Trustees want say in school zone redesign

Trustees are calling on Winnipeg City Council to redesign 30 km/h school zones to better protect everyone who lives, learns and works in their wards — and they want a say in an infrastructure makeover.

For Ryan Palmquist, an active cyclist, dad and first-term trustee, road safety is both a passion and frequent source of frustration.

His son’s trek to École Varennes serves as a daily reminder of why he remains committed to the cause.

“My oldest son crosses a crosswalk — every single day, twice a day, to go to school — where a kid died,” the father of three said.

A century later, Ukrainian church still helping new Ukrainians

When it was founded in 1925, St. Mary the Protectress Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in the North End was a welcoming and helpful place for immigrants seeking new lives in Canada.

As the church celebrates its centennial, it is still welcoming and helping Ukrainians fleeing war in their homeland.

“Helping each other never stops,” Eugene Hyworon, co-chair of the cathedral’s centennial committee, said.

A centennial gala will be held Saturday.

Forum Art Centre and the art of neighbourhood life

Most mornings when I step outside my door at Philips Square, I look across the street and see something that makes me quietly grateful to live where I do. It isn’t just the park or skyline view — it’s the steady rhythm of people coming and going through the doors of the Forum Art Centre at the corner of Eugenie Street and Taché Avenue.

2025: a summer of interesting urban changes

Over the last few months, the city has been busy implementing several new progressive city-building initiatives to enhance livability in our communities.

Un nouveau souffle pour les paroisses

Longtemps confrontées à un déclin de fréquentation, plusieurs paroisses manitobaines trouvent un nouveau dynamisme grâce à l’immigration. Fidèles et prêtres venus d’ailleurs redessinent aujourd’hui le visage du catholicisme francophone au Manitoba.

Pour le meilleur comme pour le pire, l’Église catholique est étroitement liée avec l’histoire du Manitoba.

À ce jour, le catholicisme est encore la première religion de la province puisqu’environ 21,2 pour cent de la population est de confession catholique selon Statistique Canada.

Au même titre que la religion, l’immigration a elle aussi contribué à façonner le visage du pays d’abord, puis de ses provinces.

Try out being a tourist at home — in Winnipeg

Many Canadians and Manitobans are rethinking their travel plans to the United States this summer. We might take this opportunity to become tourists in our own city, rediscovering Winnipeg — a city that is often underappreciated, but one that is truly unique in Canada.

Mass tourism a modern ill

When I went to Paris in 2012, I skipped the Louvre. Sacré bleu!

Infill housing is not the enemy of nature

What do infill housing, rain gardens, backyard cottages, and the urban forest have in common?

Serving — and feeding — the community

A group of young Muslim men walked up and down Main Street Saturday morning offering sandwiches, loaves of bread and cans of pop to Winnipeg’s homeless population in the spirit of holiday giving.

“This is what I was taught from a very young age, to volunteer for a good cause and to give back,” said Faraad Tahir, who has been a part of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association since he was a boy.

Tahir and others from the 50-person group spent the morning making more than 100 sandwiches before loading up their vehicles and heading downtown. The group handed out the food and drinks to people outside of Main Street Project and Siloam Mission before they planned to give out the remainder — if there was any — at Portage Place.

Tahir, 22, came to Winnipeg from Pakistan as a child and immediately felt the group’s community support.

Leaving auto repair life in the rear-view

For decades, Cadillacs, Mustangs and Audis have overnighted in the Exchange District for repairs and transformations.

Now, a Winnipeg mechanic envisions a new use for his shop — one that sees it filled with milk and produce instead of wrenches and tires.

“There’s no groceries down here,” said Andy Baranowski, owner of J.W. McDonald Auto Service. “Where are you going to get your milk?”

The 189 Bannatyne Ave. building has been an auto repair garage for almost a century — since 1923, according to the Manitoba Historical Society.

Group engages community on renaming Wolseley neighbourhood

In 1870, Col. Garnet Wolseley led a military expedition into Manitoba to violently overthrow Louis Riel’s provisional government at the Red River Colony. On Sunday afternoon, a group gathered at Vimy Ridge Park to discuss how to push for the renaming of the neighbourhood that bears his name.

Red River Echoes, a Métis collective that first came together with the purpose of “bringing an alternative voice to what Métis people think in Manitoba” after Manitoba Metis Federation president David Chartrand put out an ad with the Winnipeg Free Press in March in support of the Winnipeg Police Service, put together the rendezvous to take questions and comments community members might have around the growing conversation to rename Wolseley.

