Runners’ high: School opens rubberized track

The burgundy race track Marlee Bragg's phys-ed students run on is unique in north Winnipeg.

Teens pounded Garden City Collegiate's 400-metre rubberized track, with Bragg's whistle sounding in the background, as city councillors Devi Sharma (Old Kildonan) and Brian Mayes (St. Vital) viewed the new upgrades they had helped spur.

"We feel very privileged," Bragg told the councillors Wednesday.

The Jefferson Avenue high school is one of three rubberized full-size tracks in the city. The University of Manitoba and Victor Mager School, in St. Vital, host the others.

Roads quieted by COVID fill with birdsong: study

The Conservative party has locked its MPs and candidates out of its central voter database in a move that critics say is an attempt by Erin O’Toole to protect his leadership.

Me, hate cute little squirrels? You must be nuts

I was standing in the backyard next to a very tall tree, sipping the first coffee of the day, trying to think of a topic for today’s column, when suddenly it hit me.

No, I was not struck by a sudden inspiration. I was bonked on the top of my head by a pine cone the size of a regulation volleyball.

In quick succession, several more potentially lethal pine cones plummeted from the sky and thudded into the ground near my feet.

“I can see you up there!” I shrieked, waving my fist at the sky. “You are not going to get away with this!”

Shoal Lake 40 toasts clean water

SHOAL LAKE 40 FIRST NATION – As he raised his glass, Chief Vernon Redsky looked at the water and a memory came rushing back. It reminded him of when he was a kid, he said, and the water in Shoal Lake was crystal-clear like that, back when he and his friends would splash along the shore, drinking from the lake when they got thirsty.

So he thought about that as he clinked his glass against two others, and took a sip. A toast, to the first officially safe tap drinking water in Shoal Lake 40: on Wednesday, after 24 years, the Treaty Three First Nation’s boil water advisory officially ended.

“It’s surreal to be at this moment,” Redsky said at a ceremony to celebrate the achievement, as well as the opening of the community’s new school.

One day earlier, a government official in Kenora, Ont., had officially approved the latest test results from Shoal Lake 40’s new water treatment plant, which started pumping this summer. That night, Redsky couldn’t sleep; he called a former chief to talk about the long road they had travelled to get to this point.

Flags of Treaty One, the Dakota and Métis fly at city hall

Drumbeats reverberated as four Indigenous leaders rode horseback past the brick-walled restaurants on King Street: it was the beginning of a ceremony to recognize the place of Indigenous people in Winnipeg.

On Wednesday morning, the flags of Treaty One First Nations, the Dakota and the Métis were hoisted at city hall. They'll be there permanently, alongside the flags of Canada, Manitoba and Winnipeg.

"It'll make our people proud that their flag will be flying at city hall," said Sagkeeng First Nation Chief Derrick Henderson. "That is so significant."

Chiefs, representatives of various Indigenous groups and Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman spoke at the flag-raising event. Ribbon skirts, headdresses and face masks were abundant among the crowd.

Custom-crafted dog kennels more plush than penal

SELKIRK — One of late, standup comedian George Carlin’s best-loved shticks revolved around how, as a kid, his parents would command him to his bedroom for hours on end whenever he misbehaved. That never seemed like much of a punishment, he’d explain in his trademark, wry tone, given that’s where all his “stuff” was, the punch line being if his mom and dad really wanted to teach him a lesson, they would have banished him to their room, instead.

Carlin’s bit came to mind recently during an interview with Matt and Kaelyn Proutt, owners of M+K Wood Co., a Selkirk-based enterprise that turns out hand-crafted, wooden dog kennels that, at first glance, could easily be mistaken for a fashionable end table or armoire.

Three years ago, the married couple brought home Callie, a Labrador-English bulldog mix. They purchased a conventional, wire crate during her puppy phase, which they placed her inside as a form of discipline if she nabbed something from a dinner plate or destroyed a throw pillow. Except after they replaced her metal lair with one Matt fashioned out of spruce wood, which Kaelyn subsequently stained to match their living room decor, they discovered it no longer served its intended, penal purpose.

