Coup d’oeil sur un jeune Métis engagé

Que disent nos jeunes de ces élections fédérales? Portrait de Beaudry Labossière, étudiant Franco-Métis qui suit la campagne de près.

Étudiant en relations internationales et en histoire, Beaudry Labossière mange et respire la politique. Il consomme des nouvelles sur les élections partout où il peut en trouver: dans des podcasts, à la radio, dans les journaux, à la télévision, sur les réseaux sociaux…

Mais malgré sa soif de contenu électoral, Beaudry a l’impression que les différents partis ne font pas grand-chose pour l’atteindre en tant que jeune électeur, même si les jeunes sont historiquement connus pour leur faible taux de participation.

Néanmoins, les questions qu’il examine de près font écho à la perspective d’une génération soucieuse de son avenir. “Pour moi, ce que je regarde majoritairement,” dit Beaudry Labossière, “c’est le prix de l’immobilier, le prix de la nourriture, la performance de l’économie, mais aussi des choses comme la réconciliation, la transition énergétique, l’environnement, les programmes de sécurité sociale, les soins dentaires et de la vue, etc.”

Riel’s vision grows stronger

As the first visionary of Manitoba, Riel fought the rest of his life to stop British domination and destruction of Indigenous lives, while stubbornly maintain the independent and unique multicultural spirit that birthed this place.

Esports competitions motivating force for First Nations students, educators say

Esports clubs are allowing First Nations students to play against peers from other on-reserve schools without the costly and time-intensive trips required for basketball, hockey and other traditional extracurriculars.

For teacher Karl Hildebrandt, one of the many motivators to grow Manitoba’s online gaming community is giving youth in rural and remote areas more competitive opportunities to represent their schools.

“When you tell kids they can play video games at school, their eyes open and when you tell them you can compete against another school in the province, their mouths drop,” said Hildebrandt, director of rural and northern esports for the Manitoba School Esports Association.

A handful of members of the Manitoba First Nations School System, including Lake Manitoba, Brokenhead, Fox Lake, Roseau River and York Landing, have started developing cybersport programs. Some teachers have also started integrating online games into their everyday lessons.

Group engages community on renaming Wolseley neighbourhood

In 1870, Col. Garnet Wolseley led a military expedition into Manitoba to violently overthrow Louis Riel’s provisional government at the Red River Colony. On Sunday afternoon, a group gathered at Vimy Ridge Park to discuss how to push for the renaming of the neighbourhood that bears his name.

Red River Echoes, a Métis collective that first came together with the purpose of “bringing an alternative voice to what Métis people think in Manitoba” after Manitoba Metis Federation president David Chartrand put out an ad with the Winnipeg Free Press in March in support of the Winnipeg Police Service, put together the rendezvous to take questions and comments community members might have around the growing conversation to rename Wolseley.

"With a lot of names being changed right now, we thought it was a good opportunity,” Red River Echoes member Claire Johnston said. “And Wolseley in particular has a really violent and negative association for Métis people, and also all other people of colour in who live in Winnipeg.”

In the months since the remains of 215 children were found in unmarked graves near a residential school in Kamloops, B.C., calls have been sparked across the country to rename landmarks named after people who had a hand in the colonization of Canada. In Winnipeg, Wolseley isn’t the first instance — calls to rename Bishop Grandin Boulevard due to its namesake’s hand in the residential school system have resulted in consultations and a possible recommendation for its renaming coming to city council this fall.

Protesters gather at corner to oppose funding of pipeline

About 50 people from Winnipeg’s Mennonite community gathered Sunday at a TD Bank at the corner of Notre Dame Avenue and Sherbrook Street to protest the bank’s funding of the Line 3 pipeline replacement.

As rain pelted down on a canopy of umbrellas, one man cut his TD Bank card into pieces while the crowd cheered. After some minutes of song and prayer, the group took non-permanent markers and wrote messages over the windows of the bank.

“Stop fossil fuel funding,” one man wrote on the door. The red ink ran in long streaks from the rain down over the bank’s hours.

Organizer Steve Heinrichs said he drew inspiration from Indigenous communities leading protests in Minnesota.

Boulevard, greenway could be renamed by end of year

Bishop Grandin Boulevard and the greenway that runs parallel to it — both of which are named after an architect of the residential school system — could have new titles before the end of the year.

The volunteer board that oversees the greenway’s operations issued a notice this week to inform community members of its ongoing support for the City of Winnipeg’s efforts to explore cutting ties with Bishop Vital-Justin Grandin (1829-1902) as a namesake for local landmarks.

