Colourful history of Neepawa's cemetery draws visitors from all over

NEEPAWA — Headstones can make for interesting reading.

Take this rhyme from the headstone of John James Black, b. Apr. 4, 1860; d. Dec. 9, 1934, in Neepawa’s Riverside Cemetery.

“Reader behold as you pass by,

As you are now, so once was I.

Environmental issues fail to gain footing on election trail

The Pope might be talking about it. No one else seems to be.

The environment -- a huge, catch-all category that covers everything from emissions targets to caribou populations -- hasn't earned much attentions on the national campaign trail and even less here in Manitoba. That's despite waves made recently in the United States thanks to tough talk on climate change from Pope Francis and Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton.

Though emissions targets and pipelines come up occasionally in debates and media scrums with Canada's federal party leaders, the environment has been overshadowed by the economy, the deficit debate, Canada's refugee policy and the Syrian crisis and the niqab.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said the economy and security trump battling climate change as national priorities. Both the Liberals and the NDP have talked about fixing the environmental assessment process, and both have pledged to get out of the fossil fuel subsidy business, but there have been few hard emissions targets promised.

Riding into the sunset

For elite Canadian biathlete Megan Imrie, being a professional athlete is a lot like going down a waterslide.

"You're heading down this tube at a very fast pace, but everything is kind of laid out for you," said Imrie, who competed at the last two Winter Olympics, including finishing 31st in the women's 7.5-kilometre sprint at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

"Your whole competitive life you're in this really rigid routine with all this support around you waiting on your every move," she said. "And then you're shot out into this abyss, this ocean of surprise and unpredictability. For athletes, that can be the most terrifying thing -- not knowing which direction to go."

Imrie had made the decision to retire from biathlon competition, which combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting, long before competing at Sochi, but it was still an adjustment once that waterslide shot her out. She moved home to Falcon Lake to help her parents with the family business, and then headed straight into third-year courses at the University of Victoria, where she is currently completing her bachelor of science.

30 years later, Fred Penner’s career is still going strong

If you’re among the generation of Canadians who grew up with Fred Penner’s Place, the now-iconic opening montage is imprinted in your brain.

We remember Fred Penner, the warm, kind-eyed children’s entertainer who actually talked to us — never down at us — traversing the Canadian wilds with a rucksack on his back and a guitar in hand. We remember him delighting in discoveries along the way, be they a frog or a bird. We remember him crawling through the hollow log, the one that would magically transport him to his sanctuary — and into our living rooms.

Every weekday on CBC, from 1985 to 1997, Penner taught us about the importance of kindness, reminding us to take good care of each other. He taught us about the life-changing power of music. He taught us how to problem-solve. Along with Word Bird, he helped us with our spelling and expanded our vocabularies. His fondness for bright sweaters taught us a thing or two about confidence. For 15 minutes — or half an hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays — we were part of the world’s most inclusive club. It didn’t matter if we lived in Winnipeg or Vancouver or Yellowknife or Halifax. Fred Penner’s Place was home to all of us.

Indeed, Penner loomed large in our childhoods. His lessons and songs stayed with us long after Fred Penner’s Place was unceremoniously cancelled in 1997 and that opening montage faded into nostalgia.

St. B eatery puts diners to chili challenge

Open wide and say “ow.”

A restaurant that’s only been on the scene a few months is making a name for itself thanks to a dish that gives new meaning to the term “hot-n-ready.”

Not long after the Diner’s Grill opened for business on June 2, owner and head chef Joshua Mesojednik decided to spice things up a tad by adding a food challenge to the mix. The 24-year-old chef’s dare works like this: any customer willing — and able — to down a dozen chicken wings laced with a few grams of crushed Trinidad scorpion Butch T pepper — one of the most piquant chilies on the planet — wins a $50 gift card, redeemable at the cosy St. Boniface locale. But first, those who accept the challenge are required to sign a waiver, absolving Mesojednik of all blame in the event any of their body parts get scorched in the process.

“At the beginning, I tell them to be very careful because if they start tearing up and touch their eyes without washing their hands first — that’s gonna sting,” Mesojednik said with a chuckle.

At 74, life-long gearhead still has need for speed

I’ve known Wally for 25 years but only learned last month his family name is Dyck.

I suspect the oversight is fairly common, that the hundreds of people who deal with him today and the thousands who have dealt with him over the past 50 years, know him only as Wally, too.

His last name never seemed to matter. Everyone knows Wally. They ask for Wally on the phone. Call “Hi, Wally” when they greet him. Like Prince or Madonna or Drake, he doesn’t seem to need a last name.

Wally is that nice old guy who has been behind the counter at the Sturgeon Creek Garage on Portage Avenue forever.

Reduced service is here to stay; no quick fix to Transit woes

During a week when most Winnipeggers headed back to work or school, the last thing commuters wanted to deal with was less room on their morning bus.

As a result of a maintenance backlog, Winnipeg Transit was forced to operate fewer vehicles on dozens of rush-hour routes Thursday and Friday. This situation is likely to persist for months.

Transit riders are justified in being angry about the slowdown. They may also wonder how it appeared to take the city by surprise on Wednesday night.

Here's what happened, according to the city and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1505, which represents most Transit workers:

Sports heroes go beyond win and lose

It was a stunning interview, one Clara Hughes said on Twitter was the "most difficult" of the hundreds, likely thousands, she has ever done.

