Ashley Callingbull becomes first Indigenous woman to win Miss Universe Canada

Wesmen women’s hoops team feeling primed for a successful season

Raia Guinto is described as a silent leader.

The Winnipeg Wesmen’s fifth-year guard prefers to let her play galvanize her teammates, and she’s done just that since becoming a full-time starter four seasons ago.

Last year, however, Guinto went silent altogether.

For the first time in her hoops career, Guinto couldn’t give all of herself to the team and the sport that’s given her so much.

Not much of a race when most of the field can’t find their running shoes

In Winnipeg's mayoral race, there are few truly bad ideas, but hardly any really good ones.

Rock bottom best thing to happen to Les Girondins

You know things are dire when hitting rock bottom is a relief. You might be at your lowest point, but you still exist. The ground hasn’t swallowed you up, and while you lay prostrate, humiliated, you eventually understand that the only way is up.

Girondins de Bordeaux is at rock bottom — and lucky to be there. It is still, just barely, a football club. But it exists. And given how close it came to oblivion, existence is good enough for now. Not that it doesn’t hurt.

The dizziness of the drop, and pain of the landing, is felt in relation to the height from which you fell. Bordeaux fell from the top of the mountain.

On May 30, 2009, Les Girondins won its 11th match in a row and was crowned Ligue 1 champions for the sixth time. A month earlier, it had lifted the Coupe de la Ligue — a competition in which it drubbed Paris Saint-Germain at Parc des Princes in the semifinal.

Mayoral candidates share faves, test knowledge in Free Press culture quiz

It’s been said that politics is downwind of culture. However true that is, where politicians stand on hot-button cultural debates such as artificial intelligence, whether they prefer sports over arts and what local restaurants they patronize can offer a window into their sensibilities and outlooks.

The Free Press invited the four leading mayoral candidates among decided voters — according to a recent Abacus poll — to take part in a cultural quiz. (Kevin Klein, who was polling second, did not respond.) While most of the questions are lighthearted, they speak to some of the personalities behind the heated rivalries over budgets, buses, business taxation and beyond.

What was the last book you finished?

● Scott Gillingham: I’m almost done Winnipeg author Paul Vincent Jacuzzi’s book Blind Eyes. It’s a Dalton Drake novel.

Nurses call for national strategy on seniors’ health care

Canada’s nurses are calling for a national strategy that ensures seniors have access to care while reducing the impact on the public health system.

“Nurses and health-care workers are stretched too thinly, and Canada’s population is aging,” Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) president Linda Silas said in a news release Friday after meeting with provincial and territorial health ministers in Winnipeg.

“It’s time to act.”

The federation called for a national human resources plan to help address staffing challenges, pointing to a Canadian Institute for Health Information report showing more than three million overtime hours clocked by long-term care workers over a one-year period — the equivalent of 1,500 full-time providers.