Your forecast
Sunny, becoming a mix of sun and cloud this morning. Wind becoming south at 30 km/h gusting to 50 this morning. High 27 C. Humidex 32. UV index 8 or very high.
What’s happening today
Brent Bellamy plans to be one of the first to cross Portage and Main — and he plans to do so in style.
The Winnipeg intersection will open to pedestrian traffic this morning for the first time since 1979, and Bellamy will be wearing a custom T-shirt with results from the 2018 plebiscite in which 65 per cent of Winnipeggers voted to keep the streets closed.
“I’ll be there first thing in the morning. I might cross back and forth all day, actually, just for fun,” Bellamy said Thursday. “It’s obviously long overdue.”
The creative director for Number Ten Architectural Group and Free Press columnist has been one of many long-standing advocates for removing the concrete barricades that prevented Winnipeggers from crossing the intersection for nearly 50 years. Massimo De Luca-Taronno has the story.
Brent Bellamy at Portage and Main the day before the crosswalks are going to become active, allowing people to cross the famous intersection, legally, for the first time since 1979. (Mike Deal / Free Press)
Today’s must-read
Behind the education degrees and the lesson plans, dark secrets can lie hidden.
These are teachers, entrusted with guiding hundreds of children through their formative years. But in some cases, they are also sex offenders, child-pornography collectors and distributors, scam artists. Some, even murderers.
This disturbing reality within the education system is one the Manitoba government has been reluctant to fully disclose to the public.
Despite promises that a new teacher registry launched at the start of the year would enhance transparency within the education system and improve children’s safety, critics have dismissed it as weak, opaque and inferior to those in use in other provinces.
A Free Press investigation confirms those concerns. Jeff Hamilton has the story.
For student-safety advocates, the province’s new teacher registry falls well short of its stated goals of improving transparency and better informing parents of educator misconduct. (John Woods / Free Press)
On the bright side
Victoria McIntosh clutches the graduation cap her daughter beaded for her, and the jacket she wore on the first day she attended residential school.
The 66-year-old woman from Sagkeeng First Nation has just graduated from the University of Manitoba with a master’s degree in education after starting university when she was 50.
“I want to say to all those survivors of the residential school, the ones that didn’t make it, this is for you,” she told reporters. “That first step is always going to be the hardest, and when you take that last step, you’re going to be glad you took that first step.”
McIntosh was one of more than 250 Indigenous women honoured by the Manitoba government Thursday during the first annual gala to celebrate graduates, held at a downtown hotel. The honourees included high school, college and university grads. Matthew Frank has more here.
Victoria McIntosh was one of more than 250 Indigenous women honoured by the Manitoba government Thursday during the first annual gala to celebrate graduates. (Matthew Frank / Free Press)
On this date
On June 27, 1989: The Winnipeg Free Press reported a Toronto firm believed it could put the romance into cross-country rail travel and do it without reducing service or cutting union jobs. Members of the Winnipeg police department would challenge the aboriginal justice inquiry’s authority to subpoena them as witnesses in the investigation into the 1988 shooting death of Indigenous leader J.J. Harper. Read the rest of this day’s paper here. Search our archives for more here.
Today’s front page
Get the full story: Read today’s e-edition of the Free Press.
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