Métis delegates first to meet with Pope

Métis delegates first to meet with Pope

ROME — Mitchell Case gave Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis National Council, two traditional handmade gifts before delegates from the organization met with Pope Francis on Monday.

One was a traditional beaded jacket for Caron to wear in the meeting. The other was a handmade gift of red moccasins for the Pope.

Case is a community-based historian and educator and region 4 councillor for the Métis Nation of Ontario. In making the presentation, he said the red shoes — the kind traditionally worn by popes, but not by Pope Francis — symbolize the “long way” the Roman Catholic Church has to walk before reconciliation and forgiveness can take place.

It will also remind the Pope “he doesn’t walk alone” when it comes to reconciliation, as well as reminding him of the “great and terrible things” done by popes who came before him.

Chronic blame game festers

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara doesn’t mince words when describing how bad things are in the province’s emergency departments and urgent-care centres.

“The wait times that we are seeing in Manitoba are unacceptable,” said Asagwara in an interview with the Free Press. “I hear from families, I hear from providers, I hear from Manitobans who are concerned about the wait times that they’re seeing, that they’re experiencing, and those concerns are valid — I share those concerns.”

So what is the NDP, who promised voters nearly three years ago it had the answers to bring down wait times, doing about it?

A lot, according to Asagwara, who has been the province’s health minister since the NDP was sworn into office in October 2023.

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Demolition ordered after fire in vacant city home

A Winnipeg firefighter was assessed by paramedics and an emergency demolition was ordered after a vacant house caught fire Thursday morning for the second time in less than three months.

The two-storey home, at Argyle Street and Disraeli Freeway, in South Point Douglas, was boarded up following a blaze that occurred June 1.

Firefighters returned to the house after flames were reported shortly after 6 a.m. Thursday. The house was engulfed when crews arrived.

“Due to heavy fire conditions, crews were unable to enter the structure,” a Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service spokesperson wrote in an email to the Free Press.

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