For those 10 minutes that aired on CBC last weekend, the Olympic legend looked vulnerable, but at peace with that fact. She talked about living with an eating disorder. She recounted the abuse a former coach hurled at her, and his words tumbling from her lips were like a punch to the gut. She deserved better. Everyone does.

She talked about what it was like to hold her breath on live TV and hope, 19 years ago, that her father wouldn't be drunk and angry in front of an entire nation. CBC had brought him and her mother in as a surprise, while interviewing Hughes during the Atlanta Games.

Late in the interview Hughes, who is set to speak at McNally Robinson Booksellers on Tuesday to launch her new memoir, Open Heart, Open Mind, volunteered her surprising admission. Yes, she acknowledged in the book, she once had a doping infraction. It came after the 1994 World Championships in Sicily, when she tested positive for ephedrine.

Refugees share stories of escape from their homelands and triumphs in their new land

Images of Syrian refugees desperate to get to a safe place have the rest of the world wondering what is going to happen to those people.

Where will they go? What will become of them? Decades later, what stories will they have to tell?

Six Winnipeggers who were forced to flee their home countries over the last 70 years share their personal stories — of tragedy and triumph — of coming to Canada. We asked them five questions:

What and why you were fleeing? What, if any, were the dangers of the journey? What has been your experience since coming to Canada? What does it mean to contribute to Canadian society? What are your thoughts on Canada’s immigration policies? They share their personal journeys and their thoughts on the dire situation in Syria. (Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.)

An interview with Jane Goodall

Free Press columnist Jen Zoratti sits down with world-famous primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall, who is in Winnipeg for a lecture.

Stunning, epic Odysseo impresses

The acrobatic routines were breathtaking, the horses were stunning and the word epic seems to apply to everything that is Odysseo.

The show that was months in the making had its red-carpet debut Thursday as 2,000 Winnipeggers finally got a glimpse at the much-anticipated opening.

Under a big top constructed just for this spectacle, a dreamy combination of equestrian, dance and acrobatics unfolded. Think Ben Hur, Cirque du Soleil and ballet tossed in a blender.

As the opening curtains were raised, the audience was greeted by a group of horses that were free to wander their way around stage. The audience's excitement was almost tangible at just seeing those horses, let alone when the real performance began.

Standing-room-only

The everyday elevator has been the site of some of the greatest dramatic moments in film and television history, so it should come as no surprise that theatre would want to squeeze in there, too.

FemFest 2015: Hear Her Roar will present two plays from the National Elevator Project -- a collection of 16 short works set in lifts by established and up-and-coming playwrights -- hoping to prove that behind those sliding doors is the perfect stage, where passengers have no choice but to interact with each other.

At the very least, Hope McIntyre -- artistic director of Sarasvti Productions, which has staged FemFest for 12 years -- promises a moving experience for the limited-size audiences of The Club and Closed for Urgent and Extraordinary Work.

"Part of our mandate is to break boundaries; sometimes they are cultural boundaries and sometimes it's shows that go beyond what traditional theatre is," says McIntyre.

Child welfare unequal to the job

Did Family Services Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross hear her own words when she tried to explain the remarkable rate -- record rates in Canada -- of missing persons, most of whom ran from a child-welfare place of safety? It's not the care, Ms. Irvin-Ross said, but the problems the child is facing.

Well, why are Manitoba children so much more troubled than those in Saskatchewan, for example, which has roughly the same demographic profile as this province?

Saskatchewan takes in many fewer children, and puts many fewer in emergency shelters, which is what group homes are meant to be. By comparison, Manitoba has Canada's highest number of reports of missing young people, nearly twice the per capita rate of Saskatchewan.

Of the 2,179 missing-person reports filed with the Winnipeg Police Service from April to June of this year, 82 per cent involved kids running from a CFS facility. And 1,329 reports (61 per cent) involved a group home.

God save us from religious crackpots, hypocrites

Kim Davis is an unlikely martyr. Mind you, in reality she's more a bully than a martyr, but the Kentucky clerk who refuses to grant marriage licences to same-sex couples is rapidly becoming the pin-up girl for the Christian right and hardline Republicans. Her stubborn refusal to obey the law led to several warnings and eventually to incarceration, but we've certainly not seen the last of this sorry story.

She justifies her actions because, she explains, she is a Christian. The problem is that when it comes to biblical reasoning she's on desperately shaky ground. Modern theologians have increasingly urged a radically different interpretation of same-sex relationships and even many of those who hold to a more traditional interpretation still believe Davis is putting prejudice before faith. On a more personal level, while Jesus never mentions homosexuality, He does repeatedly condemn divorce. Davis has been divorced three times! That, and her unfaithfulness to one of her husbands, does rather tarnish her case.

In terms of freedom of religion she has a perfect right to oppose equal marriage but that's not the point. She is an agent of the state, a public official, and has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution. As such, Davis's elected position is to defend and administer the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and her refusal to do so says a great deal about how much weight she gives to the oath she took when she was sworn into office.

More than this, as a representative of the state she works for an entity that is a direct alternative to the church. The separation of church and state is a fundamental principle of American political and judicial culture, yet in the name of American patriotism she tosses it aside as though it were irrelevant.