Sirop d’érable, le trésor de Saint-Pierre-Jolys

L’incontournable Festival du Temps des sucres se prépare à revenir au village de Saint-Pierre-Jolys les 5 et 6 avril. Prenant place dans la Cabane à sucre, une extension du musée, les visiteurs pourront festoyer et célébrer ce fameux sirop local aux teintes ambrées.

Le temps se fait plus doux dans le village de Saint-Pierre-Jolys où les récoltes de sirop d’érable ont doucement commencé depuis la semaine du 17 mars.

En effet, des gelées la nuit combinées à des températures plus élevées le jour créent les conditions propices à la saison des récoltes. Ce type de météo permet d’exercer une pression à l’intérieur de l’arbre favorisant ensuite l’écoulement de “l’eau sucrée” comme aime l’appeler Roland Gagné, le gérant de la Cabane à sucre du village.

“Grâce à Mère Nature, l’eau remonte des racines jusqu’en haut de l’arbre. Ça permet de nettoyer les veines de l’érable et ensuite le liquide s’écoule.”

Infill housing is not the enemy of nature

What do infill housing, rain gardens, backyard cottages, and the urban forest have in common?

Anti-racism activist hopes to make our communities mutually respectful

Dr. Rehman Abdulrehman is a clinical and consulting psychologist at Clinic Psychology Manitoba. He has a consulting and coaching firm called Lead with Diversity, he is the assistant professor with the department of clinical health psychology at the University of Manitoba and he has just written his first book, Developing Anti-Racist Cultural Competence, which aims to help people develop practical skills, insight and better empathy when working with diverse groups.

Peacemaking and Canada’s international reputation

For many years, Canada had a much-lauded and highly respected reputation for peacekeeping — it helped define our national identity.

It started back in 1956. That’s when Lester Pearson, then minister of external affairs, proposed the creation of a United Nations peacekeeping force to resolve a crisis in Egypt when Great Britain, France and Israel attacked that country after it nationalized the Suez Canal.

The introduction of peacekeeping troops, including from Canada, stabilized the situation and allowed the belligerents to work out an agreement to end the fighting. For his efforts, Pearson was awarded the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize.

For decades after that crisis, Canada remained at the forefront of international peacekeeping operations. Altogether, the country sent about 125,000 trained peacekeepers on over 50 peacekeeping missions around the globe.

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.

Study shows ‘striking’ number who believe news misinforms

NEW YORK (AP) — Half of Americans in a recent survey indicated they believe national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting.

The survey, released Wednesday by Gallup and the Knight Foundation, goes beyond others that have shown a low level of trust in the media to the startling point where many believe there is an intent to deceive.

Asked whether they agreed with the statement that national news organizations do not intend to mislead, 50% said they disagreed. Only 25% agreed, the study found.

Similarly, 52% disagreed with a statement that disseminators of national news “care about the best interests of their readers, viewers and listeners,” the study found. It said 23% of respondents believed the journalists were acting in the public's best interests.

Canadian demographics impact cultural shifts

‘Here we go again” was the first thought while unsealing Darrell Bricker’s newest study from the envelope the Winnipeg Free Press had sent to my isolated home. Surely this new work — Next: Where to Live, What to Buy and Who Will Lead Canada’s Future — would suffer the same cruel invalidation that every other pre-pandemic prognostication must experience in these strange times.

But in a sense, Bricker has dodged a COVID-19 bullet, as his focus throughout this volume is on Canadian demographics, complete with its recurrent reminder of how these mighty, slow-moving and mostly irreversible forces affect society today and tomorrow. Take that, pandemic.

Bricker is CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, a global marketing research company. This is Bricker’s third book on population trends and follows Empty Planet and The Big Shift, both of which he co-authored with the Globe and Mail’s former chief political writer John Ibbitson. (Disclosure: This reviewer crossed paths with Bricker in the early ’90s while working at what was then the Angus Reid Group.)