“Originally, the kennel was for when she was naughty. But because she seemed to enjoy the new one so much, we had to start leaving the door open all the time, so she could go inside whenever she felt like it,” Kaelyn says with a chuckle, seated next to Matt on a couch steps away from their pooch’s hideaway.

Immigrant, newcomer communities seek to get out the vote

When Roselyn Advincula pictures an election, she pictures a party.

In her home country of the Philippines, candidates bring in celebrity endorsements and crowd-rousing chants to inspire the electorate. Living near a polling station, she remembers sharing hellos and leaflets with the jubilant crowds walking past her door to vote.

Advincula, 39, and her husband moved to Canada 13 years ago, but just got their citizenship in March. The couple will vote for the first time in the 2021 federal election, and are looking forward to bringing the familiar atmosphere to their "second home."

"It's a mixed emotion for me, it brought back memories and excitement," Advincula said at a voting campaign event Thursday in Winnipeg's Central Park.

New show pits sand carvers against each other, Bay of Fundy tides

A new CBC show aims to put the fun in the Bay of Fundy.

The series is Race Against the Tide, and it pits 10 teams of two sand sculptors from around the world against the one of the Earth’s most relentless of timers — the record-breaking tides of the Bay of Fundy, where Atlantic Ocean waves surge between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

The fast-paced show, hosted by comedian Shawn Majumder, debuts Thursday at 7 p.m. on CBC with its first two half-hour episodes kicking off a five-week run that combines the labour of packing pounds of sand for a base with the careful carving of grains of sand to create remarkable works of art.

The sculptures are temporary though. The teams are given six hours to create their works, but shortly after they are judged, the Bay of Fundy waves wash the works away.

Anxiety, hope as children return to school

On one side of the chain-link fence separating Glenelm School from the street, nervous elementary students fidgeted with their masks and bulky backpacks on the playground as they waited to meet new teachers and friends in lines.

On the other side, parents on the sidewalk — among them, Joisy Fernandez — peeked through the grey diamonds with anxieties of their own.

"I wish I could go in there and just stand next to her and say, ‘It will be OK,’" said Fernandez, who dropped off her daughter Natalie for the first day of Grade 5 on Wednesday morning. "As tough as it is on us, we have to show them that (a safe school year) is possible."

Glenelm, a K-6 building at 96 Carmen Ave., has kept its pandemic policy for drop-offs intact this year to prevent congestion on the playground. Parents are discouraged from entering both the Winnipeg school's grounds and building.

Magnificent mentorship program

Sitting on a piano bench at the back of the St. Norbert Arts Centre gallery space Thursday, up-and-coming musician Tomiwa Omolayo is wearing rose-coloured glasses — literally.

It’s the same pair of tinted shades (accented by a rolled-up mustard-yellow toque) the self-proclaimed optimist wore for his first live show since the COVID-19 pandemic: a performance on the GerryFest 2021 stage.

“I was nervous because I wasn’t sure if the music would connect,” Omolayo said, thinking back to the August 13 show on a breezy outdoor stage at the arts centre. “I’m trying to make something that’s different, something that’s fresh.”

The Lagos-born 23-year-old is an Afrofusion artist who launched his career blending a variety of musical genres with the classic sounds of afrobeats in 2018, after moving from Nigeria to Winnipeg for school just a few years before.

Winnipeg Police Museum shines a light on the history of policing in city

Worn for only a few days or weeks, a set of frayed and grimy canvas armbands stored in a back room at the Winnipeg Police Museum bear the weight of more than a century of history.

Originally fastened around a jacket sleeve with a set of snaps or modified with hand stitched elastic, these armbands bear witness to the involvement of special police constables in the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.

“They knew they were going to have all these civilians, so they needed ways to identify them,” museum curator Tammy Skrabek said, pointing to the large plastic bin of armbands stored on a shelf in a large second-floor archives room.

