B.C. mayor says drones endangering wildfire helicopter pilots, pleads for patience

Positive anticipation is growing about major housing developments underway in Winnipeg’s downtown

If traffic is light and the wind is down, Somia Sadiq is able to hear the roar of Winnipeg Jets fans twice: first through her window, then on TV.

From her apartment view high above downtown, she can look out at Graham Avenue’s painted pedestrian landscape, see construction cranes and hear the heavy equipment at work as massive housing projects take shape at The Forks, at what used to be Portage Place shopping centre and at the former Hudson’s Bay building.

Sadiq has lived at 300 Main for 2 1/2 years, a few steps from the city’s famous, windy and reopened-to-pedestrians Portage Avenue intersection. At 42 storeys, it’s the tallest building in Winnipeg.

She is among 18,000 downtown residents who will soon be joined by thousands of others attracted to the city’s core by the new wave of major construction projects.

Happy email debt forgiveness day

There are few things more capable of producing an immediate feeling of guilt than opening your inbox and seeing an email you have not answered.

You know the one. It has been sitting there for three days or three months or perhaps long enough that responding now feels less like answering an email and more like reopening a historical case. You read it, think, “I really need to deal with that,” and then close it again.

The next week you see it, feel slightly worse and tell yourself you will answer it when you have more time. A month later, you are considering whether it would be less embarrassing to change your name and move to another province.

Fortunately, there is a solution: Sept. 30 is Email Debt Forgiveness Day, and I think it may be one of the most compassionate holidays we have invented.

Is a better Winnipeg on the horizon?

Four Free Press columnists weigh in on the challenges ahead and how the city can become better.

WSO kicks off season pairing Beethoven, Tchaikovsky

French fries and milkshake, watermelon and feta cheese … Beethoven’s Fifth and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth?

Few events mark the beginning of the classical concert season like the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s season-opener and this year they kick things off with an unusual but satisfying pairing.

“I think that for me, the combination of these two pieces is, first of all, a celebration of great masterworks that have withstood 100 years of being probed by time for their relevancy,” says conductor Daniel Raiskin, the WSO’s music director. “It’s the quality of music, it’s the quality of narrative that attracts us to these masterworks again and again.”

Both symphonies are so hefty and canonical, one might have expected half of the concert would be devoted to a concerto, tone poem or something smaller or lesser known.