In pictures: Volcano erupting in southwestern Iceland By: The Associated Press Posted: 5:42 PM CST Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023 Last Modified: 5:13 PM CDT Monday, Mar. 18, 2024 Updates

World-touring rock star comes home for street-naming

Memories of burning Wayne Gretzky rookie cards while biking up and down Bellavista Crescent came flooding back to Brent Fitz on Friday morning as the local rocker revisited his childhood neighbourhood for a street-naming ceremony in his honour.

Bellavista Crescent has been given the honorary name Brent Fitz Way to celebrate the prolific Winnipeg musician, who has played drums and keyboards alongside such rock legends as Slash, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, Gene Simmons and Vince Neil.

“Having this location now officially geotagged, it’s incredible. But it’s geotagged attached to people and friends and family,” Fitz said to a crowd of supporters gathered at the corner of Bellavista and Voyageur Avenue.

The Toque and Streetheart member said growing up in the community is where he learned how to connect with people, which led him to form countless relationships that would change the course of his life.

In pictures: Volcano erupting in southwestern Iceland

A volcano erupting in southwestern Iceland is sending flashes of light into the evening sky and spewing semi-molten rock into the air in a spectacular show of the Earth’s power in the land known for fire and ice.

Canad Inns puts Portage Avenue hotel, MET, office building ‘connected campus’ up for sale

Downtown entrepreneurs are watching with wary eyes as a prominent hotel and event centre hits the market.

Graham Avenue street art gets a refresh

After a year of weather, wear and foot traffic, the colourful murals that brightened Graham Avenue have been given a refresh — but the artists behind them say the fading was not necessarily a failure.

The Graham Avenue murals were installed as part of the city’s pedestrian plaza pilot project, funded through Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Asphalt Art Initiative. The city said the murals created a temporary pedestrian plaza to test how people would use the downtown space.

Shortly after the street art was completed in July 2025, paint began chipping away from the designs between Carlton and Garry streets.

At the time, Cool Streets Winnipeg organizer Stéphane Dorge told the Free Press that the wear appeared sooner than expected, and cited challenges including the condition of the street, oil embedded in the pavement from decades of bus traffic and the quick timeline for completing the project.

Winnipeggers hoping for shorter waits in rural ERs delay care for all, Selkirk nurse says

Nurses and union leaders say Winnipeggers — who are frustrated with wait times at city hospitals — head to rural emergency rooms instead, but the facilities don’t have enough staff to meet the extra demand.

As a result, patients in the Selkirk Regional Health Centre emergency department have waited up to 18 hours during peak times, said one nurse who works there.

The nurse, who spoke to the Free Press on the condition of anonymity, said in recent years they have noted more Winnipeg patients who’ve driven the 25 kilometres north to Selkirk’s ER, believing the wait for treatment would be shorter than in the three emergency departments inside the Perimeter.

“They’re all trying to access health care, right? And everybody deserves health care. And I feel bad, because people have to come out here thinking that the wait times are less,” the nurse said. “I can’t blame people for wanting to seek care, and they’re desperate to see someone.”