Along with the white armbands, printed with the words Special Police Winnipeg, the museum owns a bin of pinback celluloid buttons also issued to the anti-strike, anti-union volunteers hastily commissioned as police officers during the strike, which saw more than 30,000 workers participate, including most of Winnipeg’s Police Department.

Set of The Porter a testament to the special connection production has with Winnipeg's Black history

On a rainy Friday evening in Winnipeg’s landmark Nutty Club building, camera crews, grips, food services, hair and makeup teams, stand-ins and actors are spinning about in dance-like organized chaos.

The five-storey candy warehouse — first erected in 1905 and still standing in the shadow of active CP and CN rail lines — has been transformed, pulled back to its turn-of-the-20th-century roots as a set for CBC’s upcoming TV drama The Porter. At each stop along the building’s steep wooden staircase, the team behind Canada’s largest Black-led production is hard at work bringing the roaring ‘20s — and an oft-forgotten story of Black liberation and empowerment — to life.

On one floor, cast and crew block their scene movements, listening raptly to directors, speaking in huddles, donning crisp white shirts and suspenders or gowns, preparing for the crack of the clapperboard.

A floor above, the members of the “video village” tuck on their headphones, lean over screens and warn each other not to move, lest the ceilings shake below.

Athletic excellence in the genes of Geekie family

STRATHCLAIR — It's a hot day in August and the Geekie brothers are home together for a change.

That doesn't happen much anymore.

Morgan, the eldest, has packed a lot into summer. After playing 36 games for the Carolina Hurricanes last season, the 23-year-old centre was chosen by the Seattle Kraken in the NHL expansion draft.

Less than two weeks later, he married his high-school sweetheart, Emma Coulter.

Cree singer Rhonda Head stumbled into classical music, then made it her own

Singer Rhonda Head has travelled a long and winding road to get her voice heard.

Her classically trained vocals have received worldwide recognition after she received two bronze medals from the Global Music Awards, an online competition that specializes in classical and jazz artists and composers.

Head, who hails from Opaskwayak Cree Nation, near The Pas, earned the acclaim for two Cree language songs, Kisahkihitin I Love You, which was in the contemporary classical category, and 500 Years, which received honours among protest songs.

She began taking singing lessons in 1987, after she graduated from high school at the University of Winnipeg Collegiate and moved to Toronto to study fashion. She found, almost by chance, that singing suited her better.

Longtime attendee of Winnipeg Beach Jewish camp now program and planning director

It’s difficult for Drew McGillawee to pinpoint just one favourite part of his 18 summers at Camp Massad, but his biggest takeaway is that attending camp shaped him into the person he is today.

“Camp is the place that allowed me to be myself and allowed me to come out of my shell,” the 25-year-old Winnipegger said.

“Any job that I’ve had outside of camp is because of all the skills that I gained at camp, and all of my best friends are from my experiences at camp.”

This summer, McGillawee acted as director of planning and programming at the Jewish summer camp in Winnipeg Beach. The job allowed him to help attendees have the same formative experiences that he did.

Swimming with local history

Get the sunscreen, we’re going to Patricia Beach!

In fact, we’re even going to get a history lesson on who Patricia was, and why the beach was named for her.

The story all revolves around a summer cabin that was built at Patricia Beach back about 1944, at that time all privately owned by George and Olive Allen, and which still exists and thrives today on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg.

Gotta’ admit, I knew nothing of the history of Patricia Beach until a few days ago when I received a very interesting e-mail from Catherine Lee, George and Olive’s granddaughter.

Japanese garden an enduring cultural experience

The Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba, 180 McPhillips St., opened to the public in 1987. The centre offers a wide range of programs which are designed to promote and enhance the understanding of Japanese culture. The centre also serves as the site for a beautiful Japanese garden. Built by Yoshimaru Abe who was born in Japan in 1914 and came to Canada with his family in 1927, the garden is an enduring cultural experience.

Prior to building the garden at the centre, visitors to the Japanese Folklorama exhibit in 1971 and in the years following had the opportunity to see a Japanese garden recreated by Abe. Using moss, rocks, and pieces of wood, Abe recreated an authentic Japanese garden on a concrete arena floor.

