First lady spreads anti-bullying message at kids’ hospital

Dynacare strike set to begin before hearing into essential services agreement

Hundreds of Dynacare lab employees are expected to hit the picket line Tuesday, hours before a labour board hearing to determine whether they are essential workers.

The ‘Buy Canadian’ trade war challenge

“Buy Canadian,” they tell us, as trade tensions escalate between Canada and the United States. “Elbows up,” the pithy slogan advises again and again, in response to the latest daily affront from increasingly unbalanced U.S. President Donald Trump.

And there’s no question Canadians from coast to coast to coast have bought into the patriotic mindset that politicians, from Prime Minister Mark Carney right on down to elected officials at the municipal level, have implored us to adopt.

“We were attacked,” is how Carney described the Aug. 21 unraveling of trade talks, after U.S. negotiators reportedly inserted last-minute demands the Canadian side viewed as both unreasonable and unacceptable. “You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked.”

The breakdown led to the immediate imposition by Trump of steep new tariffs on $29 billion worth of Canadian goods headed to south-of-the-border markets. A targeted, dollar-for-dollar Canadian tariff response will take effect after the Labour Day weekend. In the meantime, Canadians are more motivated than ever to stand firm against Trump’s tyrannical tactics.

‘Where are they going to go?’: encampment policy blamed for homeless people sleeping outside thrift store

The owner of a Portage Avenue thrift shop says the city’s encampment ban has pushed dozens of homeless people from tent communities to spaces near her store.

Susan Lockhart, who runs Just Like New to You at 635 Portage Ave., says anywhere from 25 to 50 people can be found at any given time behind the store and along the back lane stretching between Sherbrook and Furby streets.

“Where are they going to go?” she said Wednesday from her shop. “I was just here on the weekend and I couldn’t get to our back door. There were people everywhere. Mattresses.”

Earlier this week, the city reported 275 people were known to be living in 72 encampments across Winnipeg — down from 100 encampments housing about 700 people last September. The report also noted that 141 sites have been remediated since the city’s encampment policy came into effect in November.

Woman who saved child, father from Red River uncomfortable with hero label

A Winnipeg woman who’s been hailed as a hero by police for saving a father and his young child from the Red River says she doesn’t feel like one.

“I’m a mom… and I would do it again,” said Jayclyn Morrissette, who was walking with her neighbour through St. John’s Park on Aug. 24 when they spotted a young girl flailing in the nearby river. “I was meant to be there and that was supposed to happen.”

Morrissette, who spoke to the Free Press Wednesday after police released details about the rescue, said she and her neighbour began looking for the child’s parents and found them at the nearby playground searching for her.

Morrissette waved them over. The father, who she said could not swim, jumped into the river first and immediately began to sink.