The board indicated renaming consultations are underway and it anticipates a report with a recommendation on the subject will be brought forward to city council this fall.

“I don’t want people to think we’re sitting on our hands and letting this fall by the wayside,” said Derick Young, president of Bishop Grandin Greenway Inc.

City considering new name for park near former residential school to honour Indigenous leader

AS a residential high school student, the site now known as Wellington Park offered him rare moments of joy.

As an adult survivor of that system, it helped trigger both positive memories and quiet, disturbing flashbacks.

Theodore Fontaine, who died in May, found more than a chance to play hockey and baseball at the Assiniboia Indian Residential School, according to his wife Morgan Fontaine.

“These fields, this was just for him a time of that little taste of freedom that he longed for.… It was just before his seventh birthday (that) he lost his freedom,” she said.

Chef wants to keep on trucking while she puts down permanent restaurant roots

Tara Hall is just getting started.

The 40-year-old chef is the owner of Winnipeg’s Aboriginal Fusion food truck and she has her sights set on opening a restaurant — sans wheels — focused on the foods she grew up eating.

The elevator pitch is “traditional Aboriginal foods with a fine-dining twist,” Hall says. “We don’t have enough of that here.”

She was born in Vancouver and grew up with her great-grandparents and grandpa on Pinaymootang First Nation in the Interlake. Hall watched her elders and aunties closely in the kitchen and learned to make staples, such as bannock, fried pickerel and saskatoon berry jam, at a young age.

Oh, Canada! We have a racism problem

Sorry, Canada — as much as we like to believe we’re a multicultural country, we’re not as tolerant as we think we are.

Indigenous, Muslim youth event seeks to build friendships

Indigenous and Muslim youth in Winnipeg are invited to get to know each other at a special gathering Sunday.

Longing for Belonging — sponsored by the Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre and the Islamic Social Services Association, with financial support from the Winnipeg Foundation — is a free event for youth ages 14 to 20. It’s happening at the United Way (580 Main St.) from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Space is limited to 60 participants, but there is still room for a few more, event co-organizer Sarah Parkar of the Islamic association said.

The goal is to “provide a safe space where Indigenous and Muslim youth can learn about each other and break down stereotypes,” Parkar said.

Riel, le lien entre les francos d’Amérique

Pour Jocelyn Jalette, bédéiste de Joliette, au Québec, pas besoin d’être métis, ou manitobain, ou encore francophone en milieu minoritaire pour apprécier le combat, le triomphe et la tragédie de Louis Riel. Et voici pourquoi.

Dans La République assassinée des Métis, la bande dessinée de Jocelyn Jalette qui vient tout juste d’être publiée aux Éditions du Phoenix (www.editionsduphoenix.com), des personnages fictifs côtoient Louis Riel et Gabriel Dumont, mais aussi les politiciens Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, Louis-Joseph Papineau et Honoré Mercier.

Une palette de personnages pour mieux placer la résistance des Métis dans un contexte francophone plus large, comme le souligne l’auteur de 47 ans :

“Les liens sont étroits entre la résistance des Métis, Louis Riel et les francophones du Québec. Surtout quand on se rappelle que la lutte pour assurer un statut d’égalité entre le français, l’anglais, et les cultures francophone et anglophone, c’est l’affaire de tous les francophones.”

Traversant le Canada en 20 chansons

De La Rochelle à la Colombie-Britannique en passant par l’Acadie, le Québec, l’Ontario et les Prairies, voici le voyage que proposera la chorale québécoise En Supplément’Air dans la Cathédrale de Saint-Boniface à l’occasion du 150e anniversaire de la Confédération canadienne, le 11 juillet.

Le Chœur En Supplément’Air a été fondé en 2015 par Carole Bellavance, la directrice artistique de la chorale. “Cette année, le chœur compte 300 choristes de toute la province du Québec. Tous les étés, nous organisons une tournée avec une quarantaine d’entre eux. Nous sommes partis le 3 juillet pour un premier concert à Ottawa, puis nous nous rendrons à North Bay, Sault Sainte-Marie, Thunder Bay. Nous terminerons à Winnipeg le 11 juillet,” Bellavance a dit.

C’est la première fois que le chœur se déplace aussi loin à l’ouest du Canada. “Avec notre spectacle Le périple de la chanson francophone en Haute-Amérique, nous voulons faire valoir l’histoire de la chanson francophone au Canada à travers le temps. Nous avons choisi des chansons de partout pour mettre en valeur les régions. Le propos se prête bien à la grande aventure de la francophonie canadienne. J’ai profité du 150e anniversaire de la Confédération pour faire vivre aux choristes les chansons francophones canadiennes, et pas seulement québécoises.”

