Your forecast
Periods of light snow ending early this morning then clearing. Wind from the northwest at 20 km/h. High -7 C, wind chill -20 this morning and -13 this afternoon. UV index 3 or moderate.
What’s happening today
🎦 Alliance Française du Manitoba returns to the Dave Barber Cinematheque, 100 Arthur St., this weekend for its 11th annual festival of French-language films, a well-curated, interconnected program that kicks off tonight with the crowd-pleasing culinary comedy Tous toqués (All Stirred Up!), directed by Quebec’s Manon Briand.
Today’s must-read
A fragmented trade relationship with the United States and an oil crisis driven by a new conflict in the Middle East has bolstered Canadian politicians’ calls for new oil and gas infrastructure.
As investors hesitate to back the east-west pipeline proposals that face opposition from Indigenous communities and environmental advocates, a decades-old idea to build a link to the Port of Churchill on the shores of Hudson Bay has picked up steam.
The start of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline at the Pump Station 1 near Deadhorse, Alaska. (Jenny Kane photo)
While not all of northern Manitoba is as ice-laden as the Northwest Territories or Alaska, any pipeline from Alberta’s oilfields to Manitoba’s northern coast would need to cross the Canadian Shield, the tundra and permafrost. These ecosystems are changing rapidly as the planet warms; more than half of existing infrastructure in the Arctic is projected to incur damage by mid-century as a result of climate change.
If the province of Manitoba, the federal government and industry players are serious in their pursuit of pumping oil and gas through the Port of Churchill, they will need to build on the legacies — and lessons — of northern pipelines that have come before it. Julia-Simone Rutgers has the story.
On the bright side
UBC alumna Jessica Meir gave students an unusual office tour on Thursday as she floated and flipped inside her zero-gravity workplace — the orbiting International Space Station.
Meir is a NASA astronaut and the commander of a SpaceX Crew-12 mission to the station, where she’s living for eight months.
U.S.-based Meir, who taught a flock of geese how to fly at UBC as part of her zoology research there from 2009 to 2012, answered questions from high school and university students on subjects ranging from space suit design research to how she keeps her curly hair clean in space. The Canadian Press has more here.
UBC alumna and NASA astronaut Jessica Meir (Supplied / UBC / The Canadian Press)
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Today’s front page
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