Julia-Simone Rutgers

This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original site.

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Author: Julia Bullard, Assistant Professor in Information Studies, University of British Columbia

The two largest agencies responsible for the language we use to discover books in libraries in North America — the Library of Congress in the United States, and Library and Archives Canada — are changing how they refer to Indigenous Peoples.

A Virden-area school division will have to pay out more than $80,000, after a substitute teacher was injured in an incident involving a student.

In a decision delivered last week, a Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench judge ruled the Fort La Bosse School Division bears full responsibility for an Oct. 16, 2015, event in which a senior substitute teacher suffered a broken hip after a student flung open a door in a rush before class.

In the early morning, the then-16-year-old and a teammate were late for an out-of-town volleyball tournament. The Grade 11 student at Virden Collegiate Institute was “speed-walking” through the halls with his gym bag and a bag of volleyballs to meet his coach in the parking lot. The coach had told the teen to “hurry,” court documents show.

Arriving at a back door, unable to see through the high window and having his hands full with volleyball equipment, the teen pushed the door open with his hip, court records state. At the same time, 66-year-old Emma Lou Evanson was bending over to unlock the door with her staff key.

“Something is going wrong in a country called Sudan,” Mekki Mohamed cried into a microphone on the front steps of Manitoba’s legislature Saturday. “We want democracy back.”

As Mohamed spoke, the nearly 60 people gathered below him cheered, affirming their support for citizens of a country torn apart by a violent military coup this week. Sudanese and Canadian flags waved high together above the crowd, as Sudanese-Canadian families and their supporters chanted “Action, action for Sudan.”

On Monday, Sudanese military leader Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan dissolved the country’s tenuous transitional government — where military and civilian leaders had shared power since ousting Omar al-Bashir in 2019 — by arresting civilians, including Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and his wife, and opening fire on civilian protesters.

Monday morning, Sudanese Canadians woke to the disturbing images of violence, “widespread arrest and torture” of civil protesters in their home country, Sudanese immigrant Hassan Babiker told the crowd gathered in Winnipeg Saturday.

The minimum wage for security guards has been frozen for years despite the previous government’s instituting special remuneration more than two dollars above Manitoba’s general minimum wage.

As a government under a new Progressive Conservative leader looms, the union representing private security guards is asking the two Tory leadership candidates to commit to those minimum wage increases.

“When you hear about the anti-vaxxers, you hear about the anti-maskers, the people who believe that COVID is made up — they’re taking it out on the first person who tries to enforce the public health orders, which is quite often the security guard,” United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 834 president Jeff Traeger said.

“They’re getting the brunt of that anger, and in some cases, they’re being attacked violently.”