I meme, you meme: internet language brings us together

Sometimes, a public health campaign gets it right.

The Baltimore City Health Department has been earning praise for a new initiative that spreads accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines online by using an internet-native language: memes.

“Ginger ale can’t cure COVID, Derrick!” reads one. “Mimosas with the girls? You’re still not vaxxed, Debra!” reads another. “What the FAQ is Delta? It’s new. It’s scary. But we’re here to break it down.”

Done wrong, a public health department using the language of the internet can smack a bit of, to evoke a popular meme, actor Steve Buscemi dressed up unconvincingly as a teenager and asking, “How do you do, fellow kids?” (To be fair, so does describing memes in print.)

Landing young leaders

Sitting in the shade of some trees between Hope and Princeton, B.C., on Thursday, 25-year-old Rylee Nepinak is 230-kilometres into a coast-to-coast bike ride raising funds for youth in Tataskweyak Cree Nation, a northern Manitoba community struggling with the impact of a suicide crisis among its young people.

He’s been on the road for two days; he drove west earlier in the week, pivoting quickly after the completion of another project fuelled by his passion to support and empower Manitoba’s Indigenous youth.

Back home in Winnipeg, Nepinak heads up the North End community volunteer group Anishiative, which leads Indigenous youth in caring for their relatives and community.

The organization has grown and adapted, since its origins in 2019, when Nepinak dreamed up a camp to equip Indigenous youth with land-based traditional teachings, health and well-being tools and survival skills.

Winnipeg Railway Museum can punch your ticket to the past, but it also needs your help

The Winnipeg Railway Museum, run by the Midwestern Rail Association and the Winnipeg Model Railway Club, is "the coolest indoor museum in Canada in the winter and the hottest ticket in town in summer."

Prominent fact-checker Snopes apologizes for plagiarism

A collection of breaking news briefs filed on August 19, 2021

• Trudeau, O’Toole to make campaign stops here Friday

• Twelve arrested, two at large after Norway House woman held against her will and sexually assaulted

• River East Transcona school board mandates masks for K-12 students, staff

• Missing teenage girl found in Portage la Prairie

• LRSD, teachers' association one step closer to implementing staff vaccine mandate

• Winnipeg police investigate 28th homicide of the year

• Twenty-seven new COVID infections, one death reported Thursday

• U of M, U of W, Red River announce vaccine mandates

• Two arrests made following June homicide

Tree-felling display home transport generates online buzz

A Winnipeg display home that recently smashed into trees and street signs as it was transported via truck has now been to British Columbia, the Panama Canal and Oz — via the internet.

An online Manitoba starlet, Photoshopped images of the house in the city and beyond have gone viral.

The home’s transport Saturday led to the destruction of nearly two dozen trees in the Charleswood neighbourhood along Roblin Boulevard, between Scotswood Drive and the Perimeter Highway. The house was too wide to fit on the road. It also hit several street signs.

The Winnipeg Police Service said officers arrested the driver, who’s facing a charge of mischief over $5,000. The incident is now subject to a provincial investigation.

'Cheering for the mammoth': Scientists retrace the steps of 17,000 year-old animal

More than 17,000 years ago, a woolly mammoth roamed enough of the Alaskan landscape to circle the Earth twice.

That's according to a new paper from an international team of researchers who retraced the lifetime of one of the extinct ancient Arctic creatures.

The mammoth's story is written in its tusk through tiny isotopes, which are tiny atoms, said Mat Wooller, a paleoecologist at the University of Alaska.

"Isotopes are like a little chemical GPS (global positioning system) recorder," Wooller said.

Pit bulls legal, ball pythons banned?

Laura Baker has wanted a pit bull for 20 years, but hasn’t bought one because of the city’s ban.

“I just feel like the whole breed has been so misrepresented, misunderstood and given a raw deal in terms of being able to find loving homes,” the St. James resident said.

If proposed changes to a city bylaw pass, Baker will legally be able to own a pit bull, while it could become illegal to feed wildlife and to leave pets in vehicles at certain temperatures.

The city is looking for feedback on suggestions to its Responsible Pet Ownership bylaw. Winnipeg Public Service reviewed the rules this summer and came back with a number of ideas, including a removal of breed-specific bans.

