Return of motorized lift boosts home care recipient By: Katie May Posted: 5:36 PM CDT Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023

Banjo Bowl a big deal for new and returning faces

Kenneth Womack never doubted this day would come.

For all of the twists and turns along this journey, Womack believed in himself and the work he’s been putting in on the road to becoming a professional football player.

So, as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers receiver gets set to make his CFL on Saturday afternoon against the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the Banjo Bowl, you can be sure he’s going to take a moment to savour the experience while doing his best to make it feel like any other game he’s played previously.

“Once I run out the tunnel, it’s all going to sink in,” Womack said after Friday’s walkthrough.

Retired sportscaster Scott Oake determined as fundraising for women's addictions treatment facility enters home stretch

For now, the patch of land just east of the Victoria Hospital doesn’t look like much: just a field of rocks, mounded dirt, and concrete piles driven into the earth. Yet when Scott Oake looks over the site, he can already imagine how it will look in just over a year’s time, when the new Anne Oake Family Recovery Centre is expected to open.

It’s easier to picture this time around. In 2020, when the recently-retired CBC sportscaster and his late wife, Anne, were building their first labour of intermingled grief and love, the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre for men, it was hard for him to wrap his mind around how a raw construction site could transform into a welcoming addictions treatment facility.

When that centre opened in 2021, Oake found it looked “almost identical” to the architect’s renderings. So it’s easy to hope the Anne Oake Centre will be the same. It will be the first facility of its kind, its founders believe, not only in Canada but in North America: a place where 50 to 70 women can pursue sobriety while staying with their children.

“At Bruce Oake there’s a culture of love, and most of all a culture of hope,” Oake said, speaking at the site Thursday after a media conference to announce the final push of the centre’s fundraising campaign. “I can feel it every time I walk into that building. And I know it will be the same here.”

Sunday-night auto aficionados work to steer away from unwelcome elements they say aren’t a part of their tradition

The red 1969 Dodge Coronet Super Bee out for a cruise on Portage Avenue draws admiring eyes from onlookers on a recent Sunday night, many of them seeing a specimen of the now-rare muscle car for the first time on a Winnipeg street. Or any other street, for that matter.

Longtime car enthusiast Bob Sudoma was behind the wheel, participating in the decades-old show-offy summer tradition.

The Sunday night cruise is built around a simple idea: proud car owners take their beloved vehicles for a spin to meet up with others of the same autophile ilk.

Less-fortunate appreciators, or just curious folks, also gather along the route to watch the highly-polished parade. Portage Avenue is one of cruise night’s best-known stretches.

Supportive housing operator sued after man with dementia walks away

The Public Guardian and Trustee of Manitoba is suing a health services company after a man with dementia under its care allegedly wandered away from an apartment it operates for vulnerable people and was later found face down in a puddle — unresponsive, hypothermic and severely injured.

The public trustee — a provincial government agency that, among other duties, makes financial and personal care decisions for vulnerable adults who cannot do so themselves — filed the lawsuit against Cambridge Health Inc. and a related numbered company in the Court of King’s Bench earlier this month.

The agency did so on behalf of a now-38-year-old man, who has been under its care since 2018, as a result of his frontotemporal dementia. The disease often starts in mid-life, rather than old age, as is the case with most other forms of dementia.

The lawsuit alleges the man, who resided at a Henderson Highway apartment complex where Cambridge Health operated a supportive residence for people with complex behavioural health issues, was in a common area of the home at about 4:30 p.m. on April 3 last year.

The plane truth about a dangerous president

U.S. President Donald Trump has crossed firmly into cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face territory.

Return of motorized lift boosts home care recipient

A Winnipeg wheelchair user is raising concerns about bureaucracy within Manitoba’s home care program, after an electric lift was approved for him, taken away over unexplained safety issues, and then reinstated after he publicly complained.

Jean Marcoux, 76, said a portable electric lift was removed from his Bridgwater home last week because officials expressed concerns he’d be stuck on his couch if a home care worker was not available or able to move him in a timely manner.

On Wednesday afternoon, after he contacted the Free Press and a reporter subsequently asked the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority about its handling of the case, Marcoux received a phone call from client relations advising him the lift will be returned to his home.

Only a few weeks earlier, an occupational therapist did a home visit and approved the assistive device, which meant Marcoux could finally sit on his reclining sofa. Previously, he could only be moved between his manual wheelchair and his bed via a permanent lift installed on the bedroom ceiling.