WAG-Qaumajuq names first Indigenous director, CEO

John Mahli Lawa’ Hampton has been selected to take the helm of Canada’s oldest civic art gallery, WAG-Qaumajuq announced Thursday.

Most Canadian actors earn less than $20K per year from screen work, survey finds

TORONTO - Most Canadian actors can't pay the bills through onscreen work alone, according to a survey from the Canada Media Fund that found seven in 10 respondents earned less than $20,000 a year from their work on film and TV.

The poll of nearly a thousand screen performers also found only six per cent of respondents earned more than $75,000 per year, and just 13 per cent earned all their income from performing.

Two-thirds of respondents made less than half their money through acting, the Canada Media Fund said. The survey was conducted at the end of 2025 by Abacus Data, and asked performers to reflect on their earnings the year prior.

"People have to find other jobs, and really make ends meet in different ways ... to make their careers sustainable," said Diego Briceño, senior manager of data equity at the Canada Media Fund, who presented the report on Tuesday at the Reelworld Summit in downtown Toronto.

CFB Wainwright fire highlights long, painful process of burn recovery, specialists say

TORONTO - The coming days and weeks will be critical for patients with severe burns from Saturday's devastating fire at a military base in central Alberta as they face life-threatening risks of infection and a long, painful road to recovery, burn specialists say.

Dr. Vincent Gabriel, medical director at Calgary Firefighters Burn Treatment Centre at Foothills Medical Centre, said Monday that there are several variables in how a patient recovers, including age, the percentage of the body that's burned and any complications that may arise.

But for serious cases in general, "we would count recovery from burn injury not in days or weeks … but in months and in years, with the hope that a burn survivor returns to their pre-injury role," Gabriel said, stressing that he was not giving details about any of the specific patients involved in the fire at CFB Wainwright.

"Unfortunately, there are times where there's permanent impairment, so it's a long process," he said.

A kitchen is transformed with beautiful tiles and new countertops

Remote job sites are a challenge. Not only is distance a consideration when venturing out to gather information for a price quote, but the commute has to be factored into the project’s overall costs. As a result, many of my repeat remote clients indulge my idea to propose several projects at once, in an effort to maximize my time while putting all those kilometres on my work truck.

Although the jaunt from Winnipeg to Gimli is not that demanding, from where I live the travel time is close to two hours each way, making for long work days. So, the homeowners knew to throw everything at me once I had scheduled an initial visit. On the agenda was a main bathroom facelift as well as the addition of a frosted glass door to the office, which just had a doorless entryway from the hallway.

Nearing the end of our chat, the homeowner mentioned almost in passing how she’d love to also have a backsplash in the kitchen. Previously, the wall area above the back edge of the arborite countertops to the bottom of the upper cabinets had always been painted.

After assessing the kitchen, I would have felt remiss in not mentioning that the backsplash might not yield the desired result if they were intent on keeping the arborite counters. It wasn’t an attempt at an upsell — I truly felt that tiling the backsplash above the back edge of the old countertops was not the way to go. After a bit more discussion, I suggested that if they truly wanted a facelift, the cost-effective approach would be to retain the existing cabinetry, while upgrading the countertops to quartz, along with a new undermount sink and faucet. A newly tiled backsplash after those upgrades would be the icing on the cake. The homeowners quickly jumped on board and requested a quote for the kitchen facelift, along with the bathroom reno and the new glass door for the office.

Nurses call for national strategy on seniors’ health care

Canada’s nurses are calling for a national strategy that ensures seniors have access to care while reducing the impact on the public health system.

“Nurses and health-care workers are stretched too thinly, and Canada’s population is aging,” Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) president Linda Silas said in a news release Friday after meeting with provincial and territorial health ministers in Winnipeg.

“It’s time to act.”

The federation called for a national human resources plan to help address staffing challenges, pointing to a Canadian Institute for Health Information report showing more than three million overtime hours clocked by long-term care workers over a one-year period — the equivalent of 1,500 full-time providers.

Violence directed at Winnipeg School Division support staff surges, union reports

Kicking, biting and other types of student aggression toward educational assistants in Winnipeg has surged 118 per cent since 2022-23.

Ottawa adding new express entry points for immigrants in ‘high-wage’ jobs

OTTAWA - Ottawa is adding new express entry points for some permanent residency applicants in "high-wage" jobs, Immigration Minister Lena Diab said Friday.

The government also plans to remove the requirement for an employer to prove they can't find a qualified Canadian for those jobs.

The policies, which will take effect on Nov. 3, will apply to applicants who already have Canadian work experience, or who have a job offer in a high-wage field such as engineering.

The government considers a high-wage job one that pays at least 1.3 times the national median wage. The new policy offers more points for an occupation's wage level, with higher paying jobs being worth more express entry points.