Harmonisé et orchestré par François Couture, le spectacle met la culture francophone au premier plan. “La culture francophone a été apportée de l’Europe. Pour illustrer cela, notre première chanson s’intitule Je pars à l’autre bout du monde. Au début du spectacle, on se sent vraiment à La Rochelle. Ensuite, on arrive dans les Maritimes avec des chansons qui reflètent l’histoire de l’Acadie, puis du Québec, et le développement de l’Ontario. Nous suivons le trajet de la chanson francophone, d’est en ouest.”

‘Cette terre n’a fait aucun mal’

Le 3 mai, une caravane d’étudiants en architecture paysagiste de l’Université du Manitoba a été accueillie devant le bâtiment d’autogouvernement de la Nation Dakota de Sioux Valley. Ils ont présenté à un comité du conseil de bande leurs plans pour l’aménagement d’un centre de guérison sur les lieux de l’École industrielle indienne de Brandon.

L’École industrielle indienne de Brandon était un pensionnat autochtone où, de 1895 à 1972, des enfants autochtones étaient éduqués par divers ordres religieux selon la politique d’assimilation du gouvernement canadien. Le chef de la Nation Dakota de Sioux Valley, Vincent Tacan, indique qu’il y a grand nombre de survivants de l’ancien pensionnat dans sa Nation.

“Nous avons besoin de guérir. Nous sentons les effets intergénérationnels des pensionnats autochtones. Essayer d’aller de l’avant avant de guérir serait inutile.”

Le Sud-ouest du Manitoba n’a aucun centre de guérison avec un environnement approprié aux cultures autochtones. Le chef Tacan note que les membres de sa Nation en besoin de traitement doivent se rendre à Regina, ou encore en Alberta.

Oka at 25, lessons in reconciliation

It's been a generation since July 11, 1990, when a SWAT team piled out of a truck and advanced against a small Mohawk protest on a dirt road in the pine forest outside the Quebec village of Oka. What followed was a 78-day armed siege -- the most violent and consequential clash between indigenous people and the Canadian state in modern times.

What has changed during the past 25 years? What hasn't? And why has there not been another Oka despite repeated warnings about indigenous unrest across the country?

The crisis was sparked by a proposed golf course expansion and condo development that would have turned a Mohawk cemetery at Kanesatake into a parking lot. It represented something much bigger -- a history of inequality and a society divided by race and seething with anger.

The images were jarring. Tanks rolled through quiet communities, white rioters burned effigies of Mohawk warriors, cars carrying Mohawk women and children were pelted with rocks as police stood by, and most iconic of all, a soldier and Mohawk Warrior stared each other down at point-blank range. Generations of tension compressed into the few inches between their steely faces. The nation was on edge.

Hardship, history live in rock of ancient fort

CHURCHILL -- Samuel Hearne, English explorer and governor of Fort Prince of Wales in the late 1700s, claimed the beavers he let waddle around the stone fort made better pets than some cats and dogs.

"I kept several," he wrote in his journal, "... til they became so domesticated as to answer to their names...and follow as a dog would do; and they were as pleased at being fondled as any animal I ever saw."

You had to do something, after all, stuck in a fort made out of quartzite rock, on a desolate point overlooking Hudson Bay, buffeted by northern gales and frequent blizzards and surrounded by sea ice two-thirds of the year.

Fort Prince of Wales, built in the mid-1700s, is testament to the extraordinary mettle of those first immigrants, mostly Scots from the Orkney Islands, who plied the fur trade for the Hudson's Bay Co., and the First Nations people who traded with them.

Canadian political culture grew out of War of 1812

THE War of 1812 -- a conflict between Britain and the United States, much of it contested on Canadian soil -- was a decisive event in Canadian history.

The U.S. proved unable to conquer and annex Britain's Upper and Lower Canadian colonies, thus ensuring that Canada would develop as an independent nation within the British imperial orbit.

This summer marks the 200th anniversary of the outbreak of the war. Recent years have witnessed a flurry of scholarship on the conflict -- Ontario historian Wesley Turner's 2011 biography of British general Isaac Brock comes to mind -- but it is difficult to imagine a better introduction to the War of 1812 than this account by York University professor of political science James Laxer.

This military and diplomatic history of the War emphasizes the roles played by two inspired leaders on the British and Canadian side: Brock, the commander of the forces of Upper Canada and the head of its civil government; and his ally Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief who joined the British to fight the Americans who were systematically encroaching on native land.

Indigenous Chamber of Commerce Manitoba annual event encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to believe in themselves

Matthew Sabourin owns a craft brewery and hospitality company that employs 50 people, and is preparing to open a second location later this year, but when he was growing up, he never pictured himself as a businessperson.

