Julia-Simone Rutgers

Manitoba, Ottawa ink deal to protect dwindling boreal caribou population

Manitoba’s boreal woodland caribou are one step closer to having their population — and habitat — protected. This week, the federal and provincial governments signed an agreement reaffirming their commitment to protecting and recovering the threatened and declining population.

Resources, reconciliation and Wetiko

For Manitoban author, filmmaker and environmentalist Clayton Thomas-Müller, healing is about connection to the land.

Seeking a watertight plan: flood mapping, forecasting programs fail First Nations

Before the flood waters overwhelmed Peguis First Nation last spring, local trappers noticed the beehives had been built much higher than in years past. The beaver dams looked different; the foxes and raccoons they usually snared had moved to higher ground.

Get proactive to protect belugas

Before she was a marine biologist with a PhD focused on beluga whales, Kristin Westdal ran a small kayaking ecotourism outfit out of Churchill, Man., in the waters of Western Hudson Bay.

Arctic energy corridor: A pipe dream for Churchill? How we got here and what might be next

Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was met with rousing applause last week as he laid out a vision for a prosperous northern Manitoba that hinges on the contentious Port of Churchill.

Ottawa tabs $1.6M for Lake Winnipeg support

The federal government is chipping in to help restore the health of the Lake Winnipeg watershed, providing nearly $1.6 million to support projects aimed at reducing nutrient loads in the lake basin.

Greening the concrete jungle, in Winnipeg and Edmonton

In the leafy shade of Edmonton’s living-cities victories, Winnipeg advocates see hope for easing the grey expanse of 150 downtown surface lots to an urban oasis

Fishing for a ‘much brighter future’

On Cedar Lake, some 460 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, members of the Chemawawin Cree Nation spend the summer and winter casting nets, looking to pull in schools of walleye, goldeye, lake whitefish and northern pike.

Shades of green: A review of mayoral candidates’ climate-related campaign promises

Cities are on the front lines of climate adaptation. They manage the day-in, day-out impacts of warmer, wetter and more extreme weather.

Lighting a fire under geothermal

The West Kildonan Memorial Community Centre is starting to show its age.

Free parking helps keep councillors driving to city hall

Most city councillors, like the majority of Winnipeggers, drive to work, and those commutes help make driving the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the city.

Despite the city’s plan to slice emissions in the coming decades, one city hall perk makes it hard for councillors to abandon their cars — a free parking pass.

Coun. Matt Allard (St. Boniface) says the option of free parking makes it easy to decide to drive to work.

“One of the biggest inconveniences of commuting to work downtown is finding that parking spot,” he said. “So not only is it tempting from a financial perspective, because you already have a spot paid for, but also you have the convenience of knowing that there’s going to be a spot for you as soon as you pull in.”

Winnipeg’s shiny plan for net-zero emissions

The City of Winnipeg is taking steps toward a net-zero emissions future; a committee of council has unanimously approved an ambitious, multibillion-dollar ‘road map’, with hopes of getting there by 2050.

The Community Energy Investment Roadmap was commissioned by council in 2020. Meant to accompany the city’s broader guiding documents (OurWinnipeg2045 and the 2018 Climate Action Plan), the road map outlines a series of targets for reducing emissions in five sectors, as well as recommendations to help make the goals of the plan a reality. The committee also approved a plan to request annual progress reports from each department affected, and a motion to discuss hiring two additional employees to tackle work outlined in the report at the next budgetary consultations.

Climate and environment advocates lauded the report at a water, waste, riverbank management and environment committee meeting, celebrating its detailed financial modelling and holistic approach to emissions reduction.

“Universally, there is a lot of joy amongst (the climate advocacy) community as a consequence of receiving this report,” Climate Change Connection executive director Curtis Hull said during the June 28 meeting. The road map “is phenomenal; it’s exactly what we need right now.”

Next city council needs to up its green game, advocates say

In advance of the civic election this fall, advocacy groups are trying to make the environment and sustainability ballot-box issues.

“​​We’re trying to make sure that mayoral candidates are challenged to put forward a strong climate platform in their campaigns,” said Niall Harney, a researcher at the Manitoba chapter of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, at an event at the courtyard at city hall Thursday.

Representatives from seven groups presented policy options from the centre’s alternative municipal budget that would curb greenhouse gas emissions and improve green infrastructure.

“The next four years are critical for climate; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we have to reach peak emissions by 2025, and that we have to reduce emissions by 43 per cent by 2030. We want to make sure that mayoral candidates know that and are being pushed to go further,” Harney said.

Murals bring colour, play, inspiration

Robin Love likes to think of her painting style as “playful.”

“I like to tune into a child-like fantasy world that’s kind of pop-surreal fantasy. I describe it as ethereal because of the colours. It plays with this duality: it’s very bright and vibrant, but sometimes there’s an eerie darkness to it,” the 39-year-old mother of two says on a phone call. “I love colour play.”

Such an attention to brightness, colour and play caught the attention of a group of dedicated employees serving the south Winnipeg community from a collection of offices in a church basement this past summer.

At the time, the walls of the South Winnipeg Family Information Centre’s rented space in the basement of Fort Garry United Church were “a dull, muddy brown-ish colour,” says executive director Tricia Robinson, and the team was looking out for a way to brighten its halls.