How to grow a giant pumpkin, with help from science

Tornado touches down near Elkhorn

A tornado touched down in southwestern Manitoba Sunday evening.

The tornado and heavy thunderstorms were reported near Elkhorn, a community in the Rural Municipality of Wallace-Woodworth, about 105 kilometres west of Brandon.

The heavy storms and winds were caused by a frontal passage, when two separate air masses move over the same location, said Stephen Berg, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

“(It was) a pretty active system, that’s for sure,” Berg said Monday morning.

Village Green Bakery keeps focus on classic quality, kindness, fun in Victoria Beach

VICTORIA BEACH — They’re not carved into stone tablets — they’re reminders and not commandments, after all — but behind one of the display cases at Village Green Bakery is a laminated sheet of letter-size paper with a list of statements outlining how owner Jen Leslie wants staffers to approach their work.

Fittingly, there’s a baker’s dozen of them.

One is aimed specifically at a stoic teen who’s worked at the bakery since it opened in summer 2022 — “Smile, Brody,” it says — while the other 12 are meant for all 17 employees at the seasonal business, which is open annually from May long weekend until Thanksgiving.

“Smile and enjoy the ride,” is the first reminder, followed by, “The summer is short, so make it a good one,” “always take the high road” and “you are awesome.”

Manitoba Hydro’s strategy: Deny, deny, deny

Here’s a good story…

A man walks into your office and says, “Have I got a deal for you! I want $3 billion (plus perhaps a bit more) to build you something that you might use three or even four times a year, for maybe 30-60 hours each time. Sign here.”

You might respond… “and I’ve got a lovely bridge for sale…”

That is exactly what Manitoba Hydro wants — $3 billion or more, plus the fossil fuel bonus for peak load events that happen a few times each year. They assure us that the gas turbines will only be used very occasionally. At the same time, they tell us that we are headed for a crisis of energy supply by 2030.

Making mentoring magic one child at a time

When Bree-Ann Jubinville first met the eight-year-old she was going to mentor, she had no idea how much the child would go on to alter the course of her life.

At the city’s busiest fire and paramedic hall, first responders face a relentless workload

As a soft rain begins to fall between the concrete walls of “Hope Alley,” little feels further away than the place’s namesake.

Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service crews have been called to the narrow downtown passage, named by Al Wiebe, a formerly homeless man turned advocate. People regularly pass through here, moving between the shelters, drop-ins and resource centres clustered around Main Street between Logan and Higgins avenues.

Against a wall, as the sky switches into night mode, a man sits bleeding from his nose, seemingly unaware of how he ended up with blood running down his T-shirt.

His situation has already set Winnipeg’s emergency response network in motion.

School zones return Tuesday as lead-footed drivers risk steep fines

School crossing guards are preparing to resume their posts on busy corners across the Winnipeg School Division, but Luna Zúñiga isn’t one of them.

Zúñiga hung up her high-visibility vest about 30 months ago after she was struck by a motorist while escorting a child through a pedestrian crosswalk on Grant Avenue at Lanark Street.

Zúñiga protected the child, who wasn’t hurt, but the educational assistant at nearby J.B. Mitchell School suffered life-altering injuries, including nerve damage that limits her stamina, range of motion and makes her left leg “feel like it’s burning all the time.”

“I don’t know what needs to be done (to improve school-zone safety),” she said. “But I do know that when a six-year-old is crossing the street, a car needs to be fully stopped.”