"With a lot of names being changed right now, we thought it was a good opportunity,” Red River Echoes member Claire Johnston said. “And Wolseley in particular has a really violent and negative association for Métis people, and also all other people of colour in who live in Winnipeg.”

In the months since the remains of 215 children were found in unmarked graves near a residential school in Kamloops, B.C., calls have been sparked across the country to rename landmarks named after people who had a hand in the colonization of Canada. In Winnipeg, Wolseley isn’t the first instance — calls to rename Bishop Grandin Boulevard due to its namesake’s hand in the residential school system have resulted in consultations and a possible recommendation for its renaming coming to city council this fall.

Black History Manitoba's block party opportunity for chefs to share their passion

As a little girl growing up in Jamaica, Patrice Gilman dreamed that one day, she would cook just like Gladys, her grandmother. Everyone around downtown Kingston knew Gladys, and the little restaurant she owned in the area called Southside. Her dish of tripe and beans was famous, and fed famous athletes and hungry kids alike.

Gilman was fascinated by watching her grandmother manage the little kitchen, cooking all on her own, darting between pots of goat or chicken or fish bubbling on any of a dozen wood-fired stoves. Every morning, Gladys rose before the sun to start making lunch, and every day she was sold out of food not long after noon.

Still, she always had a little something for the kids who hung around, the ones who didn’t have enough.

“She was a one-woman show,” Gilman says. “She would feed the whole community. She had nine children, and raised many more children that weren’t her own. She passed away about 13 years ago, but her spirit lives on so strongly in our family’s heart.”

Boulevard, greenway could be renamed by end of year

Bishop Grandin Boulevard and the greenway that runs parallel to it — both of which are named after an architect of the residential school system — could have new titles before the end of the year.

The volunteer board that oversees the greenway’s operations issued a notice this week to inform community members of its ongoing support for the City of Winnipeg’s efforts to explore cutting ties with Bishop Vital-Justin Grandin (1829-1902) as a namesake for local landmarks.

The board indicated renaming consultations are underway and it anticipates a report with a recommendation on the subject will be brought forward to city council this fall.

“I don’t want people to think we’re sitting on our hands and letting this fall by the wayside,” said Derick Young, president of Bishop Grandin Greenway Inc.

City considering new name for park near former residential school to honour Indigenous leader

AS a residential high school student, the site now known as Wellington Park offered him rare moments of joy.

As an adult survivor of that system, it helped trigger both positive memories and quiet, disturbing flashbacks.

Theodore Fontaine, who died in May, found more than a chance to play hockey and baseball at the Assiniboia Indian Residential School, according to his wife Morgan Fontaine.

“These fields, this was just for him a time of that little taste of freedom that he longed for.… It was just before his seventh birthday (that) he lost his freedom,” she said.

Pit bulls legal, ball pythons banned?

Laura Baker has wanted a pit bull for 20 years, but hasn’t bought one because of the city’s ban.

“I just feel like the whole breed has been so misrepresented, misunderstood and given a raw deal in terms of being able to find loving homes,” the St. James resident said.

If proposed changes to a city bylaw pass, Baker will legally be able to own a pit bull, while it could become illegal to feed wildlife and to leave pets in vehicles at certain temperatures.

The city is looking for feedback on suggestions to its Responsible Pet Ownership bylaw. Winnipeg Public Service reviewed the rules this summer and came back with a number of ideas, including a removal of breed-specific bans.

Charleswood residents fume over destroyed trees

Frustrated residents are calling on the city and province to get to the root of the problem that led to the destruction of nearly two dozen mature trees in Charleswood on the weekend.

Early Saturday morning, a building moving company began to move a display home near the corner of Roblin Boulevard and Scotswood Drive. The home was too wide to clear mature trees along Roblin’s median.

When Winnipeg Police Service officers arrived to provide a previously scheduled escort for the movers at about 7 a.m. they discovered 17 trees had been cut down, allegedly by the driver of the vehicle hauling the house, police spokesman Const. Rob Carver said.

“Immediately, upon determining that the trees had been cut and linking it to this move, the move was halted and, ultimately, the driver (was) arrested,” said Carver.

