Course Examens post-pandemic reflections

City tries to find the right balance in regulating personal e-vehicles

Patty Wiens was already a cycling enthusiast when she got an electric bicycle in early 2023, but she didn’t realize how much it would transform the way she got around Winnipeg.

She started riding throughout winter and stopped relying on her vehicle. Eventually, she sold her car.

“It’s not a replacement for a bike,” she said. “It’s a replacement for a car.”

Wiens, who has been dubbed the “Bike Mayor of Winnipeg” by a global cycling advocacy organization, said her e-bike is a cheaper and more environmentally friendly way to get around the city, especially as the cost of living mounts.

Order of Manitoba awarded to 12 high-achievers

It was a full circle moment for a CFL superstar whose game included giving back.

Former Winnipeg Blue Bombers running back Andrew Harris was one of 12 Order of Manitoba recipients honoured at the Manitoba legislature on Thursday.

“It’s an indescribable feeling,” Harris said after the ceremony while holding one of his sons in his arms.

Harris joined Juno award-winning artist Chantal Kreviazuk, Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. Joss Reimer, former premier Brian Pallister and others who have enriched the province, said Lt.-Gov. Anita Neville as she honoured the recipients.

The next Duff’s Ditch must be medical

A runaway rail trolley hurtles towards five people tied to the tracks. You stand at the switch lever. If you pull the lever, the trolley veers onto a sidetrack, where one person is tied down. Do nothing and five die. Pull the lever and one dies by your hand.

A health minister needs no introduction to the weight of that choice. Every budget season, governments confront this dilemma with one cruel modification — the lever switches between today and tomorrow. Down the near track sits this year’s emergency, a crowded emergency department, a surgical backlog, a crisis demanding a decision by Friday. Down the far track, in the distance, over the horizon, waits a geriatric demographic that has not arrived yet. Each year’s budget cannot simultaneously rescue both.

Philosophers treat the trolley scenario as a thought experiment. A health minister calls it Tuesday.

The actual choice is crueller, because both tracks hold real people. The stroke patient in today’s hallway deserves rescue, as do the patients down the line. Two scholars, Guido Calabresi and Philip Bobbitt, analyzed such allocations as tragic choices — scarcity forces a society to preserve one value by sacrificing another. Their darker observation concerned method. Societies rarely make these choices in the open. The lever keeps directing traffic away from the immediate noise, toward the far track.

Sheriff who died in train collision ‘loved everybody’

Brett Matheson-Maytwayashing was a loving father, hard-working sheriff and proud First Nations man who helped lead traditional ceremonies for a decade before he died in a collision with a train near Portage la Prairie.

Matheson-Maytwayashing, 27, died in the Tuesday morning crash, which occurred on a rural road west of Portage while he and another member of the sheriff’s service were on their way to attend court in Amaranth, his mother, Alissa Matheson-Maytwayashing, told the Free Press.

It was Matheson-Maytwayashing’s first day back at work after taking time off to participate in a sun dance ceremony in northern Saskatchewan last week, his mother said.

“Brett didn’t judge anybody, he would give people chances,” she said, her voice breaking. “He didn’t care what colour you were, he didn’t care your nationality — Brett just loved everybody.”

Main Street crash involving motorcycle linked to speeding

Speed appears to be a factor in a serious four-vehicle collision, including a motorcycle, on Main Street Friday.

Police did not immediately release information about the crash, but at around 7 p.m., a large section of Main Street was taped off between Jarvis and Dufferin Avenue. Traffic was redirected and pedestrians were told to stay clear.

Behind the tape, a crumpled white sedan was smashed into the side of a building, and a damaged motorcycle was on its side in the middle of the street. Two SUVs were also damaged.

The Free Press watched video captured from cameras at the nearby Northern Hotel that shows the two vehicles involved in the crash — the motorcycle that had a rider and a passenger, and the white sedan — speeding side-by-side southbound on Main Street. The speed limit in the area is 50 kilometres per hour.

Winnipeg Fringe Festival: 2026 show reviews

Not sure what to see at this year's Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival? All of the Free Press’s reviews will be published here.  Find a show and click to read its review.