Much of the focus of Bricker’s new solo work is on generational groups, particularly on what he maintains are the miscalculated “Perennials” (basically anyone over 55). It is these comfortable silver-haired boomers who continue to dominate and shape our social values and consumer trends, mostly by the sheer potency of their numbers and their relative prosperity.

Chasser, pour avoir la conscience tranquille

Vanessa Ahing a été végétarienne pendant plus de quatre années. Par refus de l’industrie de la viande qui, à son avis, est cruelle et nuit à l’environnement. Pourtant, un bon steak lui manquait. Pour réconcilier conscience et palais, un choix nouveau s’imposait...

Un soir de septembre, 2013, Vanessa Ahing rentrait de la campagne, où elle avait abattu son premier chevreuil. Souvenir de l’enseignante de 31ans: “J’étais toute seule. J’avais suivi une formation de chasse pour femmes, organisée par la Manitoba Wildlife Foundation. Mon chevreuil, coupé en quarts, était dans un sac de hockey dans le coffre de ma Honda Civic. C’était mon premier animal. Je voulais vivre l’expérience complète de la chasse. Donc pas question pour moi d’aller chez un boucher. D’ailleurs, j’étais étudiante. Je n’avais pas le fric pour me payer un tel service.

“Je me demandais comment j’allais faire pour préparer cette viande. Je n’ai pas été élevée dans une famille de chasseurs, ou même de jardiniers. Mes parents n’étaient pas prêts à avoir un chevreuil chez eux. Et moi, je vivais dans un petit appartement pour célibataires au centre-ville de Winnipeg.

“Il était tard. Trop tard pour dépecer l’animal tout de suite. Alors, j’ai ouvert les fenêtres de mon appartement. Je me suis endormie dans mon sac de couchage. Le lendemain, j’ai tapé ‘Comment couper de la viande de chevreuil’ sur YouTube. Et je me suis mise à l’œuvre.”

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.”

Book details 1953 Cold War experiments on Winnipeg

Winnipeg was duped into being a “guinea pig” for American chemical warfare experiments in 1953, but no one knows what effect it had on city residents, a University of Manitoba pharmacology professor emeritus says.

“It’s too late now to do anything about it or to know what health effects it had on people,” Frank LaBella said Thursday of the aerosol cloud of zinc cadmium sulphide that was sprayed in Winnipeg to test ways of distributing chemical and biological warfare agents.

The deceitful operation by the United States army came to light in 1980 and is back in the spotlight with the publication of a book by an American researcher that includes declassified information. Behind the Fog: How the U.S. Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans, by Lisa Martino-Taylor, details the testing carried out in cities in the U.S. and Winnipeg (which resembled target sites in the Soviet Union).

“Nobody knew what was going on,” LaBella said. In 1953, Winnipeg city council was told civil defence authorities were testing the effects of smoke over the city using “harmless fluorescent powder.”

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.”

Predator used Snapchat to lure children for sexual abuse; girls struggling now, court told

A Winnipeg man who used the social media app Snapchat to lure his young victims into having unprotected sex with him filmed some of the encounters.

Future students will be wired differently, thanks to AI

Teachers were urged to stop asking children what they want to be when they grow up and focus on building creative, self-directed and critical thinkers at Manitoba’s AI in Education Summit.

“How do we prepare kids for a future we can’t yet see, but we know it’s going to be radically transformed by technology?” futurist Sinead Bovell asked a crowd of educators at a first-of-its-kind conference Friday.

“That is the moment that we are in.”

The province invited Bovell, founder of tech education company WAYE, to share her predictions about artificial intelligence and related advice for schools.

Carney reaches ‘landmark’ tariff quota deal with China on EVs, canola

BEIJING - Prime Minister Mark Carney touted a renewed relationship with China and "enormous progress" on trade irritants as he announced a new deal with Beijing on electric vehicles and canola at the end of a high-profile trip to China on Friday.

