The Wrap: School lunches, Centre Village set for demolition, art fraud sentencing, and a trailblazer in U Sports

Manitoba schools are undergoing kitchen renovations, hiring food co-ordinators and stocking up pantries as they roll out expanded meal programs.

The province earmarked $30 million in this year’s budget to make healthy meals more widely available to students across the public school system.

The “universally accessible” program expansion will feed students who show up to school hungry and thereby limit disruptive behaviour in classrooms, Premier Wab Kinew said at a launch lunch today.

Centre Village, the inner-city apartment complex hailed as an architectural marvel when it opened in 2010 but recently shuttered and abandoned by the province is set to be demolished this month.

The long-vacant building, which caught fire Wednesday night, has gone from a sign of hope and innovation to an unprecedented black spot on the province’s affordable housing file.

Reporter Malak Abas has the latest details on the controversial complex.

For orchestrating what is considered the largest art forgery ring in Canadian history, Ontario’s David Voss has been sentenced to spend five years in a federal penitentiary.

In June, Voss, 52, pleaded guilty for his principal role in producing and introducing into the market at least 1,612 fraudulent artworks falsely attributed to Norval Morrisseau, the influential late Anishinaabe painter, considered one of the finest visual artists in modern Canadian history.

The forgery scandal touched Winnipeg’s arts community in June when the Winnipeg Art Gallery was informed by Thunder Bay police that a painting in its collection — Astral Plain Scouts — was not a Morrisseau original, as thought upon donation in 2000, but a Voss fake.

On a warm fall day almost a year ago, Maya Turner became the first woman to play in a U Sports football game, score points in a U Sports football game and kick the winning field goal.

It was only the beginning.

By the end of the 2023 Canada West season, Turner had played in six games, hit on 11 of 14 field goal attempts, went 16-for-16 on conversion attempts and averaged 52.3 yards on 16 kickoffs.

Sportswriter Mike Sawatzky catches up with the trailblazer at the start of an encore performance that promises to be even better.