Husband will be picking up tab for future free lunch

Mayor tight-lipped about firefighter charged with disobeying protection order while on job

Mayor Scott Gillingham said he can’t talk about the case of a firefighter accused of breaching a protection order while on the job this month — a man who has been jailed twice in the past 10 years for harassing two women.

Christopher Goethals was arrested July 21 after breaching a protection order requiring that he not come within 200 metres of a protected person.

Police said Goethals, 59, was in full uniform, driving a Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service fleet vehicle, and was performing “modified duties” on the job when he breached the order.

When asked about Goethals being able to serve as a firefighter under those circumstances, Gillingham called it a human resources issue. He said he wouldn’t get into specifics, but would “look into this matter further.”

Cross Lake pro blueliner walks away from sport he loves to live and work in northern community he loves even more

CROSS LAKE — It’s a hot, hazy Tuesday evening in northern Manitoba, and Jericho Blacksmith and his buddies are gathered inside a baseball dugout.

There isn’t a glove or bat in sight.

Instead, the young men are engaged in a loud, good-natured race to see who can get blackout drunk the fastest, passing around bottles and cans purchased from the local vendor, which had just been restocked when the weekly truck rolled into town earlier that day.

“Honestly, everything can be pretty brutal around here,” says the 26-year-old lifelong resident, pointing to isolation, a lack of opportunity and relentless boredom.

Summer brews to while away dog days

Last week I was in Niagara attending the 16th International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration (i4C+).

And while it may sound a little niche, it offered a fascinating window into the ways in which the king of white wine grapes is being made in Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and a handful of other cooler-climate wine-producing countries in the world.

I’ll have more on i4C+ coming soon, but after tasting around 100 or so Chardonnays in four days, I’m giving my palate a break from wine this week, and am instead getting caught up on some new/newer/new-to-me local brews that have landed on shelves.

All the following beers are available at the breweries where they were made as well as Liquor Marts and beer vendors (should they choose to carry them), and are listed roughly in order from lightest to fullest…

E-scooter knocks senior onto sidewalk as he gets off bus

A Winnipeg man was thrown onto the pavement and injured after being struck by an electric scooter after stepping off a Winnipeg Transit bus Monday afternoon, an incident he hopes will push the city to take a closer look at sidewalk safety.

Telecom on defensive after about 90 emergency calls fail over several hours

Bell Canada — Manitoba’s 911 service provider — is facing questions about reliability and redundancy measures after an hours-long outage outside Winnipeg, caused by a severed fibre optic cable, prevented dozens of calls from getting through Wednesday.

Bell spokeswoman Elise von Scheel said backup systems that reroute 911 calls when an outage occurs due to equipment damage also experienced “issues” after a third party cut the cable during construction “near Winnipeg.”

“Manitoba’s 911 system relies on legacy architecture that does not support the failsafes that newer systems have, which is why Bell is in the process of upgrading the ecosystem to next generation 911,” von Scheel wrote in an email.

“All Manitoba public safety answering points are planned to be migrated to the new system by the end of 2026. Migration to NG911 is the fastest and most effective remediation to prevent instances like this in the future.”