Nurse practitioners fill void as menopause clinic to open in 2027

Some Manitoba women are paying close to $400 to access medically necessary menopause treatment from nurse practitioners who aren’t funded by the province.

“It’s a needed service that has plenty of gaps to access,” said Ashley Carruthers, chief executive officer of the Nurse Practitioners Association of Manitoba.

Premier Wab Kinew acknowledged the need at a news conference Monday to announce a $5.2-million plan to revive the menopause clinic by fall of 2027.

For now, many women must wait for access to treatment or pay a nurse practitioner.

Syrup season in swing

Louise May has been tapping the trees at the St. Norbert Arts Centre for 37 years, extracting the nectar that becomes maple syrup.

May began making syrup as a way to connect with the trees and continue in the footsteps of the Trappist monks who originally planted the maple trees more than a century ago.

Recently, the endeavour has taken a more spiritual turn as May began collaborating with kookum Christine Cyr and sharing the syrup for a strawberry heart medicine used during Sundance ceremonies, which include a four-day fast.

“This is a really powerful medicine,” says Cyr. “It physically and spiritually helps people to get through” the ceremony when it is typically taken on the third day of the fast. At the beginning of the season, community members drummed, sang, and offered tobacco to each tree as May put the taps in.

High fuel prices driving up shipping costs for northern grocers

Whether it's Florida oranges, Colombian coffee or even homegrown items from another province, food has often travelled a long way before it reaches grocery stores in Canada.

The supply chain gets even longer for communities in the Far North.

Typically, groceries are loaded onto a truck and taken to a launch point in cities like Ottawa or Winnipeg. They're then flown, or shipped by sea, to finally reach the shelves of remote northern grocery stores.

It's an expensive journey. By the time groceries reach northern communities, the added transport costs mean items are priced significantly higher than what most Canadians pay at the grocery store — and even more for fresh and perishable produce.

Sewing studio offers classes for crafty folks

Make it Sew is made to feel like a living room. Handmade quilts and crafts are displayed throughout the cosy Sherbrook Street sewing studio. A vintage couch sits next to a tall credenza filled with kitschy teapots and refreshments for “mandatory cookie breaks.”

The homey vibes are an intentional nod to the business’s early days, when owner Brittany Karbonik was teaching students how to sew in her Transcona abode.

“I wanted it to feel inviting, like a home,” she says.

Karbonik opened Make it Sew (156 Sherbrook St.) last fall as haven for fibre art enthusiasts of all skill levels and ages. The shop offers private and group classes in sewing, crocheting, knitting and weaving, as well as equipment rentals and special crafting events. The space also has a retail section stocked with items made by local craftspeople.

Most fashion mannequins are about a size 2. The Met Gala exhibit is making room for diverse bodies

NEW YORK (AP) — On a sultry summer day in Brooklyn last year, artist and couture designer Michaela Stark found herself in a studio surrounded by 175 cameras, for a photo shoot unlike any she’d done before.

Clad only in her signature corsetry that binds the flesh, Stark stood in the midst of a circle as the cameras captured all angles of her body, simultaneously — part of an intricate process known as photogrammetry. The goal: to scan her body and build a mannequin — three, actually — for display in one of the world’s top museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And at the Met Gala, no less.

“It was definitely a bit nerve-wracking,” recalls Stark of the “intimate and vulnerable” experience. But, she quips, “something about being naked on a 40-degree (Celsius) day in a corset that isn’t hiding anything kind of takes the awkwardness away from the situation, actually.”

The mannequins, and others based on real-life models like Stark, will be featured in “Costume Art,” the upcoming spring exhibit at the museum’s Costume Institute that's launched by the starry May 4 gala. It’s part of an effort to add an element of body positivity to a show that examines the dressed body in art over the centuries, says curator Andrew Bolton.

North End vocational school opens ‘cultural learning lab’ creative design studio

A North End warehouse has been converted into a multi-purpose design studio where students can sew ribbon skirts, print 3D models and launch businesses.

The Winnipeg School Division celebrated the grand opening of its Waabishkaa-Makwa Lab last week.

The first-of-its-kind “cultural learning lab” embeds Indigenous teachings into project-based learning activities.

