‘Ugly produce’ trend may have limits, as grocers end tests

A Life's Story: Beloved matriarch, kindergarten teacher lived a musical life

Phyllis Dana faced a choice: leave Winnipeg to study opera at a prestigious Philadelphia school, or marry the man she loved.

She chose the latter.

Now, her Juno-winning granddaughter cherishes a Happy Birthday voicemail sung by Phyllis. Three generations of Dana women — Phyllis, her daughter, and granddaughter — would sing in Winnipeg’s prominent Jewish spaces. And hundreds of Manitobans know the matriarch as their kindergarten teacher.

“My mom said, ‘A sheet of music won’t keep you warm at night,’” Karen Dana recalled.

Men cycling across Canada for charity have bikes stolen in Winnipeg

Thomas Clark and Valentin Duquenne were devastated after their bikes went missing outside CBC Manitoba’s headquarters, but uplifted by the outpouring of support from Manitobans afterward.

Long may you scamper, sweet little Jimothy

We desperately needed a folk hero this summer, with its wildfires and storms and diarrhea lettuce. Someone to unite us, to inspire us, to get us through.

Enter Jimothy.

Jimothy is an off-kilter raccoon with an appropriately off-kilter name from Seattle who has gone viral for his short, round body — likely the result of a congenital condition called short spine syndrome.

I have seen various creative descriptions of Jimothy online: “a child’s rendering come to life,” or “a raccoon drawn from memory,” or not a raccoon but a “rcn,” owing to his truncated spine.

Convicted sex offender awaits latest sentence

Prosecutors are seeking a 15-year prison sentence for a Red Lake, Ont., man who groomed two Indigenous girls online and drove nearly 500 kilometres to Winnipeg to sexually abuse one of them.

Scott Christopher Alcorn, 50, has pleaded guilty to one count each of child luring, sexual interference and possession of child sexual abuse material.

Alcorn was still on parole for child sex offences at the time of his April 2025 arrest, having been convicted four years earlier of providing a 16-year-old girl a bottle of alcohol in exchange for sex.

“Despite this (prior conviction)… Mr. Alcorn egregiously reoffended, this time to lure two children online and successfully groomed, manipulated and commodified one of (the victims),” Crown attorney Dayna Queau-Guzzi told provincial court Judge Robert Heinrichs at a sentencing hearing Thursday.

Dropping the gloves to make the point

In hockey parlance, it’s called “shedding,” the moment in a game when you are forced to deal with an instigator by dropping (shedding) your gloves for an all-out brawl.

That term is a deep cut from hockey culture that Prime Minister Mark Carney — he of the “elbows up” phenomenon — may need to not only embrace but practise more often in the face of yet another round of overly punitive tariffs imposed by United States President Donald Trump.

To be fair, under Carney’s leadership, Canada has not exactly rolled over in the face of Trump’s bully-boy tactics.

Yes, Canada has made concessions to placate Trump to further a new continental trade agreement: investing more money to combat the cross-border flow of fentanyl that isn’t actually happening, stalling efforts to tax streaming companies as most European countries already do, and — most recently — giving Trump a cut of profits from the Canadian-made, Canadian-paid Gordie Howe bridge between Windsor and Detroit.