But the agreement has received mixed reviews at home. Ontario and the auto sector warned of the dangers of giving China new access to Canada's auto market, while Prairie premiers and farm groups welcomed the drop in tariffs on some agricultural products.

The deal, made public shortly after Carney met with President Xi Jinping in Beijing, marks a de-escalation in tensions with a country the Liberal government branded as a disruptive power just three years ago.

Carney distanced himself from that description on Friday, noting he was not part of the government that used the term in Canada's 2022 Indo-Pacific strategy.

Farm sector weirdness becomes new normal

Farming has never been a wise career choice for people who thrive on predictable outcomes, but last year set a new bar for craziness in what was already a risky business.

Looking ahead, the uncertainty laced with foreboding that heralded the start of 2025 has been replaced in 2026 with the certainty that comes from knowing the chaos will continue.

Just when you think it can’t get any weirder, the government administration south of the border at the centre of it all grabs the headlines once again with something even more unimaginably outlandish.

For example, the announcement late last year that the U.S. is considering placing steep tariffs on two key fertilizers — potash and phosphorus — ostensibly to increase domestic production. Except the U.S. doesn’t have the necessary reserves to develop.

Attention-grabbing screens demean us, bit by bit

The first time I read Oryx and Crake, Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s haunting dystopic novel, I couldn’t put it down. I devoured it in just days, engrossed by the fictional world Atwood wove from the most discomfiting new threads of our own.

Over the years, I returned to the book many times, always finding new depth in its pages. Each time, I finished it at the same brisk pace. I was a fast reader as a child, and for most of my life, that didn’t change.

Until now. In November, as part of an effort to calm my restless mind, I put Oryx and Crake on my nightstand, and made a pledge to myself to read a little bit every night. This time, it’s been over two months, and I’ve made it through only 92 pages.

It would be easy to say I’ve been too busy, but that would be a lie. I’ve had time to read. The problem is now, unlike when the book came out in 2003, I struggle to read more than a page without checking my phone quickly; and checking it once means falling into the chasm of raw content the internet has become.

Glacial glamping: Riding Mountain woos in winter

As they say, it was so cold it’d freeze the nuts off an iron bridge. Margie and I slept in a prospector-style tent, or what Riding Mountain National Park calls an “oTENTik,” at -39 C.

Fewer than one in five Manitobans are sure they know fabricated online content when they see it: survey

When Weekly World News stories about a half-boy, half-bat lined supermarket checkout lanes in the 1990s, most consumers — including Probe Research partner Curtis Brown — could readily, easily and confidently identify the eye-grabbing tabloid reports as false.

“When it comes to (content generated by) AI, people have a bit less confidence,” says Brown. “Sometimes it’s very obviously so-called AI slop — like a historical figure talking about something contemporary. The last couple of months I’ve seen a lot of videos of JFK talking about what a fool his nephew is.”

Even if a quick Google search to note RFK Jr. was nine when his uncle was assassinated in 1963 — marking such videos as debris in an artificial intelligence mudslide — new media literacy polling conducted by Probe for the Free Press reveals that only 18 per cent of Manitobans feel very confident that they can identify whether video footage is “fake or AI-generated.”

Of the 1,000 Manitobans randomly surveyed by Probe between Nov. 25 and Dec. 10, 13 per cent believed that they’d personally shared video, images or text on social media that they didn’t realize was fake.

Alberta group gets green light to collect signatures for separation referendum

EDMONTON - Alberta's election agency has fired the starter's pistol on the race to collect enough names for a referendum on the province quitting Canada.

Elections Alberta announced Friday that Mitch Sylvestre and the Alberta Prosperity Project have from Saturday until May 2 to collect just under 178,000 signatures to qualify.

"Citizen initiative petition signature sheets have been issued," Elections Alberta said in a statement Friday.

"The proponent may now proceed with collecting signatures."