B.C. government marks 5 years since heat dome killed hundreds

VANCOUVER - A stifling heat dome that sat over much of British Columbia five years ago is being remembered by the provincial health officer as traumatic for people who lost loved ones and overwhelming for those trying to care for those affected. 

More than 600 people died during the first provincewide heat dome in 2021, but Dr. Bonnie Henry says it will not be the last such event. 

Henry says in a statement issued Thursday that most of the people who died during the period between June 25 and July 1 lived alone and weren't able to keep cool inside their homes. 

She says her thoughts are with those who live with trauma from the event and she knows of the "tremendous effect" on people who lost loved ones and on the first responders and health-care workers who were overwhelmed with people needing help. 

The 2 earthquakes that struck Venezuela are known as a ‘doublet.’ Here’s how they happen

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The two powerful earthquakes that struck Venezuela’s northern coast, killing more than 180 people, were an event known as a “doublet.”

Doublet earthquakes happen when a pair of similar-sized quakes hit close in location and time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. On Wednesday evening, a 7.2 magnitude quake hit first, followed by a magnitude 7.5 just 39 seconds later.

The deadly one-two punch toppled buildings in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas and beyond. Some 1,500 people were injured and thousands were reported missing. The coastal region of La Guaira, which is north of Caracas, experienced some of the heaviest damage and casualties, officials said.

How rare are doublets?

Archaeologists find huge Viking textile production site in Denmark

SØFTEN, Denmark (AP) — Archaeologists have discovered a huge Viking Age textile production site in Denmark that dates back more than 1,000 years and underlines the sophistication of Viking society.

Experts from the Moesgaard Museum said this week that the sprawling 100,000-square-meter (more than 1 million-square-foot) site features an area for processing flax as well as more than 80 pit houses — semi-buried huts that were used as workshops and dwellings in Viking times.

It's located in Søften, 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of Denmark’s second-largest city, Aarhus, on the Jutland peninsula. The site dates back to the late Iron Age and early Viking Age, sometime between A.D. 600 and 950.

Archaeologist Liv Stidsing Reher-Langberg, who led the 10-month dig, said that “we have a clear focus on textile production, which makes this settlement different from other kinds of settlements of this period.”

‘Whatever it takes:’ Indigenous group seeks help repatriating items from Switzerland

Sacred pipes, intricately beaded regalia and firearms believed to be associated with the period of the Battle of the Little Bighorn are some of the thousands of Indigenous artifacts a group of First Nations leaders and advocates are trying to repatriate from Switzerland.

As Native American boarding schools project ends, survivors describe feeling honored and restored

Hundreds of Indigenous people have testified. They’ve sobbed, cursed and laughed in spite of it all. Many told stories about their time in boarding schools that they’ve kept inside for decades, finally able to begin recovering from childhood trauma.

An oral history project led by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is wrapping up in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Friday. To date, the nonprofit’s historians have collected video testimony from more than 360 Indigenous survivors in 19 states — stories set to be preserved in the Library of Congress for years to come.

Iona Mad Plume, who is Blackfeet and grew up on her tribe’s reservation in Montana, said she “can’t emphasize enough” how healing her experience was. She testified in front of a video camera last month in Billings about her time in the Pierre Indian School in South Dakota, where she was sent at age 14.

Mad Plume, now 74, said since her interview she’s been more grounded and has been able to let go of some of the haunting memories: a dusty blue Greyhound bus driving her away from her parents’ red pickup truck. School staff beating her with a wooden dowel as she cowered on a bunk bed in her dorm room. Eating corn meal or cereal littered with weevil bugs.

MMF suing governments over hunting, fishing rights

The Manitoba Métis Federation has filed two lawsuits against the provincial and federal governments over where in the province its citizens have the right to hunt and fish.

In separate statements of claim filed in the Court of King’s Bench earlier this month, the federation seeks declarations from a judge that the Métis have harvesting rights in several regions of Manitoba, despite current restrictions there, and that those restrictions on Métis hunting and fishing have unjustifiably infringed on their Aboriginal rights under Section 35 of the Constitution.

“The Métis, the Red River Métis, without a doubt have Section 35 rights … equal, side by side with the First Nations and Inuit,” said MMF president David Chartrand in an interview.

One of the claims is over game hunting areas 5, 7 and 7A around Manigotagan and Grass River, north of The Pas, and areas 17A and 26 on the southeast of Lake Winnipeg.

