to say, the well-maintained home is anything but a throwback to its late-’50s origins.

In an apartment above the Sherbie, famous local artists line the walls

Directly above the West Broadway vendor and noisy bar now known as the Kyoto Kat Club, amid a primly kept wardrobe and dirty coffee mugs, Josh Peterson’s bachelor suite is bursting with coveted Manitoba art.

Automation reaches new heights on farm

LANGHAM, Sask. — The thousands of farmers from across the Prairies who flock to the annual Ag in Motion show every July seem oblivious to the possibility the technology on display could one day replace many of them.

Families with children in tow, Hutterite colony workers, grandparents and young couples just starting out roamed through the 600 or more exhibitor displays, amazed at how everything about farming just keeps getting bigger, more efficient and increasingly more automated.

It’s now possible to seed using a 100-foot-wide drill — a 12-foot jump over the widest available a few years ago — provided the farmer can afford a tractor with enough horsepower to pull it. Those sell for around $850,000 and up.

Granted, the number of farms with enough acres to justify that kind of width and drawing power is still relatively small, but farms continue to grow. And it’s no secret the number of people who have the interest, skills and financial wherewithal to run them continues to shrink.

Longtime Assiniboine Park Zoo resident Blizzard the bison dies

Blizzard, the white bison that became one of Assiniboine Park Zoo’s most recognizable residents during nearly 20 years at the facility, has died, the zoo announced Friday.

The zoo said Blizzard’s health declined in recent weeks, so a diagnostic exam was recommended to better understand his condition. He died during the procedure.

Blizzard arrived at Assiniboine Park Zoo in 2006 and went on to become a favourite among visitors, inspiring “millions of visitors with his remarkable presence,” the zoo said in a social media post.

“While all animals in our care are deeply valued, Blizzard held a special place in the hearts of many people and carried profound cultural and spiritual significance for many Indigenous peoples,” the post reads.

For unique Menno-centric take on Free Press, satirist mines her jibes between the lines

Free Press readers of a certain vintage may remember when tuning into a local radio station to hear a pair of disc jockeys perusing a section of the Saturday edition was appointment listening.

On Sunday mornings from 1962 until the mid-1980s, CKRC 630 personalities Bob Washington and Tom Ashmore — better known as Wash and Ash — entertained Winnipeggers of all ages by impersonating the likes of Dennis the Menace, Beetle Bailey and Archie Andrews, as they lent their voices to that weekend’s multi-page, colour comic insert.

In a 1984 interview, Washington, who died in 2016 at the age of 82, attributed the weekly program’s longevity to audiences enjoying the antics of “two middle-aged guys in 24 dialects, giving their version of what Dagwood is saying to Blondie, or what Hägar the Horrible is bragging about.”

More than 40 years later, another Winnipegger is turning to the Free Press for her material. Only instead of reading the paper’s funnies, Lori Klassen, a mother of three and grandmother of two, is funnily reading the paper.

Men cycling across Canada for charity have bikes stolen in Winnipeg

Thomas Clark and Valentin Duquenne were devastated after their bikes went missing outside CBC Manitoba’s headquarters, but uplifted by the outpouring of support from Manitobans afterward.