“I did not have that confidence,” said Sabourin, co-founder of La Brasserie Nonsuch Brewing Co. in Winnipeg’s Exchange District.

Ideas would run through Sabourin’s mind, but he didn’t even consider pursuing them because he believed he couldn’t make them a reality.

“I now realize looking back … I have been an entrepreneur all my life,” he said.

Archbishop urges Catholics to learn about Indigenous spirituality

Roman Catholics will benefit by taking time to learn more about Indigenous spirituality, the head of the Archdiocese of Winnipeg says.

Province still working on Crown corporation legislation to get Port of Churchill expansion going, Kinew says

Legislation needed to begin the work of turning the Port of Churchill into a national export hub with the potential to transform Manitoba’s economy is still being hammered out, says Premier Wab Kinew.

The act, to create the Manitoba Crown-Indigenous Corp., is still being written, which meant it was not among the more than 40 bills introduced by the NDP before Wednesday’s deadline for passage before the legislative session’s summer recess.

The government promised the legislation in November’s throne speech.

“The corporation has been set up,” the premier said Thursday at an unrelated event.

Ottawa contributes $91M to 10-storey Naawi-Oodena apartment block

The federal government has announced $91 million to support the development of a 10-storey apartment building that’s under construction at the former Kapyong Barracks site.

“This is an exciting day, but it really marks the doors opening for future with a lot more affordable homes for people who need them the most,” said federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson.

The project — named Endayaan Omaa, meaning “home is here” in the Anishinaabemowin language — will create 260 housing units in southwest Winnipeg; 109 units will offer affordable rents below median market value.

It is part of the larger plan to transform the former military site into Canada’s largest urban reserve. The overall project, led by a consortium of seven Treaty One Nations and dubbed Naawi-Oodena, is expected to provide about 5,000 homes.

Former reality TV star Jessie Holmes repeats as champion of the grueling Iditarod sled dog race

NOME, Alaska (AP) — Former reality TV star Jessie Holmes cruised to a repeat victory in the Iditarod, the roughly 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) sled dog race in Alaska.

Holmes guided his dog team across the finish line Tuesday night in the old Gold Rush town of Nome, a Bering Sea coastal community, after traveling for nine days, 7 hours and 32 minutes. He pumped both fists in the air as the crowd cheered for him and his team of 12 dogs, who devoured some meat after finishing.

“I’ve been chasing greatness ever since the last time I was here,” Holmes said, noting that he had been thinking of others who followed up initial wins with a second, third or fourth. “So we’re just going to keep chasing those footsteps, trying to push ourselves every day to be better.”

Last year, Zeus, one of Holmes' lead dogs, was a 2-year-old finishing his first Iditarod after leading a couple of runs. But this year, Holmes said, Zeus led every run except one. Holmes had been keeping back older lead dog Polar, so he wouldn’t have to do so much work, but put him in after the last checkpoint before Nome.

Indigenous partnerships key to wildfire preparation

More than 5.3 million acres in Manitoba burned — second only to Saskatchewan — as wildfires raged across Western Canada last summer, and 32,000-plus residents, most of whom were Indigenous, were evacuated from their communities.

In Winnipeg, air quality due to the smoke was so terrible that by August, the year’s poor conditions had broken a 65-year record.

In northern places such as Thompson, the smoke was life-threatening. For most of the summer the city was engulfed in smoke, causing wide-scale lung irritation. Anyone with respiratory conditions like asthma and heart disease was forced to stay indoors.

The fires began after the May 10-11 weekend, when temperatures rose above 35 C, drying the underbrush and creating dangerous conditions.

Ghosts of pasts faced in spirited Royal MTC production

Under the light of a lakeside moon and its brighter-than-the-city constellations, in the glow of a sacred fire, a portal to awakening opens for three men grieving the loss of their childhood friend in this spirit story, an absorbing, eerie and chill-inducing first play from Norway House’s Rhonda Apetagon.

Senior squeeze: Many older Manitobans are in an increasingly precarious financial situation

Terisa Taylor is deemed a low-income senior, based on the federal tax bracket classification, but the numbers don’t take a full measure of the person.

At age 73, the St. Boniface resident relies on the three acronyms synonymous with aging — CPP, GIS and OAS — to make ends meet.

Manitoba Rental Assistance helps cover about half her apartment costs, but she gave up her car when it became clear it was no longer affordable.

Despite that, Taylor considers herself one of Manitoba’s more fortunate seniors since she’s able to continue to pursue a meaningful life.