A gardener is called niwashi in Japanese. Abe was the distinguished niwashi at the Japanese cultural centre’s garden into his 90’s and was followed by Sam Matsuo, who maintained the garden for 10 years. Both Abe and Matsuo were assisted by dedicated volunteers. Today the niwashi is Raymond Normandeau, who has been involved with the centre for several years as well as in the building of the garden at the Japanese Pavilion at Folklorama. Normandeau will oversee an expansion of the garden at the Japanese Cultural Association — which is slated to begin this fall.

Currently, there are two different areas to the garden. The front garden is a long narrow strip on the outside of the building that faces into a concrete parking lot. The inner garden is an enclosed garden accessed by a short bridge and tall wooden gate. “It is not a pure Japanese garden,” says Normandeau. “It is representative of a Japanese garden. We don’t have the stalwarts of Japanese gardens — bamboo, clipped azaleas, and the black pine which is one of the most popular pine species in a Japanese garden.” But many fine elements of Japanese garden design can indeed be found here.

Craig Block link to city’s Black history

Above a fruit seller in a small brick building on Main Street, a group of Black railway porters made history.

The Order of Sleeping Car Porters, formed in Winnipeg in 1917, was North America’s first Black labour union. Five years later, they established offices and a meeting hall on the second storey of the building, the Craig Block, at 795 Main St.

Now, the building has hit the market, without any historical status protections or a bronze plaque to commemorate its history.

History writer Christian Cassidy said he’s seen the building, which recently housed retail store Ma’s Fishing, go up for sale once or twice in the past. Each time, he worries someone will buy it and knock it down. It’s one of last buildings that links Winnipeg to the history of its Black communities.

The show must go on as Selkirk buys theatre

Many in Selkirk thought the credits had rolled for the Garry Theatre, but it appears there’s a sequel.

Landmark Cinemas decided to close it in May and on Wednesday, the City of Selkirk announced it had purchased the theatre for $350,000, plus closing costs.

“What we’ve heard so far is people are very excited and very happy that the city has been able to secure the property,” said Selkirk CAO Duane Nicol.

Nicol said the city will reach out to the community to determine how best to use the building. The city hopes it will become a centre for arts and culture, he said.

Local jewelry company handed key to success

It’s a golden opportunity that came straight out of the blue.

Nominees for the upcoming Emmy and Golden Globe awards will be walking the red carpet in handmade necklaces from Winnipeg company Jillian Leigh Jewelry, but exactly how the award show organizers discovered the local brand of gold adornments remains a mystery.

“We still don’t know how they found us, but we’re really glad they did,” says co-founder and jeweler Velia Amador. “It means a lot to us to be able to participate in such a high profile event because it’s going to help us gain some international exposure.”

“And if any of the celebrities loved our pieces and ordered something from us, I think I would die,” says Jillian Sheedy, the business’s other half and a self-professed celebrity enthusiast. Before they were business partners, the women were co-workers at a corporate office. They started Jillian Leigh together in 2018 after Amador — who had been forging jewelry as a hobby for more than a decade — offered to make some custom bracelets for Sheedy’s wedding.

Selkirk art crawl centres on city's thriving mural scene

Sometimes a wall is more than just a wall.

It’s a blank canvas. And in recent years, artists in Selkirk have turned several into works of art, highlighting local figures and traditions, using paint to transform bricks and plaster in the downtown into a growing visual history of the city.

Since 2018, nearly 20 murals have emerged, depicting everything from the traditional community round dance to Indigenous and settler women thriving on the Prairie landscape to a grandmother passing on her teachings. Others bring needed attention to the ongoing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and to everyone affected, in the past and present, by the Indian Residential School System, those who came home and those who never did, artist Jordan Stranger says.

All these murals will serve as the backdrop for a free public art crawl Sept. 4 and 5, with local vendors and artisans posting up next to them and getting a long-awaited opportunity to share their work with the community, including handmade goods, paintings, crafts, sewing and woodworking pieces, and much more.