Gallery: Windsor Hotel destroyed by fire By: Winnipeg Free Press Posted: 11:59 AM CDT Thursday, Sep. 14, 2023 Last Modified: 6:20 PM CDT Thursday, Sep. 14, 2023

Jets’ brass warming up to El Nino?

Decisions, decisions.

The Winnipeg Jets held their final dress rehearsal Friday night before the curtain rises next week on the new NHL season.

Unlike their first three exhibitions, this one in Denver featured competitive lineups that looked an awful lot like what we’ll see when the games start counting, with plenty of star power and veteran presence on both sides.

So what are we to make of the Jets’ 5-2 loss to the mighty Colorado Avalanche, who captured the Presidents’ Trophy last year and are once again a legitimate Stanley Cup contender?

Today’s horoscope

MOON ALERT: Avoid shopping (except food and gas) and important decisions from 3 a.m. until 6 a.m. The full moon in Aries peaks at 11:49 p.m.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

This is a restless day for you because the full moon is in your sign. (This happens once a year and it can create tension between you and those close to you.) Patience is your best ally. Give yourself the freedom to change plans.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Bison kicker Turner named captain, shows she belongs

Even on nights like this, Maya Turner can appreciate how far she’s come.

Though it feels like yesterday that the Manitoba Bisons kicker arrived on the scene with an unheralded right leg and a point to prove, these days the fifth-year student-athlete is lining up to split the uprights with a veteran boot and the added responsibility of being a team captain.

Getting to this point wasn’t easy, though.

It’s now four years ago that Turner ditched her NCAA Division 1 soccer career at Loyola University in Chicago to kick a different ball on the gridiron and signed with the Bisons, who were one of more than one hundred programs across North America that she sent tape to in hopes of realizing a new dream.

‘In Normandy, we remember’

Travelling nearly 7,000 km from his home in France to Winnipeg gave Gabriel Zaranski a new perspective on warfare.

“It’s very different to speak about war in school (than) to speak with real people who (have fought) in a war,” he said. “We can feel the emotion when they speak … The testimony has more impact when it’s real soldiers.”

Zaranski is one of 14 Grade 12 students from Bayeux, a town in France’s Normandy region, in Winnipeg this week for a learning tour.

The students, who attend Lycée Arcisse de Caumont high school, met on Saturday with veterans from the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, a local military regiment, to discuss their studies and the regiment’s role in the Second World War.

Signs of local neo-Nazi recruiting efforts spark concern

A far-right canvassing push in Manitoba this month is raising concerns among Winnipeg residents.

Stickers promoting Nationalist-13, a men’s-only neo-Nazi group also known as NS-13 based primarily in Hamilton, Ont., have appeared in Winnipeg and parts of southern Manitoba. The stickers bear national socialist branding and messages such as “White Man, Fight Back” and “White Community, Political Action, Training and Fitness.”

Winnipeg writer Jess Woolford recently encountered an NS-13 poster on Pembina Highway.

“It was appalling,” Woolford said. “It has the Nazi death heads covering people’s faces. It was pretty disturbing to come across this … I just didn’t expect to see it so blatantly displayed in my neighbourhood.”

Gallery: Windsor Hotel destroyed by fire

The former Windsor Hotel (187 Garry St.) in downtown Winnipeg was reduced to rubble Wednesday, after firefighters scrambled to contain an inferno blazing within.