Fort Richmond elementary school shedding racist lord’s name

Dalhousie School is undergoing a rebrand so it’s no longer affiliated with a Scottish soldier, lord and colonial leader who supported slavery.

The Pembina Trails School Division put a out a call this week for suggestions to rename the elementary building located at 262 Dalhousie Dr.

Its current namesake is George Ramsay, also known as Lord Dalhousie or the ninth Earl of Dalhousie — a title of nobility passed down in his prominent Scottish clan.

“Our whole slogan is, ‘Our differences make us strong,’” said Evi Klostermaier, acting principal of the kindergarten-to-Grade 5 school in Fort Richmond.

$61-M investment in high-speed Internet planned for northern First Nations

More homes on remote Manitoba First Nations will have access to high-speed Internet that most Canadians take for granted thanks to $61 million in new federal funding.

“Your communities have been living way too long without internet,” federal Northern and Arctic Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand told a gathering at Wasagamack Anisininew Nation Thursday. The MP for northern Manitoba said the four projects will deliver modern, reliable internet to 2,309 households.

“This really is a public safety issue and an equity issue,” Chartrand said in the community 600 kilometres north of Winnipeg that’s accessible by air, water and winter road.

“The lack of broadband has been a public safety failure. When families can’t call for help or nurses can’t access files or lives are at risk when you’re travelling roads without phone service, without internet,” she said.

Moose Hide Campaign against gender-based violence starts national conversations

This week marked the 15th annual Indigenous-led Moose Hide Campaign aimed at stopping gender-based violence.

While the campaign is recognized by official observances in British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, this was the first time the movement went national, including a launch in front of a large crowd in Toronto and an online audience of 150,000.

Full disclosure: I was one of the speakers.

Regardless of my participation, the campaign has become one of the most important Indigenous-led movements in Canada – as well-known as Orange Shirt Day.

Shot-in-Manitoba films ready to screen, stream

This has been a big year for film and TV shot in Winnipeg, with fare such as the comedic gangster film Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice topping the streaming charts when it debuted in March on Hulu/Disney+, with more than 300 million views worldwide.

Smaller indie films, such as Johnny Ma’s The Mother and the Bear, and James McLellan and Alexandre (Sasha) Trudeau’s dramatic feature Hair of the Bear also got long-awaited screen time in the first quarter of the year, as did Rhayne Vermette’s experimental feature Levers.

After the Bob Odenkirk thriller Normal becomes available Tuesday, expect more locally shot fare to come to cinemas, or your TV screen, in the months ahead.

FIFA ticketing format arguably most blatant money-grab in history of organized sport

You know you’ve done something very, very foolish when an airline is trolling you.

People don’t generally like airlines. Or, they’re at least apathetic to them — relying on the check-in staff, flight attendants, pilots and actual planes to get them from one place to another, preferably safe and sound and with a modicum of dignity.

The soaring price of jet fuel, a consequence of the pumpkin patch baby’s Iranian adventure, and resulting rise in fares has only made the carriers even more unpopular.

They know it. They also know they’ve still got a healthier brand, somehow, than FIFA.

Province has to untie Winnipeg’s hands in fight against vacant, boarded-up properties

Mayor Scott Gillingham deserves credit for at least trying to tackle one of Winnipeg’s most stubborn urban problems: derelict, boarded-up houses that sit vacant for years, rot into neighbourhood eyesores and too often become fire traps.

AFN chief warns against changes to major projects development rules, calls for debate

OTTAWA - The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations says proposed changes to major project development rules are "not acceptable" and risk trampling on the rights of First Nations.

The federal government is proposing to grant authority to review interprovincial pipelines and transmission lines, and offshore renewable energy projects, to the Canada Energy Regulator instead of the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada.

The proposal, which will undergo a 30-day consultation process, would undo the move the Liberals made eight years ago to create the Impact Assessment Agency as a one-stop shop for all national project reviews.

National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told The Canadian Press the proposed changes "demonstrate a pattern of exclusion" and she rejects the compressed timeline to submit feedback.

Supreme Court recognizes intimate partner violence as a legal basis for civil damages

OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized intimate partner violence as a distinct legal basis for pursuing civil damages.

The top court's ruling Friday came in the case of a woman who was subjected to physical and emotional abuse by her husband during a 16-year marriage.

"Intimate partner violence is a social ill and a deep affront to one's dignity," Justice Nicholas Kasirer wrote on behalf of a majority of the court.

The court said the torts of assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress — existing legal avenues for seeking financial damages — fail to remedy the specific harms to dignity, autonomy and equality caused by intimate partner violence.

Dry Cold Productions co-founder retires after 25 years of onstage merriment

A lifelong contributor to Winnipeg’s musical theatre world is taking a step back from his leadership role with Dry Cold Productions as the company marks its 25th anniversary.

In 2001, Reid Harrison, whose retirement from the role as co-artistic director was announced in December, was sitting at the Charterhouse restaurant with Donna Fletcher and Melanie Whyte commiserating over the city’s seeming reluctance to program work by American musical theatre legend Stephen Sondheim.

