The social page

The social page

Challenging limits, changing LivesThe Kidney Foundation of Canada’s Manitoba Branch launched its Challenging Limits / Changing Lives Campaign on Nov. 14. The campaign aims to raise $1 million in Manitoba to help people affected by kidney disease through research, prevention, patient services and public awareness of kidney health.

Local business owners Conrad and Yvonne Desender (InterGraphics Decal), stepped up to generously match $150,000 in donations to the campaign. For more information, visit kidney.ca/mb.

Westland-Carbone scholarshipThe Westland Foundation and Carbone Coal Fired Pizza hosted the first Westland-Carbone Partnership scholarship awarding event on Nov. 6 at Carbone’s restaurant in St. Vital. Created in 1993, the Westland Foundation is a volunteer-based non-profit organization dedicated to empowering inner-Winnipeg youth through post-secondary education.

The Westland-Carbone Partnership is a three-year collaboration to provide a scholarship for first- and second-year Westland Scholars in the Red River College Culinary Arts program, with the aim of increasing enrolment in the program. Starting this academic year, Carbone will award a $1,000 scholarship to three students per academic year. For more information, visit westlandfoundation.ca.

Exchange welcomes new gallery

Co-owned by Laura Porath and Mike Page, Lucent Gallery + Design Studio celebrates its grand opening, Thursday.

Family history, solo sojourns paved path for celebrated author’s latest novel

It’s 1967 and Lee Clarke has just been kicked out of UCLA when he receives his draft letter in the mail. Rather than report for basic training, he hops in a car and sets off across America on an amphetamine-fuelled road trip to bid farewell to his fractured, dysfunctional family before crossing the border into Canada.

Such is the premise for B.C.-born, Portland-based Patrick deWitt’s sixth novel Dodge City, published in September by House of Anansi. He’s in Winnipeg tonight at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location to launch the book.

The 51-year-old deWitt came to prominence with his sophomore novel, 2011’s The Sisters Brothers. The book was a critical and commercial success, winning the author the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and was adapted for the big screen in a film starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix.

His 2018 novel French Exit was also adapted for cinema, and his 2023 novel The Librarianist won deWitt the Leacock Medal for the second time. Dodge City is deWitt’s fourth novel to make the Giller Prize long list.

Is Osborne a street or a road? ‘Stroad’ status fails everyone

Last month, the City of Winnipeg said it would soon begin to study ways to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety along Osborne Street, which runs between two of the city’s densest neighbourhoods, where residents walk and bike for many of their daily activities.