Pursuing his passion for dance, far from home

Oliver Sinex, 12, is like any other boy in Winnipeg. He attends school during the week and enjoys sleeping in on the weekend. The only difference is he’s training to become a professional ballet dancer and lives far from home.

Dentist racks up the miles to help protect northern smiles

Wally Mah’s commute on Monday mornings begins at 7 a.m.

Free Press photographer Jessica Lee chronicles Ukrainian family’s first month in Winnipeg

In late February, when the bombs started falling in the middle of the night on Kharkiv, Ukraine, Olena Hrushytska, 37, her son, Oleksandr (Sasha) Hrushytskyi, 6, and her fiancé, Sergiy Adamenko, 41, left their home and made their way to a subway station where many others were seeking shelter from the blasts.

They were accompanied by Adamenko’s parents and Hrushytska’s mom, a young friend, three dogs and a cat.

Life underground lasted a day. It was uncomfortable. Sasha was sleeping on a blanket on the floor; the older parents were unable to sleep at all.

They returned to their house, which they attempted to fortify as best they could. They blocked windows by stacking books and taped window panes.

The joys and realities of being a photojournalist in a Winnipeg winter

Last August, I left Toronto for Winnipeg to start a new job as a photojournalist at the Free Press.

Before departing, friends jokingly wished me the best in ‘Winterpeg.’

Having only been to Winnipeg once before — a one-hour pit stop en route to Edmonton aboard the Via train in the summer of 2013 — it was the first time I had heard that term.

But I soon became intimately familiar with my friends’ jest.

Inuit sculptor honours creative mother in massive piece outside WAG’s Qaumajuq

ELIE — Goota Ashoona prefers to work outside.

That’s where she first learned to make her art as a child growing up in an Inuit outpost camp on the shores of Baffin Island, Nunavut, transforming snow into miniature igloos and polar bears under a sky that danced at night.

Today, Ashoona is seated at her outdoor workbench at her home much further south near Elie, her tiny 4-foot-11 frame bundled into a bright-blue hoodie emblazoned with the word “Nunavut” against the red inuksuk and the blue star (the Niqirtsuituq, or North Star) from the territorial flag. She’s surrounded by trees and, beyond them, open prairie.

It’s early afternoon in the small community about 45 kilometres west of Winnipeg, but already, the November sunlight is long and low. Ashoona is carving faces, among her favourite things to carve, into beluga whalebone. It’s silent out here, save for the whine of her rotary tool.

Sioux Valley Dakota Unity Riders' horseback rides call attention to issues, connect ancestors

The riders take a break as the sun climbs high, pulling the horses off the road somewhere on the long, flat highway north from Sioux Valley Dakota Nation. They’ve ridden maybe 11 kilometres at this point, riders guiding horses through the long grasses in the ditch, trucks hauling horse trailers purring along beside them.

Although it’s already mid-October, the heat has crept up on them with a surprising conviction, and the horses, some new to being ridden and others getting long in the tooth, need a rest. So the Sioux Valley Dakota Unity Riders decide to break for lunch, to laugh and also to pray.

For three decades, the Unity Riders have made journeys like these, trekking on horseback to call attention to issues that impact Indigenous communities and beyond. Today, they ride for kidney disease awareness. In June, they led a large ride to Brandon in memory of the children lost to residential schools.

Sometimes, they wear traditional regalia; today, they wear hoodies and jeans. Sometimes, dozens of equestrians join the ride; today, there are just five. There were more who wanted to come, but it’s the long weekend and many have plans. Still, the ride is sacred to them, no matter how big or how small, and so it must go on.