Influencers have more reach on 5 major platforms than news media, politicians: report

OTTAWA - More than two-thirds of younger Canadians engage with political content from influencers — and influencers have significantly more reach on five major social media platforms than news media outlets or politicians, a new study indicates.

A significant portion of the political content Canadians see on the major platforms "comes directly from influencers," says the report from the McGill University and University of Toronto-led Media Ecosystem Observatory.

The report focused on posts from individuals and institutions on X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Bluesky. It did not look at or compare reach on websites, other online platforms or traditional platforms.

The researchers say they identified 1,097 influencers and collected 4.1 million of their posts from January 2024 to July 2025 on five social media platforms. Over that time period, politicians were responsible for 1.1 million posts while media outlets accounted for 2.8 million.

Hurrying hard for Jamaican flavours infusing West St. Paul Curling Club

WEST ST. PAUL — This month marks a full decade since Vincent Dennis opened a Caribbean-flavoured restaurant inside the West St. Paul Curling Club.

And although it could be assumed that a person who has spent that much time in the vicinity of rocks and rings would have picked up a thing or two about the roaring game by now, that doesn’t appear to be the case with the Jamaican-born owner of Tropical Thunder.

Not even close.

“I’ve been here since 2015 and I still don’t have a clue what I’m staring at,” Dennis, 52, says with a chuckle, seated at a table offering a perfect view of the 62-year-old club’s four curling sheets.

Le pouvoir des rencontres

Depuis plusieurs années, Djehil Togoi, élève de 11e année au Collège Louis-Riel, s’investit dans le programme CanU, un projet caractérisé par ses offres de mentorat et son accompagnement éducatif destiné à soutenir la jeunesse manitobaine.

Pour Togoi, aussi appelé DJ, cette expérience est à la fois une occasion de créer des liens et de se rapprocher d’une communauté.

“Mon expérience CanU a été très enrichissante, explique-t-il. Chaque jour est une nouvelle expérience et chaque expérience m’apporte de nouveaux apprentissages. Je suis vraiment reconnaissant d’avoir découvert ce programme.”

Le 13 novembre, CanU organise le Gala Imagine Stories, une initiative annuelle visant à lever des fonds et à mettre à l’honneur la parole des jeunes. Comme l’explique Roger Berrington, fondateur de l’organisation, “ce gala permet aux élèves de raconter leur histoire mais aussi de montrer leur courage, et ces moments-là marquent leur vie et celle de ceux qui les entourent”. Cette année, l’événement se tiendra au Musée canadien pour les droits de la personne, un choix symbolique qui reflète les valeurs de l’organisation CanU.

Puppy Sphere yoga chain rolls out ‘mood-boosting’ first classes in Winnipeg

Winnipeg yogis seeking to do a downward dog while surrounded by dogs are in luck: puppy yoga is here.

Toronto-based company Puppy Sphere began offering weekend yoga classes at Yoga Public (280 Fort St.) earlier this fall.

Each class consists of a 45-minute yoga flow led by a certified instructor, while puppies from local rescues and breeders roam the studio. The class is followed by a 30-minute wind-down that includes refreshments and canine cuddles.

Puppy Sphere founders Francesca Albo and Lea Burbidge Izquierdo said the classes began selling out almost immediately, which led them to add Thursdays to the schedule. The entrepreneurs are actively looking for a Winnipeg studio of their own.

Trustee suspended for third time in three years

TRANSCONA’S school board has given a veteran member his third strike in as many years, but he’s not out of a job.

Rod Giesbrecht, a longtime trustee in the River East Transcona School Division, has been suspended for three months for breaching the board’s code of conduct.

Giesbrecht was disciplined twice during the 2023-24 school year for admitting he spoke out of turn about confidential board matters.

His colleagues voted to suspend him without pay — the most severe consequence available — on Sept. 9.

Unique Bunny jumps to 10 stores, with eye on future expansion

Ekam Verma’s shopping trip might be sparked by an email: we’ve restocked. Her destination? Unique Bunny. Verma scanned the aisles of Unique Bunny’s McPhillips Street location on Monday — her go-to Japanese eyeliner was across the store; South Korean cleansing foams and pore repair serums stood nearby.

