Papal visit 2022 Posted: 10:39 AM CDT Thursday, Mar. 24, 2022 Last Modified: 12:54 PM CDT Monday, Mar. 28, 2022 Updates

Winnipeg Jets trade Connor Hellebuyck to New Jersey Devils

Connor Hellebuyck has been traded.

The Winnipeg Jets announced Friday morning they have sent the netminder to the New Jersey Devils for four players and two draft picks.

The Jets are receiving: Dawson Mercer, Alexander Command, Nico Daws and Nick Bjugstad.

More to come.

Hutterite colonies embrace the manufacturing business – while staying faithful to their way of life

Tucked away at Oak Bluff Hutterite Colony, past rows of communal housing and farm buildings, Aaron Maendel tinkers in a laboratory.

Black-and-white sheets smeared with grey-test formulas cover a counter. A Thermotron — a refrigerator-looking machine — is powered off but standing by to simulate any desired temperature.

Maendel moves to a worktop littered with partly full mixing cups. He pulls out a small, rectangular sample — a sheet showing the drying time of his new fixation, floor coatings.

“Very simple, actually. Very simple machine. Drags a stick through the mud,” Maendel says.

Papal visit 2022: Full coverage from Rome

Coverage of the visit to the Vatican by First Nations, Métis and Inuit delegates for meetings with Pope Francis.

New Jet looking forward to ‘special’ debut

Dawson Mercer is doing his best to get acclimated as quickly as possible.

After spending his first five NHL seasons and change with the New Jersey Devils, Mercer was informed on Friday morning that he was on his way to the Winnipeg Jets as part of a blockbuster deal for goalie Connor Hellebuyck.

That led to a mad scramble, as Mercer loaded up a suitcase with his belongings, jumped on a private jet with goalie Nico Daws and landed in the Manitoba capital on Friday night.

“Pretty busy and hectic. Pretty much, I was at the rink in Jersey, and then got the news,” said Mercer, who was the 18th overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft. “Then, you go home, pack everything up, get on the jet, and then come here and come into a big game here at this classic. It’s pretty special, though. I’d rather do it this way than any other.”

Air force pays tribute to retiring CC-130H Hercules planes

Royal Canadian Air Force personnel in Winnipeg bid farewell Saturday to the military branch’s last remaining CC-130H Hercules planes — “workhorses” that crews flew in seemingly countless combat, rescue and transport operations.

The federal government is phasing out Canada’s fleet of CC-130H Hercules aircraft, which entered service in 1974, in favour of modern planes, including the CC-295 Kingfisher, which will be used for search-and-rescue operations out of 17 Wing Winnipeg as of November.

“It’s really part of our family and one of us. This was the backbone of a lot of things that we do here out of Winnipeg,” Col. Curtis Wright, commander of 17 Wing Winnipeg, said of the “mighty Herc” after a retirement ceremony and a flypast.

The 435 Transport Search and Rescue Squadron, based at 17 Wing Winnipeg, is the final RCAF unit to fly the CC-130H Hercules. Two Winnipeg-based planes are still being flown. They will be taken out of service Nov. 1 and Nov. 18, Wright said.

Opening of Portage and Main shows even seemingly insurmountable impasses can be overcome

There are places in a city that become more than places. Portage and Main is one of them. For generations of Winnipeggers, the intersection has represented downtown, traffic, development and civic identity. Its reopening to pedestrians in 2025, after 46 years of closure, was about more than crossing a street. It was a reminder that decisions made by one generation can shape the choices available to another — and that even seemingly permanent decisions can be reconsidered.

I have spent much of my professional life thinking about Winnipeg as a planner, working in public, private and non-profit settings. My PhD research gave me an opportunity to examine Portage and Main differently: not simply as a debate about cars and pedestrians, but as a window into how power operates in a city. I reviewed 569 archival documents spanning the 1960s to the present, interviewed 48 planners with experience in Winnipeg, and mapped the relationships between planners, politicians, developers, engineers, residents, businesses and advocacy groups.

What emerged was a story about how planning decisions become embedded in a city’s institutions, agreements, infrastructure, professional practices and political expectations — shaping not only what gets built, but who gets to influence what gets built.

The closure of Portage and Main in 1979 did not remain a decision confined to a particular political moment. Over time, it was reinforced by development agreements, physical infrastructure, property relationships, traffic-engineering practices, administrative routines, and public narratives about mobility and downtown revitalization. The people who made many of those original decisions eventually left office. The arrangements they created remained. Later planners inherited them.