What's up: Flatlander’s Beer Fest, RWB's On the Edge, Josiah Koppanyi, Prairie Spirit and Detective! and more

Flatlander’s Beer & Beverage FestivalCanada Life Centre, 300 Portage Ave.Friday, 7-10 p.m; Saturday, 1-4 p.m. and 7-10 p.m.Tickets $49.95 plus fees via Liquor Marts or TicketmasterThe sound of cans being cracked open will be echoing through the concourse and ice-level areas of Canada Life Centre on Friday and Saturday as the Flatlander’s Beer and Beverage Festival returns.

Over 500 products will be poured at this year’s event, more than 150 of which will be new to the province or festival exclusives. Around a dozen locals are pouring at this year’s festival, including Dastardly Villain, Little Brown Jug, Brazen Hall and Winkler’s Heritage Farms, with a range of Canadian and international brews being poured throughout the concourse level.

Recent years have seen Flatlander’s broaden its scope to include seltzers, ready-to-drink cocktails, ciders and more — for 2026, these drinks make up around half of all products being poured. Pre-made caesars, hard iced teas, gin smashes, canned margaritas, boozy seltzers and more will be on offer on the event level, including products from Winnipeg’s Shrugging Doctor and Winkler’s Dead Horse Cider Co. and Fort Garry offshoot Hector’s Hard.

In addition to the Friday and Saturday evening events, which run from 7 to 10 p.m., a matinee tasting runs from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturday. There will also be concessions for purchase as well as games and prizes.

Volleyball bench boss named to coaching staff for men’s national squad tourney

Chris Voth is getting bumped into the starting lineup.

The Winnipeg Wesmen men’s volleyball head coach was named to the Canadian senior men’s national team’s coaching staff for the upcoming Volleyball Nations League tournament this summer.

Voth spent five years on the staff of the senior men’s extended roster that trains in Gatineau, Que. That time was spent with Team Canada’s reserve crop, who were young professionals or up-and-coming university athletes.

Now, he’ll help the main roster as it begins its push for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Even after decades in standup, comedy legend Rita Rudner never stops writing new jokes

A Q & A with Rita Rudner, American comedy legend and queen of the one-liner

Music fest committed to exploration, experimentation

In the fifth-floor headquarters of the Cluster Festival, Ash Au is nerding out a little bit over a piece of West German machinery that’s still humming after all these years — a 1967 Nordmende 3004-C.

“The (original) warranty card on it says to get it serviced at Columbus Radio,” Au says, referring to the one-stop repair shop opened in 1968 by Bill Yaworsky, Winnipeg’s doctor of audio.

Au, the artistic director of the festival — officially titled Cluster: New Music and Integrated Arts — visited the shop at 1151 Sanford St. to get the Nordmende up and running.

With the fest settling into its Exchange District studio apartment, Au — a prolific sound designer, bassist, music educator and queer creative — figured it was about time to invest in a sick soundsystem.

Linebacker Clinton making strong case to be kept on Bombers roster

Ja’Kobe Clinton’s path to the pros hasn’t been anywhere near as glamorous as his brother’s.

The aspiring Winnipeg Blue Bombers linebacker had to scratch and claw just to continue playing after high school. Then there’s his well-known sibling, former Pro Bowl safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix — a two-time national champion at Alabama who was chosen in the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft by the Green Bay Packers.

He went on to play eight NFL seasons and made approximately US$20 million in career earnings.

“That set the bar way tremendously high for me. But like I tell everybody, we got two different roads and I kind of took the harder route,” Clinton told the Free Press after Bombers practice on Tuesday.

Local fatboy challenge gives customers 30 minutes to devour behemoth burger

It’s just noon on what’s turning out to be the hottest day of the year and Curtis Kalmakoff, 40, takes a swig from the bottle of water next to him before taking his 11th bite of the world’s largest — and likely most expensive — fatboy burger.

Weighing as much as a three-month-old child, the burger comprises a seven-pound meat patty topped with: 10 slices of Bothwell cheddar cheese, half a pound of chopped white onions, one pound of tomatoes and half a pound of Elman’s sliced dill pickles, all smothered in 1½ pounds of chili and sandwiched between two made-to-order buns from Food Fare measuring 38 centimetres wide and approximately five centimetres tall.

As Kalmakoff wraps his lips around the 12½-pound beast in the outdoor seating area of St. James Burger & Chip Co., owner Kevin Ramberran and restaurant manager Les Bartle cheer him on.

Ramberran is the mastermind behind today’s contest.

Watch it: Chillers, thrillers and some workplace drama

Revenge is a dish best served with humour and … coloured contact lenses? Who can say. These are crazy times. Here are some mostly retaliatory new viewing suggestions for passing the time while awaiting a sign that summer will, one day, arrive for certain.

● Spider-Noir Series premières with all eight episodes Wednesday on Prime Video

Back in 2007, Nicolas Cage was thrillingly over the top as Johnny Blaze in the supernatural superhero movie Ghost Rider.

Nearly 20 years later, he and his crazy eyes are once again fighting crime and other injustices in the live-action adaptation of the Marvel comic Spider-Man Noir.

Museum diorama detailing marshland, rye farm decommissioned owing to pest infestation

What was designed as a triumph of taxidermy has instead become a buffet for pests.