Travelling sign painter finds his groove on the move

For someone whose writing appears all over the city, Joseph Pilapil’s penmanship isn’t the best.

You’ve probably seen his meticulously formed letters above store entrances, on shop windows and decorating sandwich boards all across the city.

But when it comes to writing on paper, well, the less said the better.

“My handwriting is terrible. When I am writing out my day-to-day stuff, it’s absolutely really bad,” he says, with a laugh.

Invention of combine part reaps recognition in Time

A dozen years ago, Jeremy Matuszewski had only visited farms a few times in his life. Now, Time magazine has recognized him for a product he created to help farmers.

Investment regulator funds program to help Indigenous youth manage settlement money

Sudden wealth isn’t a topic that would typically be part of a basic financial literacy course. It seems like even more of an odd fit for a new program for low-income Manitobans.

“We’ve been picking up on what people we worked with in the community have been asking about,” says Lisa Forbes, manager of social enterprise and fund development at SEED Winnipeg Inc.

Called “Sudden Wealth and Investing Basics,” the pilot is a response to what SEED has been hearing from Indigenous youth who may soon be recipients of legal settlements, she says.

These notably include a $530-million settlement to compensate children in care from 2005 to 2019 in Manitoba who had grant money unfairly clawed back and a $23-billion federal settlement over discriminatory child welfare practices and chronic underfunding.

La créativité franco-manitobaine rayonne: Anna Binta Diallo expose à travers le pays

En 2025, l’artiste visuelle franco-manitobaine Anna Binta Diallo connaît une année charnière. De Vancouver à Toronto, en passant par Edmonton et Winnipeg, ses expositions se succèdent, confirmant la place qu’elle occupe désormais parmi les figures majeures de la scène artistique canadienne contemporaine.

Née à Dakar, Sénégal, en 1983 et élevée à Saint-Boniface, Anna Binta Diallo tisse depuis toujours des liens entre les continents et les mémoires. Ses œuvres explorent les intersections entre identité, nostalgie et nature, dans un langage visuel qui conjugue collage, vidéo, graphisme et sculpture.

“Le collage est depuis longtemps au cœur de ma démarche,” confie-t-elle. “J’aime réagencer des images anciennes, des sons, des fragments d’archives pour construire de nouveaux récits.”

L’artiste collecte cartes, livres et photos qu’elle transforme en compositions hybrides, à la croisée du passé et du futur.

No dog? No problem: Local program offers offices pup for a day

Brandt and Paisley are raring to start their new jobs. But instead of hellos and handshakes, they’ll most likely be giving their co-workers tail wags and face licks. Not that anyone in the office will mind.

Coming of age in the era of ‘fake news’

‘Let’s get media lit(erate)!” The punny slogan was my attempt to get students excited about fact-checking, current events and finding alternative sources to Wikipedia — a crowd-sourced platform anyone can edit.

Province releases inaugural innovation report

Promises to keep data in Manitoba and bolster the economy through innovation highlight the province’s first innovation and prosperity report.

“AI, tech, it’s gonna be in your industry,” Premier Wab Kinew said Friday after the report’s release. “We have to get in the game.”

Proponents of the 39-page document expressed hope for Manitoba’s future; critics deemed the strategy lacking.

A majority of Manitoba’s data storage and cloud computing infrastructure is run by United States firms such as Microsoft. The report calls on the province to build its own infrastructure with federal and provincial funds.

The ‘fix’ is a fantasy as dysfunctional health-care system fails Manitobans on multiple fronts

If you’ve been stuck in a Winnipeg emergency room wondering why you’re waiting longer than ever to see a doctor, you’re not imagining it.

New numbers are in, and they paint a grim picture of a health-care system still in crisis.

According to the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s 2024-25 annual report released this week, emergency room and urgent care wait times have jumped 36 per cent over the past three years.