For more than a decade, the 4,500-square-foot space inside R.B. Russell Vocational School had been collecting dust and housing broken equipment.

In praise of the deliberately slower lane

Before I begin this story, I should first confess that I once suffered from a serious affliction — that nasty urban disease known as road rage.

Manitoba puts up $4 million to protect Seal River watershed

Six years after a coalition of four northern Manitoba First Nations banded together to conserve the province’s last major undammed river, the Seal River watershed is “on the cusp” of permanent protection.

On Friday, the Seal River Watershed Alliance and the provincial and federal governments released a joint proposal to designate the 50,000-square-kilometre ecosystem — one of the world’s largest intact watersheds — as an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area.

“This announcement is an absolutely historic moment in time where we have all different levels of government (and) … the nations coming together to preserve some of the most beautiful areas in the world,” Manitoba Environment Minister Mike Moyes said Friday.

“I am so proud to be part of a government that is moving forward on this historic agreement that is going to protect seven per cent of Manitoba.”

Phasing out of door-to-door mail delivery sinks in for Winnipeggers

Canada Post said Thursday it plans to convert about four million addresses to community mailboxes over the next five years, beginning with 136,000 in late 2026 and early 2027.

Supervised drug consumption site will be grounded in culture, compassion: facility’s leader

Winnipeg’s first supervised consumption site is being designed as a culturally grounded health space where people struggling with addiction will be met with familiarity, dignity and support from the moment they enter.

AI-driven app like a grain market ‘analyst in your pocket’

Mark Lepp grew up on a 5,000-acre grain farm near Elm Creek, but he never took to farming the way his father and two younger brothers did.

“I probably frustrated everyone around me,” he said. “The real art of farming — I was not that artist.”

That hasn’t stopped the entrepreneur from making a name for himself in agriculture. In 2004, he co-founded FarmLink Marketing Solutions, which pioneered the business of providing personalized marketing recommendations for Western Canadian farmers.

“I always liked the economics part (of farming),” Lepp said. “I liked the business part.”

Gatorade, inventor of the sports drink, is getting a rebrand targeting non-athletes

Sixty years after it invented sports drinks, Gatorade is making a surprising pivot: It’s no longer focusing primarily on athletes.

PepsiCo, Gatorade’s parent company, said Thursday that the brand wants to broaden its reach to non-athletes who are looking for ways to hydrate, whether they’re on a long flight, going for a walk or nursing a hangover. New packaging highlights the specific ways Gatorade’s various drinks and powders work and the research behind them.

The change reflects U.S. consumers’ booming interest in beverages with perceived health benefits. Jack Doggett, a food and drink analyst with the consulting firm Mintel, said his research indicates 60% of consumers who buy sports drinks aren’t athletes but want the functional ingredients those drinks provide, like electrolytes for hydration and carbohydrates for energy.

“People are using these drinks more for wellness and daily maintenance,” Doggett said. “It’s easy to say that the wellness consumer is the young consumer, but older generations are also drinking these drinks for hydration.”

Meet neffy: Health Canada approves epinephrine nasal spray for anaphylaxis

TORONTO - Health Canada has approved the first needle-free epinephrine treatment for severe allergic reactions: a nasal spray called neffy.

ALK Canada, which purchased the rights to distribute the drug, says the two-milligram treatment could be on the market as soon as this summer.

The drug was approved for adults and pediatric patients who weigh at least 30 kilograms, which is roughly 66 pounds. A one-milligram dose has been approved in the United States for kids between 15 and 30 kilograms, but not in Canada.

As it stands, epinephrine auto-injectors — a single-use pre-filled device known by the brand name EpiPen — are the only emergency treatment option available for allergic reactions.

A small but growing movement wants you to put down your phone. But first read this

NEW YORK (AP) — More than a dozen millennials gathered in a brownstone apartment in Brooklyn and placed their phones in a metal colander before two hours of reading, drawing and conversation — anything but staring at screens.

A similar scene played out a few miles away, in an early 20th-century cardboard box factory turned high-end office space. Nearly 20 people in their 30s stared at their cellphones for a few minutes. Then they set them down and looked at their bared palms for a while. Then those of their neighbors.

