Scientific Knowledge

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Cloud pruning is a technique used to train mugo pines into a shape resembling a cloud.
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Japanese garden an enduring cultural experience

Colleen Zacharias 7 minute read Preview
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Japanese garden an enduring cultural experience

Colleen Zacharias 7 minute read Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021

The Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba, 180 McPhillips St., opened to the public in 1987. The centre offers a wide range of programs which are designed to promote and enhance the understanding of Japanese culture. The centre also serves as the site for a beautiful Japanese garden. Built by Yoshimaru Abe who was born in Japan in 1914 and came to Canada with his family in 1927, the garden is an enduring cultural experience.

Prior to building the garden at the centre, visitors to the Japanese Folklorama exhibit in 1971 and in the years following had the opportunity to see a Japanese garden recreated by Abe. Using moss, rocks, and pieces of wood, Abe recreated an authentic Japanese garden on a concrete arena floor.

A gardener is called niwashi in Japanese. Abe was the distinguished niwashi at the Japanese cultural centre’s garden into his 90’s and was followed by Sam Matsuo, who maintained the garden for 10 years. Both Abe and Matsuo were assisted by dedicated volunteers. Today the niwashi is Raymond Normandeau, who has been involved with the centre for several years as well as in the building of the garden at the Japanese Pavilion at Folklorama. Normandeau will oversee an expansion of the garden at the Japanese Cultural Association — which is slated to begin this fall.

Currently, there are two different areas to the garden. The front garden is a long narrow strip on the outside of the building that faces into a concrete parking lot. The inner garden is an enclosed garden accessed by a short bridge and tall wooden gate. “It is not a pure Japanese garden,” says Normandeau. “It is representative of a Japanese garden. We don’t have the stalwarts of Japanese gardens — bamboo, clipped azaleas, and the black pine which is one of the most popular pine species in a Japanese garden.” But many fine elements of Japanese garden design can indeed be found here.

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Saturday, Aug. 28, 2021
Mat Wooller, director of the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility, kneels among a collection of some of the mammoth tusks at the University of Alaska Museum of the North. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-JR Ancheta, University of Alaska Fairbanks MANDATORY CREDIT
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'Cheering for the mammoth': Scientists retrace the steps of 17,000 year-old animal

Emma Tranter, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Preview
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'Cheering for the mammoth': Scientists retrace the steps of 17,000 year-old animal

Emma Tranter, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026

More than 17,000 years ago, a woolly mammoth roamed enough of the Alaskan landscape to circle the Earth twice.

That's according to a new paper from an international team of researchers who retraced the lifetime of one of the extinct ancient Arctic creatures.

The mammoth's story is written in its tusk through tiny isotopes, which are tiny atoms, said Mat Wooller, a paleoecologist at the University of Alaska.

"Isotopes are like a little chemical GPS (global positioning system) recorder," Wooller said.

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Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026
Manitoba-born scientist Peebles wins Nobel Prize in physics

Manitoba-born scientist Peebles wins Nobel Prize in physics

Maggie Macintosh 6 minute read Preview

Manitoba-born scientist Peebles wins Nobel Prize in physics

Maggie Macintosh 6 minute read Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019

The most recent Canadian recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics, cosmologist James Peebles, will be honoured with about $600,000 in prize money — and his picture will hang in at least one Winnipeg dorm room.

"He has become an icon of mine since today, this morning," said Harshan Singh, an aspiring physicist enrolled in his first-year at the University of Manitoba. "I will probably put his picture on my wall and then look at him every morning."

The Winnipeg-born, U of M educated Peebles' theories predicted the existence of dark matter and dark energy, as well as a distant radio signal created after the Big Bang.

There was a "muted murmur" among the world's scientists that he should have won the Nobel Prize 41 years ago, when two other scientists were awarded it for stumbling on the faint signals from space Peebles had first theorized with a colleague, according to the U of M newspaper archives.

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Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019
WAYNE GLOWACKI/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS U of W Prof. Chris Wiebe shows off some of the equipment at the PRIME.
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Locals find loophole in laws of physics

By Nick Martin 3 minute read Preview
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Locals find loophole in laws of physics

By Nick Martin 3 minute read Wednesday, Sep. 21, 2011

A University of Winnipeg scientist leads an international team of researchers who may have found a loophole in the laws of physics.

Magnetricity could have practical applications down the road to store data in computers or conduct electricity, said U of W chemistry Prof. Chris Wiebe.

"All of magnetic (knowledge) is based on 'You can't have a single pole,' " explained Wiebe, a graduate of the U of W and Transcona Collegiate. There is always a north pole and a south pole, and a single pole cannot occur naturally.

So say the laws of physics, but...

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Wednesday, Sep. 21, 2011