The 90th percentile wait time — meaning nine out of 10 patients are seen faster and one in 10 waits longer — has ballooned from 7.6 hours in 2022-23 to 10.3 hours in 2024-25.

Winnipeg students develop critical aptitude essential for navigating media landscape

One day in the fall of 2024, two of Lily Godinez Goodman’s Grade 5 students came to her with a question: Why didn’t their Earl Grey School have a newspaper, they wondered — and if they started one, would she serve as editor-in-chief?

Former Liberal cabinet minister says young people are hesitant to enter politics

OTTAWA - Sergio Marchi says when he asks students in his university course on politics how many of them are interested in a career in public life, he's surprised if two or three of them raise a hand.

Marchi, who served as minister for international trade from 1997 to 1999 and later as ambassador to the World Trade Organization and the United Nations, told The Canadian Press he fears that more and more young people are giving politics a pass.

"You can't have the current young generation be exempted from public life," he said.

"Nothing wrong with old white men, but we can't have our politicians be just white old men. We need the energy and the idealism of the youngsters."

Winnipeg-based organization injects federal funds into innovative, women-powered business in Bolivia

With practised grace, Antonia Olpo slides down the bank of the long, shallow pond and plunges fully clothed into the muddy water. On the grass above, other women and their male helpers unfurl the net, stretching it across the pond from edge to edge, and let it sink below the surface.

WNDX Festival celebrates 20 years of avant-garde, cutting-edge cinema

When it happened for the first time in 2006, the WNDX Festival of Moving Image was an open-ended hypothesis, and even those most dedicated to its success had their doubts.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen, and only in doing it did we really understand how many times it could have catastrophically failed,” says artistic director Cecilia Araneda, who co-founded the festival with Solomon Nagler.

But it was in that grey zone of possibility and limit-testing, that both the festival and its filmmakers soon thrived —establishing WNDX as a cornerstone event with an international reputation for showcasing a dizzying variety of off-centre, outre and avant-garde work by both emerging and established creators.

As the festival’s porcelain anniversary edition begins tonight, the results are conclusive: WNDX offers replicable proof of its own staying power in the experimental film sphere.

Schools work to fulfil promise afforded by new law supporting Indigenous language

‘Minawaanigoziwin” is the Ojibwa concept that comes to mind for Sherri Denysuik when the Winnipeg teacher is asked about her thoughts on a new law that raises the status of Indigenous languages in schools.

That term is roughly translated to “one who is happy and joyous.”

Denysuik, a member of Sagkeeng First Nation, is trying to learn words many of her ancestors were banned from speaking and, in many cases, punished for uttering inside a residential school.

Recent changes to Manitoba’s Public Schools Act are expected to make it easier for future generations to become fluent in Indigenous languages.

Croft Music plays finale after century-plus in business

A 110-year-old music instrument business has concluded its coda.

On Saturday, Ian Crowson closed the doors for good on Croft Music and began his retirement. The company specialized in selling and renting string instruments — particularly violins — and sold accessories and sheet music.

For the last 23 years, Croft Music worked in tandem with Violins by Anton, a one-man business operated by luthier Anton Domozhyrov. Crowson rented instruments and Domozhyrov repaired them out of the same location at 833 Henderson Hwy. Domozhyrov will continue running Violins by Anton in the building.

Crowson announced his retirement on Facebook at the end of May, writing that he would finish his career shortly after his 72nd birthday in September.

Emergency-vehicle traffic technology pilot a success and city should expand it, WFPS says

Winnipeg ambulances and fire trucks could soon automatically trigger green lights through most of the city, allowing faster emergency responses.

An emergency vehicle pre-emption pilot project was a success, so the city should pay to expand it next year, according to a new Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service report.

“It makes travelling through intersections safer and decreases the time it takes first responders to arrive at an emergency scene,” the report says.

WFPS will seek $1.8 million in 2026 capital funding and $200,000 to cover operating costs to expand the program. That would extend its reach to 437 “higher-risk” intersections, including the 17 included in the pilot, out of Winnipeg’s total 693.