Food literacy curriculum on the menu

Manitoba has a new recipe for health class and “food literacy” is a key ingredient.

The in-class portion of phys-ed has historically involved lessons about puberty, the risks of consuming drugs and dissecting Canada’s food guide.

A new pilot program asks teachers to expand their nutrition units and include in-depth discussions about how everything from diet culture to food insecurity affects eating habits.

“This is really moving beyond a conception of food as only fuel, where you just boil down food to its calories, its vitamins,” said Sarah Elvins, a food historian at the University of Manitoba who researches popular culture and marketing.

MPI looks into motorcycle safety

Manitoba Public Insurance is probing how to make regional roads safer for motorcyclists.

The public insurer is seeking feedback about restrictions on powerful bikes for new riders, mandatory training for older motorcyclists and limiting registrations to drivers who have a motorcycle licence (Class 6).

The Coalition of Manitoba Motorcycle Groups, which is set to gather at its regular meeting in Winnipeg Wednesday, will weigh in.

President Mary Johnson said some of the questions — such as those that relate to restricting new riders to bikes with engines under 500 cubic centimetres — are non-starters.

Microsoft commits to sweeping AI privacy rules for students. Will other tech giants follow?

Millions of students every day turn to AI chatbots for help with schoolwork, emotional support and personal advice — often unaware of where their conversations and other personal information end up.

How that data is used — and schools' role in protecting it — is a growing concern for educators, parents and kids as artificial intelligence becomes a ubiquitous part of the school day, embedded in many of the classroom tools students are required to use.

As the school year started, the country's two largest school districts, New York City and Los Angeles, announced they were putting the brakes on student use of AI for one year, as they study how to best incorporate the technology into education.

In response to a growing AI and screentime backlash, Microsoft announced last week it had agreed to adopt guardrails and privacy standards for its AI in schools, as negotiated with the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-largest teachers union.

Online etiquette, dangers part of new Manitoba health curriculum

Students will learn about everything from emoji etiquette to internet scam artists, as well as the difference between sexting and sextortion, as part of a provincewide overhaul of health class.

Manitoba’s new phys-ed and health curriculum pilot puts an emphasis on a child’s online habits and experiences.

“It is really good to see online privacy being recognized as a health and wellness skill,” said Matthew Johnson, director of education at MediaSmarts, a national charity that designs resources for teachers to build digital literacy.

“It has an effect on so much of our lives. At the bare minimum, the content that we see online is determined by data that companies have on us… the algorithmic shadow we cast.”

Finding fulfilment as canines’ companion

Tim Campbell loves dogs. He loves them so much that as soon he retired from his job at Panasonic Canada in early 2024 he began volunteering in earnest at the Winnipeg Humane Society (WHS).

He’d started his voluntary career five years prior with another local dog rescue organization. The work was rewarding, he says but the call-outs were unpredictable.

He was looking for a voluntary role which had a bit more structure to it, something he could build a routine around, while spending time with the animals he truly adores.

“In the summer, I’m there two mornings a week, and when the weather turns a little colder, I’m there anywhere from three to four mornings, depending on what’s going on,” Campbell, 59, explains.

Menstruation, consent move up in sex-ed lesson plan

Manitoba’s newest curriculum introduces the menstrual cycle earlier and repeatedly calls for explicit lessons on how students can give, seek, and decline to provide their consent.

The education department has released its sweeping proposal to overhaul how exercise, nutrition and sexuality are taught between kindergarten and Grade 12.

Grade 5 has long served as a key turning point for “the talk,” said J Fiedler, a sexual and reproductive health educator who provided input on the new curriculum.

“There’s no ‘the talk’ anymore. Now, there’s continuations of multiple ‘talks,’ which can hopefully reduce stress for students and stigma that people experience talking about sexuality.”

Drug recovery centre opens office in ‘heart of the city’

Richard Halverson found his freedom from addiction through Adult & Teen Challenge and, six years later, he hopes a new Winnipeg location will bring hope to the city.

Ebola outbreak in Congo spreads to a 7th province

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — The Ebola outbreak in Congo, the world's fastest-growing outbreak of the disease on record, has now spread to seven provinces in the African country, local authorities said. And it's showing no signs of slowing down.

According to the governor of the northwestern province of Sud-Ubangi, Jean-Rene Galekwa Vundawe, Congo’s national research institute tested a sample and found traces of the Bundibugyo virus, the rare kind of Ebola that caused the current outbreak.

The statement, which was issued on Thursday and reported by local media outlets on Friday, said the sample was from the Bulu health district in Sud-Ubangi. It did not disclose other information about the source of the infection.

Local lawmaker and former health minister Jean-Jacques Mbungani said on X on Thursday a positive case was recorded in Gwaka, a town in Sud-Ubangi province. He said the patient was a 23-year-old man and has died.

