Snowbird kitty: Lost cat heads home to Maine – from Florida

Gillingham talks trash, pledges big bin boost

Scott Gillingham says he would add hundreds of locked garbage bins downtown to prevent unsightly trash piles if re-elected as mayor.

A day on the campaign trail: Winnipeg's mayor, seeking a second term, does double duty

In the weeks leading up to the civic election, Scott Gillingham has been performing a juggling act: he’s running to be Winnipeg’s 45th mayor, while still serving as its 44th.

“If someone asks me about the campaign, I’m going to answer them. But I think for most people, I’m the mayor of Winnipeg, even if I’m showing up as a candidate,” Gillingham, 58, says. “I try to do all I can to maintain that distinction.”

The Free Press joined Gillingham on a recent rainy September Saturday on the campaign trail, where he served in both roles during an event-laden day. City council’s final meeting before the Oct. 28 election was days earlier.

In Winnipeg, it’s rare for an incumbent to be defeated. But Gillingham knows his win in 2022 wasn’t exactly a landslide — he won with 27.5 per cent of the vote — and he’s been thinking about his second term ever since.

Clock ticks down on destruction of records documenting residential school abuses

In less than a year, a private company is set to destroy the largest cache of records detailing the widespread abuse of Indigenous children at residential schools in Canada.

The destruction, which was ordered by an Ontario court in 2014 and later upheld by the Supreme Court, is set to take place on Sept. 19, 2027.

This countdown is igniting emotional conversations that seek to balance the immense historical value of the records alongside the confidentiality survivors were promised as part of the process of providing detailed testimony about abuses they’d suffered.

The records were created as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, a class-action settlement stemming from survivors who began suing the federal government in the late 1990s over the harm they’d been subjected to at residential schools.

Creative powerhouse Perry Rosemond never lost Winnipeg roots

He created King of Kensington, directed the troops in the Royal Canadian Air Farce, and his creative eye was behind the lens for television shows starring Johnny Cash, Tom Jones, Mr. Dress-Up and the Friendly Giant.

He also wrote and developed the Canadian version of Sesame Street during his time as the head of school and preschool programming for CBC in Toronto, and directed a televised special in 2002 for Winnipeg sketch comedy troupe Royal Liechtenstein Theatre Company.

But before his name featured in the credits of some of the most iconic and influential pieces of the Cancon canon, Perry Rosemond was an only child living in a crammed, multi-generational home in Winnipeg’s North End, racing each day to beat the morning bell next door at William Whyte School.

In memoirs that have yet to be published, the late television producer recalled his childhood. “(T)here were 14 of us in the house at 193 Andrews St., and it wasn’t that big of a house,” he writes.

Six high school hockey programs ceased operations following new Hockey Manitoba policy

She lived the best of both worlds.

For the last three years, the 17-year-old wore a sweater for two different hockey programs — her high school team and AAA club in the Manitoba Female Hockey League — and was preparing to flourish in both colours again this winter.

Recently, however, the blue-liner was disappointed to learn she is no longer eligible to play her Grade 12 season with her school owing to a new policy imposed by Hockey Manitoba that bans players from participating in the Manitoba Women’s High School Hockey League if they are rostered on a U18 AAA team.

The rule applies to all athletes who play for both Winnipeg-based and rural AAA teams.