The Social Page

Making mentoring magic one child at a time

When Bree-Ann Jubinville first met the eight-year-old she was going to mentor, she had no idea how much the child would go on to alter the course of her life.

‘Fine wine’: Vintage Collaros shows up in big win over Als after 38th birthday

Zach Collaros was in no mood for I-told-you-so’s.

There were no references – either thinly veiled or direct – to the naysayers, many of whom thought the Blue Bombers were in deep trouble as the league-leading Montreal Alouettes rolled into town on a roll for a matchup on Friday that could have left Winnipeg with a sub-.500 record heading into the Labour Day Classic.

No, that’s not Collaros’ style or part of how he operates.

After outduelling Alouettes quarterback Davis Alexander in a convincing 44-28 victory, Collaros stood in front of a group of reporters and displayed almost no emotion, despite delivering what can easily be described as his best showing of the season.

Village Green Bakery keeps focus on classic quality, kindness, fun in Victoria Beach

VICTORIA BEACH — They’re not carved into stone tablets — they’re reminders and not commandments, after all — but behind one of the display cases at Village Green Bakery is a laminated sheet of letter-size paper with a list of statements outlining how owner Jen Leslie wants staffers to approach their work.

Fittingly, there’s a baker’s dozen of them.

One is aimed specifically at a stoic teen who’s worked at the bakery since it opened in summer 2022 — “Smile, Brody,” it says — while the other 12 are meant for all 17 employees at the seasonal business, which is open annually from May long weekend until Thanksgiving.

“Smile and enjoy the ride,” is the first reminder, followed by, “The summer is short, so make it a good one,” “always take the high road” and “you are awesome.”

Health care needs long-term planning

If there’s been a throughline in the past 30 years of Manitoba politics — apart from the fact the electorate has bounced between NDP and Progressive Conservative governments — it’s that the state of provincial health care is almost always in the headlines.

Remember the “hallway medicine” catchphrase used by Gary Doer’s New Democrats in the 1999 provincial election campaign? It’s not that far removed from the “ER bottlenecks” that Manitobans, especially Winnipeggers, must deal with today.

In a recent Free Press examination of emergency room medicine (Condition critical, Aug. 22), Dr. Alecs Chochinov, a former director of emergency medicine at St. Boniface Hospital, attributed the bottleneck problem to “access block,” meaning that more personal-care home beds and home-care services are needed to free up acute-care hospital beds and enable patients to move more quickly through emergency rooms.

So, how should access block be addressed and who should direct the implementation of long-term investment and solutions?

Google Maps to display Lake Ontario as Lake America in U.S.

OTTAWA - Google Maps has updated to display "Lake America" for users located in the United States, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week to rename the Great Lake.

Users in Canada will still see it displayed as Lake Ontario on Google Maps, though the search engine will pull up Lake America as a result if users enter that name in their query.

The search giant said in an Aug. 29 post on its corporate website it made the change because the U.S. government's geographic names database has formally renamed the lake.

Users outside Canada and the U.S. will see both names, Google's post said.