Childfree Winnipeg group gives women without kids a place to gather

Katelyn Sawatzky founded Childfree Winnipeg Women in 2021 to bring together women who don’t have kids — be it by choice or circumstance — and do not plan on raising children.

The group is designed to help them share experiences and build meaningful friendships.

The community welcomes cisgender, straight, transgender, bisexual and lesbian women. Parents, including empty nesters and men, are turned away.

“Our group is a safe space where women can hang out with other women without being asked when you’re going to have kids or why you don’t have kids … where you don’t feel like you have to validate or defend your choices in any way, because everyone gets it,” Sawatzky says.

Gym, health pilot program rolls out as Manitoba children go back to school

Phys-ed is on the minds of many Manitobans — seven-year-old Ethan Minski included — as roughly 200,000 kindergarten-to-Grade 12 students start a new school year.

Mountain trail runners describe appeal and peril of sport as Canadian still missing

It's been just over a year since mountain runner Margaux Cohen suffered a life-changing injury while hiking a mountain in Squamish, B.C., after her dog Zion lost his footing, sending them both tumbling nearly 20 metres down a rocky slope.

Cohen said she's still recovering from a fracture of her tibial plateau, but Zion is "doing great," and she visited the spot where the fall occurred just last week.

"Seeing the cliff a year later was pretty insane because I don't think I remembered how high I fell from," she said. "The last week I've been feeling even more grateful to be alive because it's pretty crazy."

For so-called "skyrunners" or ultra-runners like Cohen, the adrenalin rush of tackling dangerous mountain terrain is worth the risk, which is ever-present on local mountains and famous peaks including the Matterhorn, where famed Canadian skyrunner Kalie McCrystal has been missing for more than a week.

NSL Winnipeg gets a home sweet home

For years, Desiree Scott has tried to imagine what women’s professional soccer would look like in her hometown.

Her vision is now a whole lot clearer.

The Northern Super League revealed Tuesday that $8.5 million is being invested into the Ralph Cantafio Soccer Complex, which will become the official home of Winnipeg’s recently announced expansion club.

Work is already underway to transform the facility into a 5,000-seat modular, purpose-built stadium that will be ready for kickoff next spring.

Online harms now top threat to Canadian children, new report says

OTTAWA - Online harms now constitute the top threat facing children in Canada, ahead of bullying, poverty and child abuse, Children First Canada said Tuesday in a new report.

It is the first time online harms have been in the top 10 list of threats, the report said.

"We've seen how now it's permeating the lives of every kid in Canada, from birth all the way through adolescence. This is no longer a conversation just about teens on social media," said Sara Austin, CEO of Children First Canada.

"In the past year alone, we've seen particularly the rise of AI-amplified harms," she added.

Home court, high hopes as Canada chases wheelchair basketball gold

OTTAWA - Canada’s men’s and women’s wheelchair basketball teams hope home-court advantage can help end a lengthy world championship drought.

Canada will host the IWBF Wheelchair Basketball World Championships for the first time since 2014, with all games being played in Ottawa. Action gets underway Wednesday, with the championship games set for Sept. 19.

This marks the first time Canada has hosted the men’s and women’s world championships together, with 17 countries represented by 15 men’s teams and 12 women’s teams.

Iran was scheduled to compete in the men’s tournament but withdrew over the weekend because of visa issues affecting four team members, including the head coach and an assistant coach.

Food Allergy Canada calls for laws requiring schools to stock epinephrine devices

TORONTO - Last May, six-year-old Kofi Berkley started getting itchy and developing bumps on his skin while he was playing with his friends at recess.

The recess supervisor brought the Grade 1 student, who didn't have any known allergies, to his Edmonton elementary school's office.

Principal Joanne Harle and an administrative assistant applied ice on his skin to try to soothe the irritation.

"Truly to goodness within — it felt like an hour but it wasn't, it was probably maybe a minute — you could see his eyes swell. His top lip grew. He was gasping to breathe," said Harle.

Education student designs lesson plans to take a bite out of food marketing

Instead of apples, Emma Caronte is handing out lesson plans on local food history to Manitoba teachers this back-to-school season.

The undergraduate researcher spent her summer break creating a social studies unit that investigates food guide evolution, marketing tactics and how honey dill sauce became a pantry staple on the Prairies.

“I want students to develop a greater interest in food and what outside influences affect their choices and what we consider ‘healthy,’” said Caronte, a final-year education student at the University of Manitoba.

She is advertising her 112-page project as a user-friendly resource for classroom teachers and “a fun sub plan” targeted at Grade 6, 7, 8 and 9.

Picking berries, sharing wonders in a muted woodland

This summer, Manitoba suffered prolonged periods of extreme weather. While eager to pick berries with my grandson, as is our habit, the temperatures were forbidding.