Canadian demographics impact cultural shifts

‘Here we go again” was the first thought while unsealing Darrell Bricker’s newest study from the envelope the Winnipeg Free Press had sent to my isolated home. Surely this new work — Next: Where to Live, What to Buy and Who Will Lead Canada’s Future — would suffer the same cruel invalidation that every other pre-pandemic prognostication must experience in these strange times.

But in a sense, Bricker has dodged a COVID-19 bullet, as his focus throughout this volume is on Canadian demographics, complete with its recurrent reminder of how these mighty, slow-moving and mostly irreversible forces affect society today and tomorrow. Take that, pandemic.

Bricker is CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, a global marketing research company. This is Bricker’s third book on population trends and follows Empty Planet and The Big Shift, both of which he co-authored with the Globe and Mail’s former chief political writer John Ibbitson. (Disclosure: This reviewer crossed paths with Bricker in the early ’90s while working at what was then the Angus Reid Group.)

Much of the focus of Bricker’s new solo work is on generational groups, particularly on what he maintains are the miscalculated “Perennials” (basically anyone over 55). It is these comfortable silver-haired boomers who continue to dominate and shape our social values and consumer trends, mostly by the sheer potency of their numbers and their relative prosperity.

Councillor raises concern about community garden homeless encampment

Months into the city’s ban on encampments in many public spaces, such as schools and playgrounds, a city councillor fears a persistent one still poses a danger to its residents and neighbours.

Coun. Cindy Gilroy said she’s disappointed people are still camping at a community garden at 609 Langside St.

“It’s a place where we (have previously had) multiple open fires… and drug (use). It’s concerning to me that we have this (policy) now and we’re not enforcing it,” said Gilroy (Daniel McIntyre), during a community services committee meeting Tuesday.

In an interview, Gilroy said she is concerned winter conditions further raise the risk of injuries, due to some bitterly cold temperatures and fires set by people trying to keep warm in tents.

Survey results crystal-clear: transit system overhaul a disaster

When more than eight in 10 of your core customers say you’ve made things worse, that’s not a minor hiccup. That’s a collapse in confidence.

And it’s exactly where Winnipeg Transit finds itself after its sweeping network overhaul launched last year.

The redesign was billed as a bold modernization — a smarter, more efficient system built around frequent primary routes and timed connections.

Instead, it has produced a level of dissatisfaction among downtown riders that is as striking as it is alarming.

Retired nurse doesn’t mind doing laundry to help raise money for Children’s Hospital Foundation

Donna Askew has been doing other people’s laundry for more than 20 years, but she doesn’t mind. It’s all for a good cause.

It’s fair to say Askew has washed, dried, mended and hung up thousands of shirts, blouses, dresses, T-shirts and trousers during her tenure as volunteer laundress at the Nearly New Shop at 961 Portage Ave.

“You name it, I’ve washed it… underwear and socks and lots of bedding and tablecloths and runners… if you’ve washed it at home in your washer, I’ve washed it in mine,” she says, laughing.

The shop attracts more than 50 customers daily, many who have come to rely on it.

Drumming program connects Southeast Asian students with traditional instrument, heritage

For many young musicians at Arthur E. Wright School, tabla class begins with a bow and tapping their music teacher’s toes.

Amjad Sabir isn’t all that fussy about formalities, but he recognizes his students’ families have taught them these gestures are important to show respect towards their Indo-Canadian elders.

“I just want to spread this art,” said Sabir, who is affectionately known as “guruji” — meaning esteemed teacher in Hindi and Punjabi — inside the kindergarten-to-Grade 8 building in the Maples.

The art in question? A pair of hand drums, known as tabla, that create a wide range of tones.

Three determined church members join forces to build thriving social community for seniors in the West End

In an increasingly chaotic and complex world, loneliness and isolation have become all too common in many communities. For many seniors, it can be particularly challenging to find a place to comfortably and easily belong.

The solution need not be complicated. In fact, a few caring volunteers can make all the difference in the world. Three women have stepped up to help a community experiencing isolation.

Denise MacRae from St. Paul’s Anglican Church, along with Cathy Campbell and Pat Stewart, both from St. Matthews Anglican Church, were well acquainted with the needs of community members. They consulted with drop-in participants from previous groups and met with Anglican partners to see how they could move forward with a space at West End Commons, in an area they all know and love.

“It was decided that we focus on seniors. Their wish was to have a place to meet and visit and see each other. And so it began,” MacRae explained, about the group that meets for a few hours at the Commons on McGee Street every Monday afternoon.