Sweethearts candies won’t be on shelves this Valentine’s

Manitoba family finalist for cattle producers environmental award

A family in western Manitoba is one of seven finalists for a national environmental award honouring beef cattle producers.

Connor and Kyla English, alongside Connor’s parents, Brian and Leanne English, are nominated for the Canadian Cattle Association’s Environmental Stewardship Award. The 30-year-old award is presented to beef farmers and ranchers who explore innovative ways to protect, preserve and enhance their operations and the environment simultaneously.

This year’s recipient will be announced on Wednesday during a banquet at the Canadian Beef Industry Conference in Winnipeg.

The English family’s roots near Bradwardine — about 265 kilometres west of Winnipeg — date back to 1898. Today, Connor, Kyla, Brian and Leanne manage a herd of about 320 breeding cows on nearly 445 hectares (1,100 acres) of owned and rented pasture and forage land.

Wyatt vows to ‘absolutely’ continue serving as city councillor despite latest sex-crime charges

Transcona Coun. Russ Wyatt vowed Thursday to continue doing his job after more criminal charges were laid against him this week, while the mayor called for “better tools” to address elected officials who face serious allegations.

Wyatt, 56, was charged Monday with sexual assault and administering a noxious substance in an October 2023 incident. He was previously charged with sexual assault and administering a noxious substance in March, based on allegations tied to a 2025 gathering.

On Thursday, Wyatt arrived at city hall and quickly walked to his office at 10:20 a.m., nearly an hour after the East Kildonan-Transcona community committee meeting he planned to attend was scheduled to begin.

He answered few questions from reporters.

Nola chef earns national award

Celebrated Winnipeg chef Emily Butcher has another feather to add to her toque. The executive chef and owner of Nola and Bar Accanto in St. Boniface has received the Culinary Award of Excellence from Restaurants Canada, a national foodservice advocacy organization.

Trailblazing Western Scrap Metals heavy-equipment operator relishes role at massive crane’s control

Less than five per cent of heavy-equipment operators in the country are women but that number is trending upward, according to a study conducted by trade magazine Crane & Hoist Canada.

It was reported that in Ontario roughly eight per cent of jobs in the transport and heavy-equipment field are currently held by women. Furthermore, in 2024 almost 20 per cent of graduates at an Edmonton-based heavy-equipment operator training school were female, the article stated.

That brings us to Harmony Guspodarchuk, the first female crane operator in the 70-year history of Western Scrap Metals, a family-owned business at 18 Sutherland Ave.

Three years ago, Guspodarchuk literally stepped into the driver’s seat of a 27,500-kilogram, Liebherr C 924 Heavy Lift Litronic crane. The 29-year-old hasn’t looked back much since.

West Kildonan Industrial residents call for speed bumps after child hit by truck

Residents in the West Kildonan Industrial neighbourhood are calling on the city to install speed bumps in their area after a child was hit and dragged by a vehicle Thursday.

Katelyn Bemister lives near the area where the child — who was hospitalized as a result of the incident and has been upgraded to stable condition — was struck. She says people frequently speed in the area.

“They’re going really fast, and they’re not really paying attention at all to the pedestrians in the area,” says Bemister.

In video supplied to the Free Press by a resident, the child can be seen riding a bike down a sidewalk along the 500 block of North Point Boulevard.

Meetings accomplish something that an email never could while respecting people’s time, building relationships

There are few workplace experiences that unite employees quite like complaining about meetings. Ask almost anyone what frustrates them at work, and somewhere on the list will be the meeting that could have been an email. We’ve all been there. Thirty minutes scheduled for a simple update somehow turns into an hour. Half the attendees don’t need to be there. Someone shares their screen for ten minutes trying to find the right document. The meeting ends with everyone wondering what was actually decided.

It’s no surprise that organizations are looking for ways to reduce meeting fatigue. Every hour spent in a meeting is an hour that isn’t spent serving customers, solving problems, writing reports, or completing projects. As calendars become increasingly crowded, employees often find themselves working longer days simply to catch up on the work they couldn’t accomplish because they were in meetings.

The obvious solution seems simple: hold fewer meetings. In many cases, that’s exactly the right answer. Routine updates, policy reminders, project status reports, and information that doesn’t require discussion can often be shared through email and chat platforms. Not every piece of information deserves everyone’s calendar.

But eliminating meetings altogether would create a different problem, especially as more organizations embrace hybrid and remote work.