B.C. firm ‘over the moon’ about contract to chart Canada’s role in lunar exploration

VANCOUVER - Shaun Riddell is "over the moon" — figuratively, if not quite yet literally — since his Langley, B.C., firm was named among three companies hired by the Canadian Space Agency to lay the groundwork for human and robotic missions to the lunar surface.

Riddell, the CEO of SpaceDirt, says he was "blown away" by the awarding of the $500,000 contract, given the competition for the national grant.

SpaceDirt makes technology for autonomous robotic resource development on Earth, aimed at predicting where to drill and making discovery faster, safer, and more cost-effective in extreme environments.

Riddell says the long-term vision for the company's robots is to be the "dump trucks" of the moon, while the current project will draw a road map on how "Canada will contribute to the overall mission of developing resources on the moon."

Late start to season due to cold washed away in storm-powered flash for many Manitoba farmers

Torrential rains eroded Manitoba farms, flooded fields, isolated cattle herds and damaged longstanding rural properties.

The entirety of the damage from this month’s storms is still unknown. Many producers are waiting for water to drain.

The provincial government plans to assess the situation at the end of June by using crop insurance data and talking to producers. From there, it’ll determine whether more support is needed for impacted farmers, the agriculture minister said.

Meanwhile, the Manitoba Agricultural Services Corp. — which oversees crop insurance — has received an average 314 calls daily over the first three days this week.

Next-generation 911 coming to Manitoba by early 2027

Manitoba, which has been plagued by spotty 911 service, will be ready to switch to a modern, next generation emergency call system by the federally mandated deadline, says Bell Canada.

HBC charter goes on display at Manitoba Museum

After months of petitions, legal scrutiny and political pressure, the 1670 Hudson’s Bay Company Royal Charter has formally arrived at the Manitoba Museum, marked by a ceremony including many notable Canadian and Indigenous political leaders.

“It’s with a profound sense of gratitude and humility that I stand before you today as we recognize the gifting of the HBC Royal Charter, together with our consortium partners,” said Dorota Blumczynska, CEO of the Manitoba Museum.

“Today marks an opportunity that is not to redefine the past, but to better understand it, and to help us use it to build a more just and inclusive future.”

The 356-year-old document, which not only birthed HBC, but effectively laid a foundation for colonial Canada itself, attracted new controversies in the last year or so. After years of bleeding at the bottom line, HBC announced in March 2025 that it would begin liquidating its stores across the country and selling off its assets to pay off creditors.

City looking into expanding 30 km/h zones in residential areas, on regional streets

Winnipeg city council’s public works committee has directed staff to study whether to expand its 30 km/h school zone speed limit to additional residential streets, or even busy regional roads.

Manitoba makes Polaris long list

Four Manitoban artists — Begonia, Boy Golden, JayWood and Propagandhi — have a shot at becoming the first local musicians to win the prestigious Polaris Music Prize after earning a spot on the award’s official long list of 40 notable albums released last year.

With a 10 per cent chance at netting the $30,000 award, Manitoba is well-represented, trailing only Ontario (13 nominees) and Quebec (12). Of the 40 records that made the long list, 10 will be selected for the prize’s short list, which will be announced July 9.

The long list for the prize — presented annually to the Canadian album of the year, based solely on artistic merit — was announced Thursday in Toronto during the NXNE music festival.

In total, 202 albums were submitted for consideration by the 205-member national jury of critics and broadcasters.

Millions of litres of sewage dumped into rivers after outages

Millions of litres of untreated sewage were dumped into Winnipeg rivers over the past 48 hours after Tuesday night’s massive storm caused power failures at pumping stations across the city.

Two tornadoes confirmed in Manitoba during Tuesday’s storm

The massive storm that brought torrential rain and hail to southern Manitoba Tuesday afternoon and evening produced at least two tornadoes, Environment and Climate Change Canada confirmed Thursday.