Thousands celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day

Drums and song filled Winnipeg’s downtown Sunday as thousands gathered at The Forks to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day and while festivities continued late into the evening, some in attendance said the event’s importance spans generations.

Braiding her daughter Sofia Ducharme’s hair in preparation for the Wáhkóhtowin Powwow — one of the day’s numerous celebrations — Alea Elliott said the powwow was one of the first for the 11-year-old. Watching his daughter get ready was Derek Ducharme, who is originally from the Waywayseecappo First Nation.

“It’s nice she gets to do this, because Derek didn’t get to learn about his culture,” said Alea, saying the family came into the city from Landmark.

Wearing a stunning jingle dress that shines in the summer sun, both Alea and Derek said they were proud to see their daughter participate in Sunday’s celebration, as Derek’s father was a victim of Canada’s colonial systems that separated Indigenous families from their children.

Confronting the scourge of polio

From 1928 to 1953, polio epidemics occurred in Manitoba every three to five years. The pain for the young victims was often excruciating. The vast majority of children recovered, yet many experienced lifelong disabilities from the disease.

Rise in female chiefs ‘a beautiful resurgence’

BRANDON — One month after Birdtail Sioux First Nation member Tréchelle Bunn was elected chief of her community, she was described on the Matriarch Movement podcast as a woman “who truly embodies what this movement is all about.”

“At just 25 years old, Tréchelle is making history while balancing law school, community leadership and national advocacy,” wrote podcast host and founder Shayla Oulette Stonechild. “Her journey reminds us that the next generation isn’t just preparing to lead — they are leading.”

Bunn was the first woman and youngest person to be elected chief of the First Nation in western Manitoba. It was a historic moment in her community and part of a larger story of the changing role of women in First Nations today.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak noted earlier this year that a record number of female chiefs — 164 — were leading First Nations across the country.

Sask. Métis village grapples with child abductions, North-West Rebellion

Major events and big personalities can overshadow the lives of ordinary people, but even the youngest and seemingly least important members of a society can help shape communities.

In Treat Them as Buffalo, Blair Palmer Yoxall has portrayed various characters in a Métis village in 1885 Saskatchewan through the life of a 12-year-old boy named Nikosis (Niko) Eriksen and his interactions with relatives and friends in the context of a community crisis and Louis Riel’s rebellion.

Yoxall is an Alberta Métis writer and poet with a master of arts in English in Indigenous literature and westerns. His fiction has won a range of prizes and landed on a number of short lists. His prose and poetry pieces have appeared in Glass Buffalo, the Fiddlehead and Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology. Treat Them as Buffalo is his first novel.

The novel follows Nikosis (Cree for “my son”) as he attempts to sort out the events occurring in his home community, Lac-aux-Trois-Pistoles, Sask., in 1885. Several boys, including Niko’s cousin, have disappeared from the town, with some reappearing mutilated or dead. Niko’s mother, grandmother and aunt try to protect him, while other women in the community attempt to find their missing sons and grandsons. Meanwhile, a fierce fighting woman named Kate McCannon seeks to resolve the situation, offering to help with the search and rescue operations.

Greed outshines ‘the Beautiful Game’

Utter greed is at the heart of this World Cup, and it has shown up as utter stupidity on the part of FIFA to think that it could treat the 104 matches of this tournament as “104 Super Bowls.”

In choosing each other, same-sex couple in 19th-century Vermont defied convention

The front cover of Charity & Sylvia, the new graphic biography by acclaimed American cartoonist Tillie Walden, recreates the striking 19th-century portrait of two women, silhouetted in profile and framed by braided human hair carefully arranged in a heart-shaped detail, that inspired this volume. They are the eponymous Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, an openly lesbian couple who quietly made a life for themselves in rural 1800s Vermont.

Stitched together from an extensive archive of letters, journals and poetry, Walden’s moving, sepia-toned volume is narrated through both women during their time together as they navigate questions of identity, community and faith.

The story begins when Charity, a family friend of the Drakes, arrives from Massachusetts to rural Vermont. As the relationship between Charity and Sylvia develops, Walden infuses the book with a visual language of the mundane, drawing the reader’s eye to household sundries and everyday minutiae as she builds the story world through wordless panels of homesteading, domestic tasks, sewing patterns (both Charity and Sylvia earn their living as tailors) and impending weather as the seasons change.

She also builds out family trees for both women through backstories (including standout sections chronicling their childhoods) and daily conversations that provide context for those appearing in later scenes. Through an array of vignettes locked into a 12-panel grid, the characters move from church pews to kitchens, bedrooms, dinner tables, gardens and carriages travelling to and from neighbouring towns and states.