Rescued shepherd cross deserves to put his paws up

Name: Gatsby

Sex: Male

Approximate age: Five years

Breed: Shepherd cross

Charleswood residents fume over destroyed trees

Frustrated residents are calling on the city and province to get to the root of the problem that led to the destruction of nearly two dozen mature trees in Charleswood on the weekend.

Early Saturday morning, a building moving company began to move a display home near the corner of Roblin Boulevard and Scotswood Drive. The home was too wide to clear mature trees along Roblin’s median.

When Winnipeg Police Service officers arrived to provide a previously scheduled escort for the movers at about 7 a.m. they discovered 17 trees had been cut down, allegedly by the driver of the vehicle hauling the house, police spokesman Const. Rob Carver said.

“Immediately, upon determining that the trees had been cut and linking it to this move, the move was halted and, ultimately, the driver (was) arrested,” said Carver.

Chef wants to keep on trucking while she puts down permanent restaurant roots

Tara Hall is just getting started.

The 40-year-old chef is the owner of Winnipeg’s Aboriginal Fusion food truck and she has her sights set on opening a restaurant — sans wheels — focused on the foods she grew up eating.

The elevator pitch is “traditional Aboriginal foods with a fine-dining twist,” Hall says. “We don’t have enough of that here.”

She was born in Vancouver and grew up with her great-grandparents and grandpa on Pinaymootang First Nation in the Interlake. Hall watched her elders and aunties closely in the kitchen and learned to make staples, such as bannock, fried pickerel and saskatoon berry jam, at a young age.

Oh, Canada! We have a racism problem

Sorry, Canada — as much as we like to believe we’re a multicultural country, we’re not as tolerant as we think we are.

Can we talk? Gannett promotes effort at bridging gaps

He may have been censured by the House of Commons this week over his handling of sexual misconduct in the military, but Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan is not going anywhere, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday.

Muslim Canadians’ Eid celebrations reflect diversity

My earliest Eid memory is of my grandma cooking fresh, hot Sirnee — a soft, sweet, spiced, cooked dough made of flour and butter. That divine smell alone would make anyone excited to celebrate Eid.

Eid-al-Fitr (also called the “Festival of Breaking Fast” or just Eid) marks the end of Ramadan, the holy month in which Muslims fast daily from dawn until sundown. It is an opportunity to foster gratitude, discipline and deepen our connection with God, so we can live from a place of higher consciousness. Not for a single month, but for our entire lives.

Coming from a Guyanese family, I grew up with Hindu and Muslim family members. It wasn’t until my paternal grandparents immigrated to Winnipeg we started to celebrate Eid. After Ramadan, we would gather at their house to feast and enjoy West Indian sweets. We also spent more time in the community donating food hampers and strengthening our faith through acts of charity.

As Eid quickly approaches this week, most Muslims celebrate in the same religious sense, but cultural traditions differ from one country to another. A common assumption is being of Muslim faith is synonymous with Middle Eastern countries, but my Muslim friends and I represent the diversity in Islam.

Puncturing the shield of ‘implicit bias’

A leaked internal report this week into the conduct of four Winnipeg firefighters showed evidence of “implicit racial bias” against an Indigenous woman and “racial animus” towards a paramedic (also a person of colour) on a call in October 2020.

The report is clear: identifying the actions of the firefighters put the woman’s health at risk, delayed her journey to the hospital, and showed callous disregard for her safety. One firefighter riding in the ambulance refused to help the paramedic, forcing the injured woman to hold the dressing to the stab wound on her own neck.

Later, one of them called it: “Just another call in the North End.”

According to the report, it was part of “retaliation” against the paramedic, who previously alleged racist conduct by members of the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service — including one of the firefighters involved, who called him a “sand n-----.”

Preserving stories of Muslim history in Manitoba

It was in the early 1900s when one of the first Muslims to live in Manitoba arrived in the province.

His name was Ahmed Awid, and he came from what is now Lebanon — one of perhaps fewer than 1,000 Muslims in Canada at the time.

Awid settled in Brandon, where he married a local woman and established two successful businesses before moving to Edmonton in 1928.

Awid’s story is one of many told in a new book: Muslims in Manitoba: a History of Resilience and Growth.