Take a hike... or a bike ride on these Winnipeg trail options

We’re halfway through the 10-week summer holiday and if your family is anything like mine, it’s very likely you’ll be in full-blown survival mode at this point.

You’ve already visited all the popular ice-cream spots in the city (and if you haven’t then you’ll find a list of our faves here) , you’ve ticked every box in our Road Trip Bingo Card and answered every single question in the our How Well Do You Know Your Province Quiz (Part 1 and Part 2) … and there are still 29 days to go before school starts on Sept. 8.

If you’re running low on ideas, don’t worry — we’ve got you covered, with not one, not two, but three cycling/walking routes to help you squeeze a bit more fun from what’s left of the holidays. Grab your helmets, lace up your sneakers, pack water bottles and get outside to explore different neighbourhoods in the city.

NOTE: Check the Winnipeg Trails website before you leaving to make sure paths are open and in working order, especially if we’ve had a bout of nasty weather.

From Uniqlo to Zara, clothing brands try to win over Gen Z with a needle and thread

NEW YORK (AP) — Encouraging customers to mend worn clothes instead of buying new ones might seem like a self-defeating sales strategy. But in-store repairs and sewing workshops are becoming essential retail services for clothing brands as they try to appeal to young consumers who want to save money and the planet.

While luxury fashion houses and select specialty retailers like Patagonia have offered product repairs for decades, the concept has caught on. Jeans giant Levi Strauss & Co., casual wear chain Uniqlo and budget retailer Primark are some of the apparel companies hoping to win over Generation Z shoppers with a needle and thread.

Levi's created a handstitching course for high school students after determining that many Gen Zers lacked the sewing skills to match their interest in thrift store shopping and sustainability. Employees spend 90 minutes instructing teenagers on four tasks: sewing on a button, hemming, patching a hole and fixing a tear.

The Wear Longer program, which the San Francisco-based company is expanding across the U.S., builds on the repair and customization services Levi's offers at hundreds of stores worldwide.

Vibrant Norwood apartment garden a labour of love to honour green thumb’s late partner

St. Vital resident Rob Duncan can’t pinpoint when he first noticed an award-winning garden blanketing the grounds of a two-storey St. Mary’s Road apartment block, near Coniston Street.

Perhaps he was on his way home from work and caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye. Or maybe he was running errands in the Norwood Flats area and paused to admire the array of annuals, perennials and potted plants that extends from the block’s doorway to the front curb.

What Duncan does know for certain is that after spying the urban oasis, twice fêted in Take Pride Winnipeg’s annual Winnipeg in Bloom competition, he couldn’t unsee it.

“First of all, the pink building really stands out,” Duncan says, referring to the brightly painted California Apartments complex at 268 St. Mary’s Rd. “But then you have the pergola, the rock garden, the flowers and trees… a sea of colour on a very busy street.”

À Granby, le Manitoba francophone au micro

Bercée par la musique depuis l’enfance, Mercédès Beaudry sera la seule représentante du Manitoba à Jamais Trop Tôt, le volet jeunesse du Festival international de la chanson de Granby (FICG), au Québec. Le 16 août, l’auteure compositrice-interprète de 17 ans montera sur la scène du Palace de Granby aux côtés de 19 autres artistes de la relève francophone venus des quatre coins du Canada.

Mère, père, frère et même ses chats : à peine sélectionnée, Mercédès Beaudry s’est empressée de leur annoncer la bonne nouvelle. La jeune artiste se trouvait avec un ami quand le téléphone s’est mis à sonner : “Pour la première fois dans ma vie, je dois prendre un appel,” s’amuse-t-elle. C’est avec un grand enthousiasme qu’elle a accueilli cette sélection.

Après le dévoilement public de la cohorte, la nouvelle de sa participation s’est vite répandue dans son entourage. “Il y a des personnes qui m’ont textée et qui ne savent pas forcément en quoi consiste Jamais Trop Tôt, alors je dois expliquer ça à tout le monde.”

Au programme du FICG, qui se déroulera du 13 au 23 août, Jamais Trop Tôt n’est pas une compétition, mais un projet musical pancanadien avec un spectacle à la clé. Vingt interprètes de la relève francophone venus des quatre coins du Canada, dont près de la moitié du Québec, passeront cinq jours à l’Université Bishop’s, du 11 au 15 août, pour suivre une formation vocale et scénique. Ils se produiront ensuite en spectacle le 16 août à 19 h 30 au Palace de Granby.

Farm to table is better, friendlier, tastier

Every year without fail, when the ground starts to thaw and temperatures begin to rise, Manitobans start calling Scott Schriemer.

“I’ll have people already phone me in the beginning of May asking if the local strawberries are ready yet,” says the proprietor of Vic’s Market (1049 Pembina Hwy.).

“Generally speaking, most people know strawberries don’t start until the end of June, but they get to a point where they have a real craving for something that’s been produced here, that’s fresh and that’s new.”

There are plenty of positives for those with access to locally grown, seasonal produce, especially when it comes to how something tastes.

Old military transport aircraft to get new lease on life as waterbombers

OTTAWA - The federal government said Friday it is selling 10 of its used CC-130H Hercules aircraft to B.C.-based aerospace company Coulson Aviation, which will convert them into firefighting aircraft.