“We were just sort of whining,” recalls Harrison, who’s also the general manager of the annual Agassiz Chamber Music Festival.

So the trio decided to do something about it.

A third world war — not as close as many fear

A Politico opinion poll conducted in the four biggest NATO countries in February revealed almost identical popular expectations about the likelihood of a global war in the next five years. In every one — the U.S., the U.K., France and Germany — they think it is quite likely.

Forty-six per cent of Americans think that, and so do 43 per cent of British and French people. The Germans are the optimists in the group, but even 40 per cent of them think a third world war is no more than five years away.

Canadians agree about that, but unlike the Europeans, who see the Russians as the biggest threat, Canadians fear an American invasion most.

These expectations and fears are not exactly wrong, but they are certainly premature. A world war is a war that involves all the great powers. We haven’t had anything like that for 80 years. The probability that it will happen in the next five years is not zero, but it is a very, very small number.

City working to reduce number of vacant buildings but can do more, mayor says

After several blazes ripped through vacant homes earlier this week, Winnipeg’s mayor is highlighting efforts to seize dozens of empty properties and reduce that risk.

The city has started the process to seize 48 properties through a “taking title without compensation process” since mid-December.

That’s when city council called on staff to use the process more often.

“I think there’s more we can do, and I want to see us use this tool of taking title more frequently,” said Mayor Scott Gillingham.

Indigenous hoopster’s son on mission to get dad inducted into Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame

Terry Garrow already received his flowers. Now he’s on a mission to make sure his late father gets his.

By his estimation, his father has been overlooked for far too long when it comes to recognizing the most influential players, fearless leaders and forward-thinking builders who have helped shape Canadian basketball.

He understands that his pleas come from a point of bias, but that doesn’t change the facts in his mind: Alex Garrow deserves to be in the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame.

Not for the success he experienced during a short career in the early 1960s, but for his resilience as a trailblazer during a time in which Indigenous athletes were largely an afterthought. And how fitting it would be for Alex to be the first Indigenous player immortalized.

Tories question CBC funding of spoof-style Indigenous show on residential schools

OTTAWA - Conservatives are questioning why CBC is funding a spoof program that used false pretences to lure high-profile people accused of downplaying the damage caused by residential schools into sitting for interviews.

Several current and former Conservative politicians have gone on social media to denounce the production “Northland Tales." The show is being produced for CBC and APTN.

The show is described by the Indigenous Screen Office — which works to increase Indigenous media representation using federal funding — as a satire program meant to “flip the script” on modern and historical injustices against Indigenous Peoples.

Frances Widdowson, who has described herself as a “known controversial figure” and has publicly questioned the history of residential schools and unmarked graves of children at the site of a former school in Kamloops, described her interview for the show in a video posted to social media this week.

Discussion paper floats ways Ottawa can help fund giant electrical grid buildout

Ottawa's electricity strategy will consider ways government can shoulder some of the cost of doubling the country's grid by 2050 and ensure equipment and workers are available to make it happen.

The federal government released a discussion paper Thursday laying out the broad strokes of its plan and opening it up to feedback.

"The scale is huge, the timeline is short, and the task of getting the right mix of power is complex," Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters in Ottawa.

Building Canada's electricity system is a "shared responsibility," the government said in the document.

AtkinsRéalis bets on nuclear-powered AI factories amid data centre surge

MONTREAL - AtkinsRéalis Group Inc.'s nuclear business powered a 34 per cent year-over-year jump in profits last quarter, as the engineering company banks on the technology to seize on soaring demand for energy-hungry AI data centres.

The Montreal-based firm's nuclear division now accounts for a quarter of total revenue versus 15 per cent two years ago, said CEO Ian Edwards. The segment boasted organic revenue growth of nearly 37 per cent to reach a quarterly record high of $737 million.

Preliminary work is now underway at Ontario's Pickering nuclear power station after AtkinsRéalis and Aecon Group Inc. signed a $2.1-billion contract for a life extension on four reactors last year. Money is also rolling in from Romania, where the company secured a deal in 2025 to extend the life of a reactor at the Cernavoda nuclear plant — after winning a contract the year before to build two new multibillion-dollar reactors there.

Atkins' ambitions go beyond traditional nuclear plants. In March, it announced it was teaming up with Nvidia to ramp up deployment of nuclear-powered artificial intelligence factories, as the two parties explore how to work the chipmaking giant's technologies into developing the facilities.

Sandhu siblings two of four Manitobans heading to Pan Am Youth Championships

It’s become evident that Khushreet and Laganjot Sandhu hit the bullseye when choosing which sport they would dedicate themselves to for the foreseeable future.

The Winnipeg siblings haven’t been in Archery very long — Khushreet started three years ago, Laganjot two — but there’s a consensus that they are both on a rocket ship trajectory up the local, national, and possibly global ranks.

“I just kind of got into the rhythm, and I really fell in love with it,” said 12-year-old Laganjot, who was drawn to a bow and arrow shortly after watching his sister. “But also on the competitive side, I really wanted to get better than my sister at it.”

It doesn’t matter if it’s their studies or in sports, the siblings are as competitive as it gets, and it’s fostered some tremendous individual success.