The exercise was meant to drive home the importance of paying attention to real life, not the gleaming little screens that have taken over our world.

A ‘revolution’ against devices

Walmart is repackaging its Great Value brand to reflect changing consumer habits

NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart is redesigning the packaging of its Great Value products to help customers instantly spot whether a bag of spicy chips is gluten-free or how much protein is packed into a serving of chicken nuggets.

Encompassing 10,000 different products, Great Value is Walmart's biggest store brand and one of the largest food and consumer packaged goods labels in the U.S. The revamp announced Wednesday comes as shoppers have increasingly treated private-label foods not as a stepdown from national brands, but more as an equivalent.

The new cartons, boxes, bags and other containers will start to appear on Walmart store shelves next month, said Scott Morris, senior vice president of Walmart’s U.S. private brands division. The overhaul does not involve any changes to the products themselves, he said.

The updates include images that are intended to make the product inside more tempting to shoppers. For example, a Great Value frozen lasagna will show a the pasta garnished with a basil leaf, served on a full plate and displayed on a red checkered tablecloth against a red background, according to Walmart executives. The current box features the lasagna against a white background.

Holocaust survivors, family members mark solemn day by remembering not to forget

Rob Berkowits carries a black and white photo in his wallet — of his father, Alex, and fellow prisoners in a Nazi Germany concentration camp — as a constant reminder the challenges in his life are small.

Province boosts CFS funding by $29M

The Manitoba government has earmarked an additional $29.2 million to bolster supports for children, youth and families in the child welfare system, but critics say it isn’t enough.

‘Desperately missed’ victims honoured as B.C. marks 10 years of toxic drug emergency

VICTORIA -

Paula Beardy said her grandson Sheldon Beardy was a good kid.

He would have turned 28 on Monday. But his mother died last year, and after attending her memorial service in August, Sheldon also died of a drug overdose.

Paula Beardy said Sheldon used to stay with her a lot and she misses his happy smile.

Crop-enhancement firm eyes potato prosperity

Of all the research labs in all the cities in all the world, Kinneret Shefer walks into St. Boniface Hospital’s.

The researcher and entrepreneur is the co-founder of GeneNeer Ltd., an agricultural biotechnology company from Israel. Earlier this year, the company established its North American operations at the Albrechtsen Research Centre in the central Winnipeg hospital.

“We moved to Canada because our technology developed, we are moving to implementation and we have some business agreements in negotiation,” said Shefer, who holds a PhD in genetic counselling from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

GeneNeer launched its Canadian operations in January. The company converted laboratory facilities at the research centre and had them operating within two weeks, allowing research activities to begin almost immediately.

‘Just staggering’: city’s homelessness crisis worsening, new data reveals

Winnipeg’s homelessness crisis is accelerating, not easing, as new data released Monday shows more people are falling into homelessness than are finding a way out.

NDP pushing for ban on AI surveillance pricing as Lewis makes Parliament Hill debut

OTTAWA - The NDP is expected to introduce a motion on Wednesday calling on the government to ban a practice known as surveillance pricing that New Democrats say is unfair to consumers.

The text of the motion describes the practice as companies using a customer's personal data, like search history or how long they stay on a web page, to increase prices both in store and online.

NDP Leader Avi Lewis said Monday examples of this can include a parent with a sick baby being charged a higher price for a thermometer or medicine based on internet search history.

"This means that two different people could pay two different prices for the exact same product in the same store or on the same website on the day. It's unfair, it's a ripoff, and it's downright creepy. And it's time to put a stop to it," Lewis said.

Statistics Canada reports wealth and income gaps grew in 2025

The gap between Canada's richest and poorest grew last year as financial markets gained while interest payouts declined and the job market softened, said Statistics Canada on Monday.

The agency says the income gap, measuring the difference in the share of disposable income between households in the top 40 per cent and those in the bottom 40 per cent, reached 46.7 percentage points in 2025.

The result compared with a gap of 46.4 percentage points a year earlier.

The wider gap came as the lowest-income households saw wages rise slower than the overall average, and saw their investment income fall because of lower interest payments on savings, the agency said.