Manitoba Museum has been forced to decommission the Delta Marsh and Rye Farm two-part diorama in the Parklands Gallery after discovering the extent of the devastation wrought by mice, clothes moths and beetle larvae. The open-air exhibition, completed in 2003, represents the province’s most important wetlands and the challenges faced by early farmers, including Ukrainian immigrants in the 1920s.

“Pests are a major issue,” says Amelia Fay, the museum’s director of research, collections and exhibitions. “All museums have pests and use discreet pest-management systems, but this specific diorama was particularly vulnerable because of how authentically it was constructed, using real plant materials and organic elements that various types of critters like to consume.”

Pests can enter the museum when the doors open; clothes moths drift in with foot traffic, mice can get in through tiny gaps and dermestid beetles can hitch a ride with visitors or via tiny cracks, laying eggs in areas close to food sources for future larvae.

Klaschka first Winnipegger in decades to compete in cross-country skiing World Cup

Taschi Klaschka has emerged as one of Manitoba’s top Nordic skiers.

Social media, screen time bigger risks to kids than substance use, inactivity: Doctors Manitoba

Social media and excessive screen time pose a bigger health risk to youth than substance use and inactivity, say Manitoba doctors, who are throwing their support behind a ban proposed by the province.

Gallery sees new location as blank canvas, celebrating with auction, exhibition

It’s the end of an era for Mayberry Fine Art, but partner and gallery director Shaun Mayberry prefers to think of it as a new beginning.

After spending 23 years of its more than 50-year existence at 212 McDermot Ave., the family business will be moving to its new — and much larger — location at 661 Wall St. next month.

“It’s bittersweet. We made our home in the Exchange,” he says. “We bought the building 24 years ago and it was a big move for us and our family. We moved out of St. Boniface into the downtown, a conscientious choice to be a part of the downtown Winnipeg arts community. The building has certainly served us well and has become a major part of our identity.”

But Mayberry Fine Art has outgrown the space. The Exchange District building wasn’t designed to be a gallery space; it was an office building that the Mayberry family constantly adapted to meet the needs of an evolving business.

Emerging film fest fosters creativity, community

While Ontario and Quebec film artists have long spoken ambivalently about working in the shadow of a cultural superpower, Prairie film artists tend to express a different kind of marginality.

“Canada doesn’t hold a candle to Hollywood and all that, but Winnipeg really struggles in the shadow of the folks in Toronto who set the agenda and who get most of the funding,” Winnipeg filmmaker Kevin Nikkel recently told the Free Press.

Nikkel’s son Caden, also a filmmaker, is driven by a similar sentiment.

He’s the programmer behind the Manitoba Emerging Filmmakers Festival (also organized by Matthew Shoup, Kieran Peters and Taryn Edgeworth). The festival, now in its third year, will show dozens of films next weekend in the Exchange District.

After quitting hockey twice, Oakbank’s Tabin flying high as Walter Cup champ

Kati Tabin was in the midst of hugging her teammates and soaking in the moment when a stark reminder of the magnitude of the long and winding road that brought her to the pinnacle of this remarkable journey was brought to her attention yet again.

“That was just it — it was like a pinch-me moment, like Holy (crap), we did it,” Tabin said in a telephone interview over the weekend. “It was so crazy, because one of my teammates came up to me after the game and she said ‘hey, remember when you quit hockey?’

“It was just kind of funny to think about that and to think about where we are now. I’m just super grateful that I stuck with it.”

The Oakbank product has been a little busy since Wednesday night, when the Montreal Victoire became the first Canadian team to capture the Walter Cup as champions of the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

Proponents of solar power push for provincial infrastructure investment to boost grid resilience

In the early 1970s, licence plates were stamped with the slogan “Sunny Manitoba” — a nod to long summer days, crisp blue winter skies and frequent sun dogs reflecting off of blinding white snow. While the slogan later changed, Manitoba’s ranking as Canada’s second-sunniest province has not.

Despite that sunlit reputation, solar power — one of the most-developed renewable energy sources — makes up just a small fraction of the province’s electricity grid.

“It’s extremely marginal, especially when you compare to other jurisdictions like Alberta and Saskatchewan,” said James Wilt, policy development manager at Climate Action Team Manitoba.

Manitoba boasts a predominantly emissions-free grid, with 97 per cent of its power generated by a network of hydroelectric dams. But the provincial utility, Manitoba Hydro, has forecasted that its once-abundant renewable energy source will soon fall short. There is growing demand for power amid the electrification of sectors like transportation and heating, and the rapidly growing interest in developing electricity-hungry data centres. Combined with more unpredictable water levels owing to climate factors like extreme drought, it’s all prompted the utility to warn that capacity could run out as soon as 2030.

Pappas Greek Food and Steak closes after three decades of serving Winnipeg

Customers at Pappas Greek Food and Steak were served a side of gratitude with their meals on Friday, as the long-running Winnipeg restaurant marked its last day in business.

Owners Bob and Maria Papasotiriou are retiring after more than 30 years of operating the eatery, located at the corner of Roblin Boulevard and Elmhurst Road in the Charleswood neighbourhood.

“People walked in, they celebrated around our tables — birthdays, special occasions — and memories were created. So it’s not like a business anymore. This is home,” Maria said before lunch service.

“I want to express our deep appreciation for everybody who came through our doors and made our dream a success. They filled our hearts with a lot of joy.”