My grandson, 5, remained intrepid. As I am the one who charmed him into becoming a picker, I must be equally so.

When he is ready (and that depends on many factors, all of which are out of my control), he points to the blue bucket and the side porch door. It’s time. The time might be high noon (and often it is) when the sun is at its peak and my cellphone tells me the temperature is a 35 C that “feels like” 44.

There is always the line —“only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun” — I reference as we set out. To begin, of course, there is the snack, the hat, the water bottle, the bucket, the bug spray, sneakers, socks (ticks) and the cell.

Minnesota paddler’s many adventures in Boundary Waters, Canadian Shield chronicled

Minnesotan Bob O’Hara was a young lad when he fell in love with camping and canoeing on the Boundary Waters that stretch from northern Minnesota to the Canadian Shield.

He first launched a canoe as a Boy Scout in the 1950s, and as of last summer you could still find him on the border lakes, his 67th consecutive year on the waterways that launched his 50-year odyssey of Far North expeditions. In Where the Green Light Shines, author Ryan Rodgers describes it as “an astonishing run, every year from the age of 18 to 84.”

As remarkable as that seems, it is the five decades O’Hara spent paddling through northern Canada — mostly as a leader, dealing with often horrendous weather, one set of rapids after another, food shortages and a myriad of other concerns while living in the exhilaration of discovery and of communing with nature — that tell the real story of a life lived large, outside the constraints of everyday urban existence.

Not that O’Hara didn’t have to work for a living and to finance his adventures. He began a teaching job in 1963 and started what he’d continue throughout his career: taking students canoeing and camping in the Boundary Waters. During the first five years of the job, he taught for 180 days and camped for 125.

Former MLA details early years, struggles with alcohol and his path forward in earnest new memoir

Kevin Chief, the former two-time MLA for Point Douglas, is very unusual for a politician. In casual conversations with Manitobans of various voting flavours over the past decade and change, this reviewer can’t recall one single person ever saying they didn’t like the guy. On two occasions, acquaintances mused that they would cross party lines (in opposite directions) to vote for Chief if he ever ran for office in their riding.

Granting that these observations are anecdotal, how does one account for such broad appeal?

It’s not charisma so much as sincerity. When Chief speaks about his experiences and his hopes for the world (and, as a public speaker and presenter, he has given a lot of speeches both in and out of office), it comes across as both heartfelt and thoroughly ruminated upon. The same is true, as it turns out, in his new book.

With a Name Like Chief, co-written with Stu Slayen, is not a political memoir. While Chief’s political career did the most to put him in the public eye, the five years he spent in the Manitoba legislature starting in 2011 make up only a small percentage of his life, and receive a commensurate page count. Instead, two of the major throughlines of the book are the intertwined roles of alcohol and Canada’s horrific colonization project, and how they impacted his life experiences.

St. Malo’s summer hot spot relies on dedicated community to make sure park-goers can kick back and relax

It’s shaping up to be a hot late-August Friday in southern Manitoba; the forecast warns of a thunderstorm in the late afternoon, but that won’t stop Manitobans from flocking to savour one of the last great beach days of the summer.

No more playing around, make 30 km/h school zones permanent

Winnipeg has already decided that 30 kilometres per hour is the right speed around schools. It’s time to stop pretending that decision should expire every summer.

Tweed a historic figure in Winnipeg’s women’s soccer scene

With Winnipeg’s Northern Super League club debuting next year, helmed by footy greats Desiree Scott and Rob Gale, the history of the beautiful game in the Keystone province has been put in the spotlight.

Or, rather, Tony’s legacy has been.

Anthony Tweed always had a love for the game. Born in Cambridge, England, it came naturally. Tweed even attended the 1966 FIFA World Cup where England beat West Germany 4-2 in extra time to claim the first and only title for the country that invented the world’s most popular sport.

“Like all Englishmen, I just loved the game,” Tweed said.

OpenAI faces 30 new lawsuits from witnesses to mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C.

VANCOUVER - Artificial intelligence company OpenAI and founder Sam Altman are facing 30 new lawsuits from witnesses to the deadly mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., with plaintiffs including a teacher who described trying to protect pupils from the shooter, and a teenage student who recalled his classmates arming themselves "with kitchen knives and heavy tools."

"My colleagues and I are haunted by the memory of shielding children with our own bodies as our ears rang from the sound of continual gunshots and high-pitched screams. An entire generation of young lives, gone in a second," teacher Deidre Rushlow said in a statement provided by Vancouver-based law firm Rice Parson Leoni and Elliott.

"And for what? So OpenAI could get to an IPO? Were the lives of my students and educational assistant just the cost of doing business?"

The lawsuits were to be filed Wednesday in California on behalf of "injured and traumatized students and educators" at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in the northern British Columbia community, the law firm said. Six of the eight victims who died in the shootings were killed at the school.