They're part of a fleet of 12 retired by the Royal Canadian Air Force back in January. The remaining two Hercs will be put on public display at bases and museums.

Secretary of State for Defence Procurement Stephen Fuhr announced the conditional sale of the recently retired aircraft in Abbotsford, B.C., where an international air show is being held.

Fuhr called the sale a "gold standard" divestment project that will give the military assets a new lease on life.

After centuries in India, the last Cochin Jews try to keep their history alive

KOCHI, India (AP) — As the sun set over Kochi’s historic Jew Town neighborhood, Keith Hallegua donned a gray kippah and began a solitary walk to the synagogue at the end of his cobbled street.

It was Shavuot, the Jewish holiday commemorating God giving the Torah to Moses. Hallegua reached the 458-year-old Paradesi Synagogue where he knew he would pray alone — without a minyan, the quorum of 10 males required for a communal service there.

Hallegua is the synagogue's last local congregant — the only Jew left in Jew Town.

Across the city at the centuries-old Kadavumbagam Synagogue, Elias “Babu” Josephai remembered the “chukkunda" — fried dough balls his grandmother used to make for Shavuot.

Winnipeggers join global community in honouring Hiroshima, Nagasaki dead with lantern ceremony

Marking small lanterns with messages of “No More War,” “Peace for Everyone” and “Nuclear Free,” Winnipeggers gathered Thursday to mark 81 years since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Lanterns for Peace event, one of many around the globe, brought dozens of people to the fountain at Memorial Park to honour those killed by atomic weapons at the end the Second World War.

Growing up in Japan, Hiroe St. Louis remembers how every year, the importance of peace was stressed across the country as the Japanese reflected on the devastation in Hiroshima.

It was a lesson her grandmother would embed in St. Louis as she grew up near Osaka. While her grandmother was not in a city hit by a nuclear weapon, her home of Yokkaichi burned to the ground during the war. Across the country, people were just trying to survive, St. Louis says.

Court orders Instagram and Facebook’s Meta to pay $567M to address kids’ mental health online

A New Mexico court has ordered Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from its platforms in the second phase of a landmark trial.

Judge Bryan Biedscheid said in a ruling late Thursday that the bulk of the money — $420 million — will be used for treatment services for young people. The rest will go toward awareness and prevention, screening services and other costs over the next five years.

The new penalty is in addition to the $375 million in civil penalties that jurors ordered against Meta in March after determining the company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. In the second phase, prosecutors asked the judge to impose fundamental changes at Meta aimed at reining in addictive features, improving age verification and preventing child sexual exploitation through default privacy settings and closer oversight.

The total amount Meta is responsible for — $942 million — is a small fraction of of its annual profit, which was about $60 billion in 2025. Investors seemed to shrug off the New Mexico ruling in after-hours trading Thursday, sending Meta’s stock down less than half a percent to $589.44.

Nova Scotian children under 14 will soon be banned from e-bikes

HALIFAX - Nova Scotia’s public works minister says the province plans to ban children under 14 from riding electric bikes this fall.

Fred Tilley says the age restriction is part of a slate of changes that will be made to the province’s Traffic Safety Act.

The minister says technology is allowing e-scooters and e-bikes to move much faster than before.

The province first restricted children under 14 from using e-scooters back in 2022.

Water-bus service relaunches with bigger boat

After staying docked last summer, the water-bus service stationed at The Forks is once again ferrying people up and down the Red and Assiniboine rivers.

Razed tree canopy leaves Selkirk Avenue stretch noisier, dirtier: resident

Selkirk Avenue resident Gail Allard sits on her front steps, looking at a row of tree stumps.

Until last fall, Allard would have opened her front door to a lush canopy of mature trees. Now, she has an unobstructed view of a freight terminal — the Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. intermodal yard.

Although the residential street is quiet on this August afternoon, the steady beeping of machinery moving shipping containers carries throughout the neighbourhood.

It’s the first summer since Manitoba Hydro cut down 262 mature trees — most of them Siberian elms — along Selkirk Avenue between Keewatin and Railway streets.

Scientists are certain a wayward SpaceX rocket slammed into the moon as predicted

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A SpaceX rocket that launched a pair of lunar landers slammed into the moon as predicted on Wednesday after drifting off course for the past year, scientists reported.

Although no one observed the actual 5,400-mph (8,700-kph) collision, a telescope in Chile spotted what astronomers have identified as the debris plume resulting from the crash. Space tracking experts said it was inevitable that the leftover rocket segment plowed into the moon.

It’s the latest instance of lunar litter, a problem that many fear could worsen as the U.S. and China race to put astronauts on the moon. In 2022, a Chinese rocket unintentionally hit the moon following a lunar mission, and many more stray rocket pieces likely struck the moon in decades past without scientists' knowledge.

SpaceX's Julianna Scheiman said this week that the company is working with NASA to avoid future wrecks, stressing that this projected crash was not deliberate. A combination of solar activity and gravity accidentally put it on a collision course with the moon, she said.

