An old adage is that all good things come to an end. For Memories of Sport, this is my final column. Who could have imagined that a freelance column about the history of sport with a focus on Manitoba would survive into its 14th year. It’s been an honour to bring stories about often forgotten events, teams, athletes, and builders to the Free Press Community Review readers every second week.

It’s safe to say that this final column will bring to an end a freelance sports reporting and broadcasting career (for lack of a better word) that began back in the early 1970s. After graduating from the first Creative Communications program at Red River Community College, I accepted a Prairie region public relations position rather than pursue a job in sports journalism that was my initial thought when I enrolled in the program.

Because of my connection to softball, I wrote game reports for the senior A men’s fastball league for both the Free Press and the Tribune. This led to my first freelance assignment when Trib sports editor Jack Matheson recruited me to cover the high school bonspiel that began each year right after Christmas. I remember asking Matty how much space I had and he said as much as I needed. Much different situation than the newspapers of today.

Matty later offered me a fuIl-time job as a sports reporter, but I chose to remain in my public relations position. I continued to cover both curling and softball on a freelance basis for the Tribune until the paper folded on August 1980. At the time, I also was writing a sports trivia column that usually ran weekly. My final column had been filed, but didn’t make it into the final edition.

What exactly is it that I’m looking at? This is a question we’re asking ourselves more consistently as AI blurs our sense of reality with deception. AI images are sometimes easy to spot. Other times, it can fool even the keenest observer. So if we no longer know what’s real or not, how do we keep ourselves, and our money, grounded in the real world?

The best safeguard we have is time. Take yours. Don’t spring quickly into action regardless of any urgency pressed upon you. Scammers use danger and emergency to their benefit, getting their victims to throw caution and sometimes, common sense, to the wind. For example, scammers have been successful in using AI to create real-looking videos or phone recordings that mimic a real person. They then send those to that person’s loved one, pretending they are in distress and require money to get themselves out of the situation. Desperate to help their friend or family member, the victim sends the money quickly only for it to go directly into the scammer’s pocket.

Scammers have also used AI to round up personal details about people then use that to create extremely targeted phishing messages. You may think it’s actually your bank calling or emailing because they’re able to rattle off an assortment of facts about you. Unless they have information only your bank would know, hang up, find your bank’s real contact information or call through your app to reach them back.

Some of the usual protections against scam prevention have been reduced due to AI. For example, fraudsters are able to create extremely realistic IDs or paperwork to pretend to be someone you’re not. The old advice was to check credentials of any service provider, but now, it’s harder to know if their paperwork is real or fake. That’s why it’s important to find your service providers yourself, check reviews on independent websites like bbb.org, or follow recommendations from family and friends who’ve worked directly with them before. Refrain from opening links in emails or text messages, and find organizations’ websites yourself. Some scammers are able to imitate trusted providers and put fake links into their communication so that people who think they’re visiting a legitimate website are actually inputting their credit card number into a sophisticated duplicate.

Canada celebrated its birthday on July 1, marking 159 years since our Confederation of 1867. While it might be considered a ‘young country’ compared to many, the history of Canada runs deep in our nation’s capital. All the way back to time immemorial.

The region is part of the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation, whose communities have lived, travelled, hunted, fished, and cared for these lands for thousands of years as the original stewards of the valley and watershed.

Long before colonization, the Ottawa region was an important place for gathering and trading. In fact, the name ‘Ottawa’ is said to be derived from an Algonquin word that means ‘to trade.’ To the Indigenous peoples of North America, the Ottawa River was one of the most significant travel and trade routes.

Ottawa’s European roots go back to 1826 and the settlement of ‘Bytown,’ established during construction of the Rideau Canal under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel John By. The ambitious plan for a navigable waterway between Lake Ontario and the Ottawa River that would bypass the vulnerable St. Lawrence River was conceived after the War of 1812. The vision was to create a secure military and supply route between Montréal and Kingston.