Halifax’s beloved 104-year-old tortoise is recovering after a successful surgery

Believed to be the oldest living gopher tortoise, Gus underwent a procedure to remove a bladder stone on Tuesday. The Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, where Gus lives, says he is now resting comfortably in private

Royal Winnipeg Ballet workers unionize with MGEU

Workers at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet have unionized.

The RWB workers’ application to join the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union as a single bargaining unit was approved by the Manitoba Labour Board Thursday.

The new Local 466 will include employees of both the RWB and the RWB School, including teaching staff, student boarding staff and accompanists as well as those working in marketing, development, facilities and security, data services, finance, food services and administration.

Physiotherapists, students of the RWB School and employees represented by another bargaining unit will not be members of Local 466.

Longtime voice of the Blue and Gold marks major milestone

Bob McGregor made his debut as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ public-address announcer on June 7, 1997, during a pre-season game at Winnipeg Stadium between the hometown Blue Bombers and their western rivals, the Calgary Stampeders.

McGregor will be behind the microphone again this Saturday, detailing the action on the field in addition to leading a boisterous Princess Auto Stadium crowd through what has become his signature call, “And that is another Winnipeg Blue Bombers first down!”

The Bombers’ final home date of the 2026 regular season will mark a major milestone for McGregor, and the former newscaster feels it’s only fitting the same two teams as 10,717 days ago — the Bombers and Stampeders — will be the ones butting helmets.

“I knew at the start of the season I was closing in on 300 games as the PA guy, only it wasn’t until I went through the schedule that I realized my 300th would be Winnipeg-Calgary, which struck me as kind of cool,” McGregor says, seated in a St. James breakfast nook, dressed in dark trousers and a blue-and-gold Blue Bombers golf shirt.

Three finalists named for inaugural Writers’ Trust non-fiction editing prize

TORONTO - Award-winning poet katherena vermette is among the three finalists for the Writers' Trust's inaugural prize for non-fiction editing.

The Nancy Flight Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Editing awards $25,000 to an editor whose work has made an outstanding contribution to a full-length book of literary non-fiction. The organization says the award is the largest of its kind in Canada, with runners-up receiving $2,500 each.

vermette is nominated for editing "Carry Your Heart: Indigenous Helping Wisdom and the Science of Psychological Flexibility" by Cree psychotherapist Louis Busch, who blends Indigenous teaching wisdoms and Western psychology in the self-help title.

The Winnipeg-born vermette previously won the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language poetry in 2013 for her collection "North End Love Songs." She also won the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for her 2021 novel "The Strangers."

Taste of home: Winnipeg transplant shares Singaporean flavours at pop-ups

Anyone who lives far away from the place they consider home will tell you that while you can adapt to life in a new country, a new work culture and a completely unfamiliar climate, there’s one thing that will remain stubbornly non-negotiable: the appetite.

For Malvin Soh, 49, like so many whose lives straddle two worlds, food is a gateway to childhood memories, culture and heritage.

Originally from Singapore, Soh and his family moved to Canada in 2014 and settled in Winnipeg.

The urban designer began cooking familiar favourites to combat his own cravings when studying and working in Australia, where he lived for nearly 10 years.

Real journalists matter in an AI world

An algorithm can decide what you see, but it doesn’t report the news. Nunatsiaq News, an award-winning newspaper in Nunavut, recently reported that a so-called “news” website was posting AI-generated articles about the north by stealing real news stories produced by real journalists.

The articles were supposedly written by Nunavut correspondent Leah Qammaniq — a fake journalist, with a fake photo and a fake bio.

Governor General Louise Arbour warned us of fake news in her installation speech in June. She said, “We must continue to protect the public space in which our national debates take place: from schools and universities to the media, political parties, unions and civil society organizations …With instant access to vast amounts of information, it is very tempting to pay little attention to the reliability of sources. The lines between knowledge and belief, between truth and falsehood, between facts and assumptions, are increasingly blurred. AI could be threatening not only the way we live and work, but also the control we exercise over our own destiny.”

The Government of Canada has recognized the problem as well. Its recent discussion paper, Enhancing trust in artificial intelligence through increased transparency, stated, “Canadians encounter news reporting, product reviews, and audio-visual content across the internet, often without any indication of whether it was written by a person, generated by an AI system, or produced through some combination of both … A particular concern within this broader landscape is that generative AI greatly enables the creation and dissemination of deceptive or misleading content.”

Scientist who hunts mysterious ghost particles in the Antarctic ice wins Nobel Prize for physics

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Belgian-born scientist Francis Halzen won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for his efforts to demystify a rare group of neutrinos, tiny cosmic particles that researchers believe offer clues to how the universe evolved.

Halzen said he had been told he was among the favorites for the prize since he first published about cosmic neutrinos in 2013. In any given year, he thought he had a 1 in 20 chance to win a Nobel.

“And I just had to live long enough, so here I am,” the 82-year-old told The Associated Press in an interview in Turin, Italy.

Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S., said the research was a huge collaborative effort. He was working on a new research proposal when the Nobel Physics Committee called.

Budding food scrap pickup services across the US want your coffee grounds and eggshells

DETROIT (AP) — Every Monday, Ricky Blanding drives his Ford Ranger pickup truck around Detroit along a carefully planned route.

Blanding hops in and out of the truck, grabbing buckets of food scraps from porches and restaurants, piling those scraps into bins in the truck bed and driving them to a composting site.

Blanding is the CEO of Scrap Soils, one of the many budding food waste collection services across the country helping to divert food from landfills and make composting more accessible. It's especially important for those who can't compost at home, who live in cities without municipal curbside pickup or who can't get to a drop-off location.

Composting leftover coffee grounds, eggshells, carrot tops and more reduces the amount of food that goes into dumps where it produces the potent greenhouse gas methane. It also ultimately helps create healthy soil for gardeners and urban farmers.

Manitoba marks end of sending simple workplace problems to doctor’s office

There are some changes in the workplace that make you think: “Well, it’s about time.”

This is one of them.

Starting Oct. 1, Manitoba changed the rules around sick notes. I think it is going to be a wonderful change — not just for doctors and patients, but for employers, employees and the way we think about accountability at work.

The change comes from Bill 11, the Employment Standards Code Amendment Act (Sick Notes for Employee Absences), which received royal assent on June 1 and came into force Thursday. Under the new rules, employers generally cannot require a sick note for an illness or injury unless the employee is away for more than one week or has been absent because of illness or injury for more than 10 scheduled workdays in the calendar year.

Winnipeg board game company charts winning path

Dennis Northcott has launched a game without frontiers.

The Winnipeg entrepreneur is the co-designer of Galactic Cruise, a board game published last year by Kinson Key Games LLC, the business he co-founded. Since its release, Galactic Cruise has been translated into 11 languages and sold around 50,000 copies worldwide.

It’s also one of three finalists for this year’s Deutsche Spiele Preis, a prestigious community-voted board game award. Northcott will travel to Essen, Germany, later this month, where the winner will be announced at Spiel Essen, an annual board game trade fair.

“It’s been amazing,” Northcott said of the response to Galactic Cruise during an interview in his Island Lakes neighbourhood home earlier this week. “The sales have been great, but it’s also been amazing in terms of people giving their reviews.”

Cops handcuffed by bail issues, lack of mental-health options, WPS chief tells residents in crime-ridden North End neighbourhood

Weak bail reform and a lack of mental-health resources and addictions treatment beds are making it more difficult to tackle crime in inner-city neighbourhoods such as William Whyte, where there has been a significant increase in criminal behaviour compared to last year, the city’s top police officer says.

Winnipeg Police Services Chief Gene Bowers made the remarks Thursday night at an event hosted by the William Whyte Neighbourhood Association, where about two dozen residents gathered to share their concerns about crime in the North End community.

“Fentanyl and meth, that’s caused a strain on all our front lines and and all these agencies that are trying to help people,” Bowers told the room of people at Inner City Youth Alive on Aberdeen Avenue Thursday night.

“What really is the problem is there’s no treatment. That’s the gap, because (police and agencies) are all churning the same people through, and we’re all seeing them. We’re all frustrated that there’s no help.”

A day on the campaign trail: Winnipeg's mayor, seeking a second term, does double duty

In the weeks leading up to the civic election, Scott Gillingham has been performing a juggling act: he’s running to be Winnipeg’s 45th mayor, while still serving as its 44th.

“If someone asks me about the campaign, I’m going to answer them. But I think for most people, I’m the mayor of Winnipeg, even if I’m showing up as a candidate,” Gillingham, 58, says. “I try to do all I can to maintain that distinction.”

The Free Press joined Gillingham on a recent rainy September Saturday on the campaign trail, where he served in both roles during an event-laden day. City council’s final meeting before the Oct. 28 election was days earlier.

In Winnipeg, it’s rare for an incumbent to be defeated. But Gillingham knows his win in 2022 wasn’t exactly a landslide — he won with 27.5 per cent of the vote — and he’s been thinking about his second term ever since.

Canadian astronaut reaches International Space Station for six-month mission

MERRITT ISLAND - Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk's first thought after being told Thursday he had made it to space was one of disbelief.

"I don't really believe it yet," Kutryk said after being told the crew was in orbit, about 10 minutes after blasting off from Florida as part of the NASA SpaceX Crew 13 mission to the International Space Station.

"It does feel weird, though."

The 44-year-old is a mission specialist on the four-person crew, which also includes commander Jessica Watkins and pilot Luke Delaney — both of NASA — and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, another mission specialist.

Winnipeg Book Festival starts a new chapter

Once known as Thin Air, the 2026 Winnipeg Book Festival marks a new chapter heading into its 29th year celebrating fiction, non-fiction and poetry with a new name, new staff and a shorter, more streamlined fest based at The Forks.