The Wrap: Encampment cleanups, HSC safety, Eid Mubarak, Whiteout party plans and a new play at WJT

The City of Winnipeg is examining the idea of cleaning up trash at homeless encampments on a weekly basis.

A report written by city Chief Administrative Officer Michael Jack, for council’s executive policy committee meeting next week, indicates the city paid $83,888.39 for 162 cleanups last year, or $517.83 each.

Based on those costs, Jack says the city would have to spend approximately $4.06 million a year to clean up each of the city’s estimated 150 homeless camps once a week.

Those numbers have some advocates claiming the potential prices are wildly overinflated compared to what they think regular cleanups would cost.

Erik Pindera takes a closer look.

Health, Seniors and Long-Term Care Minister Uzoma Asagwara announced during Wednesday’s legislature question period they have directed Shared Health to provide security officers working at Health Sciences Centre’s emergency department with pepper gel.

The announcement comes on the heels of a Free Press report that security personnel employed by the University of Manitoba’s Bannatyne Avenue medical sciences buildings — which make up part of the HSC campus — were equipped with batons or pepper gel, while those working at HSC’s ER were not.

Carol Sanders reports on the health minister’s decision.

About 15,000 people gathered at the convention centre to mark Eid Al Fitr. The word means “festival” or “feast” in Arabic, and it marks the end of 30 days of fasting during Ramadan.

People prayed together in three shifts, 5,000 at a time, starting at 7 a.m. Others prayed at mosques across the city.

Faith writer John Longhurst spoke with several local Muslims who were marking the end of Ramadan to see what the special day means to them.

A Winnipeg “Whiteout” will blanket parts of downtown again when a much-anticipated Jets playoff run begins in a couple of weeks.

The True North Sports & Entertainment’s downtown street parties will return for a fifth time (and second consecutive year) during every home NHL post-season game.

The events are capped at 5,000 fans to watch games on Donald Street between Portage and Graham avenues and inside the Metropolitan Entertainment Centre.

Tickets will be $10, and $5 from each sale will be directed to United Way Winnipeg. More than $50,000 was raised for the charitable social services organization last year.

Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s newest show, Address Unknown, is a 90-year-old story that could have been written yesterday.

The work follows two men on opposite sides of a political divide and is built around a series of letters sent between the pair of Weimar Era business partners from 1932 to 1934.

The play transports the audience to a time when communicators didn’t have the luxury of immediacy, and facts were twisted into fatal falsehoods along their delivery routes, all while documenting the rise of Nazism and fascism through the deteriorating personal relationship of two friends and business partners.

Amitai Kedar and Arne MacPherson play the men in what is a crucial production for the WJT.