Even AI has to watch its diet

Imagine going to your doctor and have that doctor tell you how much they like a new health app — but when you ask them whether their family likes it, the doctor says “Oh, I don’t trust it enough to let them use it.” Or having your general contractor extol the benefits of robotic construction workers — while bluntly saying he’d never use them to work on his home.

Well, enter AI.

For the last nine months or so, there have been recurring stories about AI companies buying up huge stockpiles of rare and out-of-print books, and “harvesting” — and destroying — the physical books to train their AI models.

Plenty of people questioned the stories, and went to Snopes to see if there was any truth to the claim.

This organ will play one composition until 2640. It’s redefining how slowly music can be played

HALBERSTADT, Germany (AP) — A small organ in eastern Germany is the headliner of the world’s slowest concert. It has been playing the same piece of music by composer John Cage at a glacial pace for nearly 25 years.

A rare chord change on Wednesday — from seven notes to eight — represented the completion of about 4% of the 639-year endeavor of the John Cage Organ Project Halberstadt.

It was a historic moment inside the medieval Burchardi Church, in Halberstadt, Germany, that reflected the past, present and future of the project, as well as those who are following its — albeit very slow — progression.

“As fast as our world is developing, I think it’s a wonderful place to be and to come to yourself and just to be touched by this ‘being there,’"said Anneli Borgmann, chairwoman of the John Cage Organ Project Halberstadt’s board of trustees.

City seeking proposals to lease, manage, program St. Boniface heritage buildings

The future of three key St. Boniface heritage buildings should soon become clearer, following years of debate over what to do with them.

The city is seeking proposals to lease, program and manage the Carré Civique de Saint-Boniface (St. Boniface Civic Square), which includes the former St. Boniface city hall (219 Provencher Blvd.), former St. Boniface fire hall (212 Dumoulin St.) and the former St. Boniface health unit building (233 Provencher Blvd.)

The city would continue to own the buildings.

“Promotion of francophone art, language, culture and history are all things that I’d like to see continue and thrive and prosper (through this lease),” said St. Boniface Coun. Matt Allard.

E.K. neighbours finally outfox, rescue injured fox

After more than two months of playing cat-and-mouse with an injured fox, East Kildonan resident Ava Tassos was finally able to rescue the animal Sunday.

Tassos, with the help of Paul Karnafel, owner of The DogFather Rescue, caught the fox, which had spent months wandering around the area with mange on his hips and ears.

“I’m just so grateful to everybody,” Tassos, 62, said Tuesday.

She first saw the fox near her Trent Avenue house at the end of May. After that, the fox returned up to five times a day to take advantage of the feeder Tassos set up for animals in the area.

Homegrown grub: Resto turns to the Leaf for freshest ingredients

The term “eat local” has taken on a whole new meaning at Gather Craft Kitchen and Bar, where the journey from plot to plate is measured in footsteps rather than miles.

Head chef Mike Licharson has expanded the restaurant’s focus on local sourcing by incorporating fruit and vegetables grown in The Leaf’s biomes and outdoor kitchen garden into his menu.

Bananas from the tropical biomes star in his banana-bread French toast and accompanying banana compote. Leeks, braised slowly and paired with Manitoba-grown beluga lentils, and Swiss chard — which takes the place of grape leaves in Licharson’s play on classic meze dolmades, a nod to the chef’s Greek-Ukrainian-Irish heritage — are both grown in the outdoor kitchen garden.

The park’s produce complements the restaurant’s other locally sourced ingredients, Licharson says.

‘Sewing angels’ come to Folklorama pavilion’s rescue after Ghana dancers’ costumes stolen

Parents and volunteers had tears in their eyes when dozens of young dancers took to the stage for their opening performances at Folklorama’s Ghana pavilion Sunday night.

‘This is Mommy’s park’: city honours two-time Olympic champion curler Lawes

When Kaitlyn Lawes drives through her childhood neighbourhood, she’ll now be able to point to a park bearing her name — and tell her daughters that anything is possible.

School backpack overload: Heavy bags can strain kids’ bodies

Backpacks can be fashionable and functional, but they can also be too heavy — weighed down by digital devices, musical instruments, sports equipment and more. Some kids carry home a laptop or tablet and textbooks, too.

It's good to be prepared, but kids who walk to school or participate in extracurricular activities may be lugging more than their bodies can handle. Lockers and classroom storage aren’t available everywhere — and a child carrying too much weight might not be ready to learn.

As families begin back-to-school shopping, here's how to know if your child's backpack is too heavy, and how to lighten their load.

How heavy is too heavy?

Tracing South Asian community’s influence in Manitoba

When Pamela Rebello arrived in Winnipeg from India in 1968, following a few years in Cleveland, Ohio, she forged a path led by determination and courage with the vision to contribute to the province.

Those attributes could be found among many of the individuals who made up the first South Asian diaspora in Manitoba.

“We relied on each other,” says Rebello of the small group of newcomers who adjusted to a new home and way of life. Holding on to their cultural identity and values was key to that transition as well as dealing with feelings of isolation.

Rebello, along with other community leaders, took their interest in fostering South Asian culture a step further by establishing the India School of Dance, Music & Theatre in 1980.