Manitoba appoints Canada’s first judge of reconciliation

The Manitoba government has appointed provincial court Judge Jerilee Ryle as associate chief judge of reconciliation, the first appointment of its kind in Canada.

Ryle perfect choice for Manitoba’s first associate chief judge for reconciliation

Judge Jerilee Ryle is more qualified than the majority of Manitoba judges on the issue of how to best serve Indigenous peoples in Manitoba’s justice system.

Inside the colorful, compelling and controversial jersey designs at the World Cup

A look at some of the more compelling — and controversial — backstories from the kit designs on show in soccer’s biggest event.

210 years of resistance: the Métis at Seven Oaks

This battle, which took place in present-day Winnipeg, was part of the Pemmican War, which saw several altercations between the Hudson’s Bay and North West companies as they fought for domination of the fur trade between 1812 and 1821.

CMHR rejects Jewish organization’s allegations of foreign interference in exhibit about Palestinians

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has said B’nai Brith’s allegations of foreign interference in connection with an upcoming exhibit are unfounded, after the Jewish organization asked the museum to investigate a meeting about the exhibit between its leaders and a Palestinian ambassador in 2024.

On Tuesday, the National Post published an email from 2024 between Ramsey Zeid, the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba president and museum officials, including vice-president of exhibitions, Matthew Cutler and CEO Isha Khan.

The correspondence appears to show plans for a meeting between museum team members and Mona Abuamara, Palestine’s ambassador to Canada, while she was at the museum in December 2024, including discussions about the exhibit, titled Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present.

B’Nai Brith has previously raised concerns about the exhibit, saying the museum failed to properly consult with members of the Jewish community in its development and said the meeting has amplified those concerns.

Manitoba-born 105-year-old in midst of four-day birthday extravaganza

Reaching a century (plus five) is a milestone so rare it deserves more than a single celebration.

And Edith Cecelia Lints Edmundson is marking her 105th birthday with a bang, returning to celebrate in the province where she lived for 100 years.

With the help of her children Vivian, Rhonda and Derrick, Edmundson organized a four-day cross-country tour that’s seen her party in Langley, B.C., Shoal Lake and Brandon.

She’ll be capping the festivities off in Winnipeg this weekend, joined by 80 of her nearest and dearest who will come to raise a glass to the matriarch of the family.

Minister says ‘lost Canadians’ must prove link to Canada in each generation

OTTAWA - Immigration Minister Lena Diab says having a Canadian ancestor does not guarantee someone is eligible for Canadian citizenship.

Diab was pushed in question period Tuesday by Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner to state how many people got proof of citizenship under the new citizenship-by-descent law using inaccurate documents.

An unknown number of people who received citizenship certificates under the new law received letters from the federal government over the weekend demanding that they surrender them. A statement from the Immigration Department says "a limited number" of people received these letters.

A spokesperson from Diab's office later said "a few dozen" surrender letters have been issued.

Work progressing inside historic 121-year old library that will house City of Winnipeg archives

Construction on the redevelopment of the historic Carnegie Library into a new home for the city’s archives is now about one-third complete, bringing the collection one step closer to returning to the landmark building that housed it for decades.

Taking Pride in what’s been built

Sunday, June 7, was a steamy day but, even without the heat, the heart of Winnipeg glowed with warmth.

That’s because an estimated 15,000 LGBTTQ+ Winnipeggers and allies snaked their way through the city’s downtown arteries — from the Manitoba legislature, along Portage Avenue and to The Forks — as part of the city’s 39th annual Pride Winnipeg parade, a riotously colourful expression and celebration of love and joy.

At The Forks, participants enjoyed drag shows, live music, theatre performances and other activities to mark the culmination of Pride Week, as well as the beginning of what the province of Manitoba now recognizes as Pride Month.

Jim Kane, grand marshal of this year’s parade, said during the pre-parade rally in front of the Legislative Building that Winnipeg and Manitoba have made great strides since 1987, when the first Pride march was held.

Une nouvelle oeuvre pour raconter l’histoire autrement

Pendant des décennies, le parc La Vérendrye, situé sur l’avenue Taché, au cœur de Saint-Boniface, a raconté l’histoire de l’explorateur français du même nom à travers une seule statue. La Compagnie de La Vérendrye, un groupe de reconstitution historique, a piloté un projet de conception d’une nouvelle œuvre d’art qui pourrait raconter une autre partie de l’histoire.