Decorated footy veterans Scott, Gale spearheading push for NSL club

Three months into her official — and final — retirement, Winnipeg’s own Desiree Scott has a new mission: bringing a Northern Super League team to Winnipeg.

“To continue to grow the game, especially for women and girls, and create those opportunities to inspire them to stick with sports and put Winnipeg on the map,” Scott said in an exclusive interview with the Free Press. “Remind people that we are here, we are the heart of Canada, and we deserve similar opportunities that other provinces are getting.”

The Northern Super League kicks off its second season Friday. The first Canadian women’s pro soccer league marked its inaugural season with off-the-charts success, drawing over 275,000 fans and generating nearly $30 million in league-wide revenue despite its small six-team size. And the league is looking to expand for the first time in 2027.

But while the league itself turns two years old, Scott enlisted veteran footy coach Rob Gale two years prior about the idea of bringing the league to the Keystone province.

‘We finished the foundation’: Northern Soccer League looks to build on first season

For those at the forefront of Canada's first women's professional soccer league, the goalposts are shifting heading into the second season.

Season one was all about launching the Northern Super League, said Diana Matheson, the league's founder and chief growth officer.

Now, on the cusp of season two, the focus shifts from making history to creating a legacy.

“From our perspective at the league and all the clubs, it just feels really, really stable," Matheson said.

Family donates 636 acres of peatlands near Elma to nature conservancy

A Manitoba family is doing their part to support the ecosystem by making a deal with the Nature Conservancy of Canada to protect 636 acres of peatlands in perpetuity.

Meta slashes 8,000 jobs, or 10% of its workforce, as Microsoft offers buyouts

Meta is laying off about 8,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, the company said Thursday as it continues to ramp up spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure and highly paid AI-expert hires.

The company said it was making the cuts for the sake of efficiency and to allow new investments in parts of its business, as first reported by Bloomberg, which also said the company will leave about 6,000 jobs unfilled.

Also Thursday, Microsoft said it was offering voluntary buyouts to thousands of its U.S. employees.

The software giant plans to make the offers in early May to about 8,750 people, or 7% of its U.S. workforce, according to two people familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

City failed to read the room before ditching Sals

If ever there were a moment to rethink how governments award contracts, this would be it.

Manitoba crypto companies say provincial plans would put them out of business

WINNIPEG - Manitoba's plan to charge cryptocurrency operations higher electricity rates and curtail power at peak times will drive businesses under, officials with two companies told a legislature committee.

"If this goes through, our business goes bankrupt and a lot of families will be impacted," Guildo Theriault, co-founder and chief executive officer of Gator Mining, told a committee hearing Wednesday night.

The government has introduced two bills in the legislature that are aimed at controlling the growing demand on Crown-owned Manitoba Hydro's electrical grid.

One bill would charge cryptocurrency operations and data centres up to 100 per cent higher rates for electricity. The other would allow Manitoba Hydro to temporarily reduce power to cryptocurrency operators at peak times in order to ensure stability of the grid.

Where did political ethics go?

Somewhere along the line, politicians have learned that they can lie with impunity. Not just being misleading or dissembling or answering questions evasively, but outright lying.

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.

Report on state of rural Manitoba’s economy ‘exciting work’

Declining municipal populations and workforce-bound immigrants are highlighted in a first-of-its-kind report detailing Manitoba’s rural communities.

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.

After facing the death of its dominant newspaper, Pittsburgh’s media has a surprising turnaround

PITTSBURGH (AP) — In the space of a couple of weeks this spring, Pittsburgh media has lived through a near-death experience and a resurrection.

Owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week announced the newspaper's sale to a nonprofit foundation that said it was committed to keeping it open. A news outlet that predates the U.S. Constitution was due to close on May 3, which would have made the Steel City the nation's largest community without a city-based paper.

Weeks earlier, the alternative Pittsburgh City Paper, whose staff learned on New Year's Day that it was closing after 34 years, roared back to life under new ownership.

They were rare positive developments for a local news industry that has seen its share of the opposite over the past two decades — newsrooms shuttered or thinned out, journalists thrown out of work, consumers drifting away. No one is pretending that a true turnaround will be easy in Pittsburgh. One thing that may help is that the city faced a news abyss and was forced to prepare for it.

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.

Rural communities team up to court doctors

A close call that would have seen the Russell emergency department temporarily close has leaders in the area joining forces to entice more doctors to practise in the town.

“At this point in time, it’s becoming a crisis,” said Louise Perreault, who manages both the Lions Manor and Park Manor, home to approximately 40 seniors.

The ER at the Russell Health Centre was set to close for a weekend earlier this month, but the shutdown was avoided at the last minute when a doctor was found.

Currently, only two doctors work in the community, one at the medical centre and another at a local clinic, but the low numbers are creating concern for many in the area, located roughly 350 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon addresses United Nations forum on Indigenous rights

OTTAWA - Gov. Gen. Mary Simon told the opening of the United Nations permanent forum on Indigenous issues Monday that Canada is making progress on improving the lives of Indigenous Peoples, even if that progress is slow.

"Countries like Canada made a promise that life for Indigenous Peoples would improve, and in many ways in Canada it is improving," Simon said, citing Canada's adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, better known as UNDRIP.

"I have witnessed progress and a growing awareness among Canadians through national and regional efforts toward reconciliation. Reconciliation is transforming our understanding of history and building new relations within our society."

Those relationships are being tested in at least one province. British Columbia Premier David Eby's government briefly proposed suspending key parts of a provincial law based on the UN declaration after courts cited it in rulings against his government.

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.

Real-life partners Brady Oliveira, Alex Blumberg join forces to save dogs in new docuseries

Winnipeg Blue Bombers running back Brady Oliveira and realtor/rescue influencer Alex Blumberg may be the charismatic couple at the heart of Must Love Dogs, a new half-hour docuseries steaming on CBC Gem, but the stars of the show are the dogs they rescue.

Former chief psychiatrist legally challenges Manitoba’s detox detention laws

Manitoba’s former chief psychiatrist is challenging the constitutionality of a controversial law allowing the province to incarcerate intoxicated people for up to 72 hours, claiming that it will harm those suffering from mental illness or disabilities.

Dr. Jim Simm, an outspoken critic of the Protective Detention and Care of Intoxicated Persons Act, said in an exclusive interview on Sunday that he is seeking leave from the Court of King’s Bench to challenge the law violates provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“We’re talking about human beings who are suffering,” Simm said. “They may be acting badly but to be putting them in solitary confinement — it’s just wrong.”

As it stands now, the legislation allows someone who appears intoxicated to be held for 24 hours at a “detention location,” and then held for up to 72 additional hours at a “preventative care centre.”

First Nations say Eby backs down again, now seeks joint path on B.C. Indigenous law

VICTORIA - British Columbia Premier David Eby has backed down again on the pausing of key parts of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, scrapping plans to table a suspension bill this legislative session.

The premier’s office says in a brief statement that it "can confirm that the government will not be introducing legislation on DRIPA during this session."

Instead, it says Eby will hold a press conference Monday to outline next steps.

A draft document provided by a First Nations source says the government now hopes to work with First Nations to come up with a joint approach to DRIPA, under a framework for negotiations.