The Portage la Prairie School Division is upholding a decision to reject a family’s request for a religious exemption from activities related to Indigenous spirituality.

Sharon Sanders Zettler and Vince Zettler have spent the better part of the academic year seeking accommodations for their children at Yellowquill School.

“I have raised my kids in the Catholic faith from Day 1 and I am just looking for respect for that,” said Sanders Zettler, a mother of students enrolled in Grades 5 and 7 in Portage la Prairie.

Her husband echoed those comments while noting they are not interested in policing what other children learn.

Nearly half of Manitobans have debt on their mind.

New data compiled by Ipsos on behalf of MNP Ltd. shows that 46 per cent of Manitoba and Saskatchewan residents say they are concerned about their current level of debt, a figure that went up six points between 2020 and 2025. More than two in five (44 per cent) regret the amount of debt they have taken on over their lifetime.

MNP, the largest insolvency practice in Canada, released the data Monday as it promotes Debt Literacy Month throughout March.

A debt literacy gap persists, the organization said in a news release. Borrowing has become more common amid cost-of-living pressures, and many Manitoba and Saskatchewan residents are unclear on how interest works in practice or how rate changes affect their own financial position.

When my now five-year-old grandson was younger, we enjoyed an easygoing relationship, the kind often represented as idyllic in popular media culture — harmonious, reciprocal, restorative.

We would walk the woods together, gather berries, cavort. He ran towards me when I appeared at his door, asked me to sit beside him at meals. We shared bowls of purple grapes while we built garages out of magnet tiles, “assisted” one another in the garden, drew pictures, consulted about the weather and planned possible treats.

Over the last several months, however, our relationship has changed as his personality and behaviour develop. He is less favourably inclined towards me and more unforgiving if I misstep or mistake boundaries that are important to him.

I had picked him up for years from his daycare, for example, but when he moved to a new school this fall, he became increasingly upset if I, rather than his mother or father, came to get him.