The first, pinpointed by Environment Canada Wednesday, was in Ste. Anne, southeast of Winnipeg. The second was in Dufrost, just east of Morris.

Investigations into the impact of this week’s wild weather are still ongoing, and there’s a chance more tornadoes will be confirmed, said Environment Canada meteorologist Brian Proctor.

“It’s a possibility,” he said. “It was a very, very severe weather day.”

Mayor’s inner circle to consider $600K grant for soccer complex upgrades if city gets women’s pro league team

City administrators are recommending a $600,000 grant to the Winnipeg Soccer Federation to help fund upgrades at the Ralph Cantafio Soccer Complex, subject to Winnipeg securing a Northern Super League team, Canada’s top professional women’s soccer league.

Canada Post moves to convert nearly half a million more homes to community mailboxes

Canada Post is rolling out the latest phase of its transition from door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes, selecting more than three dozen communities that will undergo the conversion starting next year.

Spanning seven provinces and 37 communities from Halifax to Victoria, the change will see an additional 485,000 addresses move to a more centralized mode of mail delivery.

Those homes come on top of the 136,000 addresses in 13 communities already selected for conversion late this year or in early 2027.

Switching the four million addresses that still enjoy doorstep delivery to community mailboxes within about five years marks a key pillar in Canada Post's plan to overhaul its business model in the face of declining letter mail and mounting financial losses.

HBC Royal Charter welcomed in ceremony at Manitoba Museum

WINNIPEG - A 356-year-old document that granted the Hudson's Bay Co. control over roughly one-third of Canada is now in public hands.

The HBC Royal Charter was unveiled Thursday at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg in a ceremony that was both a celebration of the new life of the document and a reflection on the troubled legacy it created.

"In 1670, a king, sitting across the ocean, claimed authority over our lands," said Ovide Mercredi, former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

"Through the so-called right of discovery, vast territories were granted to the Hudson's Bay Co., as if our lands and territories were empty. But our lands were not empty, our nations were here."

Northern First Nation purchases popular tourist lodge in Seal River watershed

The Sayisi Dene First Nation has purchased one of the largest hunting and fishing lodges in Manitoba’s Seal River Watershed, marking a return to the community’s traditional lands and an economic development opportunity for the northern nation.

The Lodge at Little Duck is nestled between Neganilini and Little Duck lakes, more than 1,000 kilometres north of Winnipeg. It is located in the Seal River watershed, a 50,000-square-kilometre subarctic ecosystem relatively untouched by industrial development, and centred on the last major river in northern Manitoba without a hydroelectric dam. A network of provincial and federal parks has been proposed to protect the region.

“The Sayisi Dene people have a real connection to the lands, especially around where the lodge sits,” Chief Kelly-Ann Thom-Duck said in an interview. “We have plans to use the area and see where it goes.”

The fly-in hunting, fishing and eco-tourism destination has its own airstrip, lounge and cabins. Manager Shawn Paul said it regularly welcomes more than 100 guests every summer and fall for guided caribou hunts and fishing trips.

Social media platforms, app stores at odds over who should enforce social media bans

As countries including Canada move toward social media bans in an attempt to keep youths safe online, tech companies are in a tug of war over who should be the gatekeepers.

Executives from Snapchat and Meta, the owner of Instagram, Facebook and Threads, have argued it should be app stores rather than platforms charged with verifying the ages of users when they try to add a platform to their phones.

Apple and Google, which run the App Store and Play Store respectively, have introduced some age-gating measures but appear to be at odds with social media platforms over whose responsibility those measures should be.

Experts say trying to put the onus on either side is pointless because app store owners, platforms, governments and parents all have to step up to keep kids safe online.

Oligarchs don’t care about ‘public good’

Don’t think the tech oligarchs are the good guys, fighting for democracy, in the next battle that’s coming. Because they’re not.

Sisler program creating new generation of animators

The characters start as crude shapes and stand-ins, then take on form. Your Elsa, Miles Morales or Buzz Lightyear are born, but move only in key poses, like a picture book.

