The Wrap: The path to safe consumption, Neo Financial troubles, Pan Am Boxing Club, Rutger’s roots, classic brooms
Plus: Guess who's preventing the Guess Who from playing Guess Who songs?

Manitoba’s new NDP government campaigned last summer on a promise to open the province’s first supervised consumption site.

The government committed $2 million in its first budget last week to establish a facility. However, the province says it needs a year to consult community stakeholders on the location and the services that should be offered.

Katrina Clarke looks at what’s being done to prepare.

Burton Cummings’ latest ploy to thwart the Guess Who appears to be working.

The former singer for the band, which began in Winnipeg in the 1960s, has terminated licensing agreements for the Guess Who songs he owns publishing rights for, including American Woman, These Eyes and Share the Land.

The tactic led to the cancellation of four Guess Who concerts earlier this week, including one that came just minutes before the group was to take the stage.

Alan Small explains the latest salvo in the legal battle over the band’s name.

A company that’s received more than $1 million from the Manitoba government to create jobs has quietly laid off staff and has become a revolving door of workers, former employees allege.

The Free Press corresponded with 10 former Neo Financial employees in various departments, from management to customer service, who confirmed and relayed experiences of layoffs or gave reasons for leaving the company in 2023-24.

Gabrielle Piché reports.

For an organization that teaches a violent sport in the downtown of Canada’s reputedly most dangerous city, Pan Am Boxing Club impresses one with how friendly its environment is.

Wholesome, even, writes Conrad Sweatman.

The organization isn’t just tackling reform and access to opportunities for at-risk youth and men. It’s also a hub where Winnipeg’s four corners interact, trade jokes and jabs, and maybe get to know one another a little better.

Rutger McGroarty is the most intriguing prospect in the Winnipeg Jets pipeline, a unique player whose combination of character, compete and charisma has already made plenty of waves around the hockey world.

Now, all eyes are on the power forward to see what he does next: Turn pro and sign with the NHL club that drafted him 14th overall in 2022 or head back to school for another year?

Hockey writer Mike McIntyre explains how a 20-year-old from Lincoln, Neb. — a city of 290,000 that has produced a grand total of zero big-league hockey players — got to this stage.

Amina Haswell wouldn’t have given a broom a second glance in the past.  But one day she happened to spot throngs of people streaming in and out of a traditional broom shop in Vancouver. Her interest was piqued.

Today, Haswell has a shop of her own, and every broom in it is handmade using natural fibres. They come in several styles: Appalachian, Shaker, Edo-Japanese, Indonesian, and more.

“Average brooms last anywhere from 18 months to two-and-a-half years. Our brooms can last anywhere from 15 to 50 years; handed down from generation to generation,” she says.