WAG-Qaumajuq exhibition offers fresh perspective on history of Indigenous representation in art

A new exhibition at WAG-Qaumajuq invites viewers to grapple with two simultaneous histories of Indigenous presence in art.

Reframed, which opened Wednesday, takes settler art of Indigenous people shaped by colonial perspectives of the time and contrasts it with modern-day contemporary work from Indigenous artists who challenge those perspectives.

Many historical paintings create a vague representation of Indigenous people by homogenizing the culture and erasing historical presence, says Marie-Anne Redhead, assistant curator of Indigenous and contemporary art.

“I wanted to highlight Indigenous perspectives on these artworks to really see these people as people,” she said.

Winnipeg teens will carry out official match balls at World Cup

For Aiden Karacsony and Cristiano Morais, the pre-match is the main event.

City mulls grant to give life to vacant buildings

The city is looking at a vacant building grant that could entice developers to convert empty buildings into new homes.

Tory MP says 4,000 letters sent urging Carney to amend Indian Act status rules

OTTAWA - A Conservative MP says more than 4,000 letters have been sent to the House of Commons committee on Indigenous issues demanding that the federal government immediately change the way First Nations status works under the Indian Act.

MP Billy Morin, the former chief of Enoch Cree Nation who serves as the Conservative party's critic of Indigenous Services, echoed those calls in a letter he sent to Prime Minister Mark Carney this week.

The committee, known as INAN, is studying legislation that would change the rules establishing who is entitled to First Nations status under the Indian Act. It was introduced in the Senate as S-2 and initially had support from the governing Liberals.

The legislation was drafted to eliminate some gender inequities in the Indian Act and allow some 3,500 people to become eligible for First Nations status.

At 356, the HBC charter is about to get a Manitoba Museum welcome

When Hudson's Bay faltered last year, Manitoba Museum CEO Dorota Blumczynska didn't even need to look at the institution's bank accounts to know it couldn't afford to buy the royal charter that formed Canada's oldest business.

Yiddish fest highlights comfort of knish crafting

For Sara Kasdan, the author of the mid-century ethnic best-seller Love and Knishes, the titular dough pocket was a pathway to everlasting romance via the stomach, assured to get the cook’s name into a man’s heart “faster … and stay longer.”

Restaurant bridges Ethiopian-Eritrean divide at the dinner table

Riverine origins matter at Baro, an eatery just west of the Health Sciences Centre on Notre Dame Avenue, but don’t overlook the connective power of the hyphen on the street-facing sign at chef Tammy Fekadu’s Ethiopian-Eritrean cuisine.

A waterway that rolls for more than 300 kilometres in the Ethiopian highlands, serving as a major cultural and economic thoroughfare for the nearby Gambella region as well as the South Sudanese state to the west, the Baro River is a reminder of communal reliance on precious natural resources, says Fekadu’s eldest daughter, Samra Solomon.

The hyphen is a bridge spanning political divides for Winnipeggers whose homelands have been engaged in decades of ongoing territorial tensions and civil war.

“My mom almost hesitated to call it ‘Baro Ethiopian-Eritrean Cuisine,’ just because some people might not be happy with that politically and maybe even morally,” says the 26-year-old Solomon, who manages the restaurant on top of a full-time job in the insurance business.

Odd pairing of Kraft Dinner and cheesecake a hit for city bakery

It’s the food mashup that appears, at first glance, to be a match made in culinary purgatory.

Featuring a Canadian childhood staple baked into a New York-style cheesecake, the star of the show is the ubiquitous blue-and-yellow box lurking in nearly every pantry across the country.

It’s the ultimate time-saving saviour — firmly lodged in memories as a comforting dinner rapidly whipped up and just as swiftly snarfed down between after-school activities and homework.

But now Kraft Dinner is stepping boldly — some might even say wildly — out of its lane.