Lifestyles 55 2025 September Digital

Canola sales matter to all of us – what are we doing about this?

Jeff Bereza

Manitoba farmers are facing one of the most serious market shocks in years. In just weeks, they will harvest a canola crop worth billions to our province. Canola makes up roughly 25 percent of Manitoba’s farm cash receipts, with an export value of $2.4 billion. More than 12,000 square kilometres of farmland are seeded with canola each year. The crop supports over 35,000 jobs and contributes nearly $7 billion to our economy.

Now, that success is at risk. China’s new 75.8 percent tariff on Canadian canola seed threatens the 3.2 billion kilograms Manitoba normally exports. It is not just canola. Tariffs on soybeans and pork also put $1.2 billion in exports at risk. That is 85 percent of Manitoba’s total agricultural trade with China.

China normally imports about six million tonnes of Canadian canola every year. If those imports fall to zero, who will fill the gap? Some expect Australia to take on more demand, but with annual production of only six to seven million tonnes, it cannot fully replace Canada. Even if Australia diverted its entire crop to China, it would leave its own domestic and international partners short.

Harvest time is upon us.

That void could be filled by Canadian production, but only if immediate action is taken.

For farmers, this is the difference between making loan payments or losing the farm. Between putting seed and fertilizer in the ground this fall, or wondering if they will still be farming next year. Yet our provincial government is doing nothing.

The Gypsumville meteorite crater

Michael Issigonis

When travelling north along highway 6, one crosses one of the biggest craters in Canada and the 13th biggest on Earth! The scenery is not like passing Arizona’s Meteor Crater, but it used to be like that before the Ice Age covered all of Canada. Today, you only see a small bump on the highway while going over the southwestern edge of that crater, some five kilometres south of St. Martin’s Junction. It

is probably the only “bump” on Highway #6!

You can see the rounded feature, on the copy of the Geological Map of Manitoba, in the illustration. Some 227 million years ago, well before the end of the dinosaurs, there was another asteroid that collided with Earth: just before it hit our planet it broke apart into several piece. The largest stone hit Manicouagan, Quebec and formed a 100-km-wide crater (the only crater visible from space!). The second biggest piece landed where to5 ‘Gypsumville crater' u

Cowboys

Jim Ingebrigtsen

A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty "Hi-yo Silver" – The Lone Ranger! Hi-ho, Silver, away!

Those were the opening lines of The Lone Ranger, one of the all-time favourite heroes of the old west. Although the show started on Detroit radio in 1933, it was the television series that ran from 1949-1957 that we most remember. Clayton Moore was the masked former Texas Ranger and Ontario born Jay Silverheels was his loyal friend Tonto. Let’s saunter down that dusty old trail and catch up with just some of those favourite rootin’ tootin’, pistol-packin’ hombres who would sashay into my living room through the 1950s and 1960s.

You must remember The Roy Rogers Show? Roy was the King of the Cowboys and his wife Dale was the Queen of the West. They were joined by their dog Bullet and sidekick Pat Brady who drove an old jeep Nellybelle. The Sons of the Pioneers would join Roy and the gang led by Bob Nolan who was born right here in Winnipeg.

I’m not certain how many girls were fans of the dusters of the day, but I remember my mother loved Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy. I know a couple guys who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Gene could ride his horse Champion and sing Back in the Saddle Again at the same time. I was lucky enough to own a Gene Autry cap gun and holster.

Speaking of guns … how about the show’s opening of The Rifleman, starring Chuck Con-

Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. Photo courtesy of ABC Television.

How do you like those apples?

This year the apple tree in my back yard has produced a bumper crop of fruit. As I have watched the fruit grow and ripen on the tree, I have been concerned with how I could get those apples out of the tree safely, and what I could do with the apples once they had been safely removed from some very high branches.

Earlier generations of women in my family had many more practical skills and talents than I appear to have developed in my life. If my grandmother or my mother had been confronted by a tree filled with apples, they would have their canning equipment set up in the kitchen in a flash. Soon the kitchen would be filled with steam from sterilizing the jars, lots of clean white tea cloths for placing sterilized jars, big canning pots, and a processing line for coring, slicing, and dicing the apples before they went into the can. I can remember these days as hot, sweaty, long, and very fulfilling. At the end of the day there would be dozens of jars of canned apples that would be transferred

carefully into the basement storage room and placed in neat rows alongside the beans, peas, pickles, beets, corn, peaches, and a variety of jams. The satisfaction of a well organized and well stocked storage cupboard was a remarkable achievement, and a thing of beauty. Certainly, for my grandmother, those canned goods and the gardening labour that had gone into creating the resources were a requirement for feeding her family in the winter ahead.

Trudy Schroeder Random Notes

While some women of my generation continue the traditions of serious gardening and canning and freezing of summer crops, most of us have changed out ways of caring for our families by working at paid employment outside our homes, and we purchase supplies throughout the winter months from the salaries we are paid.

It is remarkable how much Canadian women’s lives have changed in just two generations. From the incredible practical skills that women had to develop to sew clothing for family members, supply food for their family members, and contribute to family life in

such visible and very skilled ways to the many forms of training women now receive to be productive members of the contemporary work force a complete shift in skills has occurred.

My worries about my astoundingly large crop of apples have lead me to considerable reflection on the ways that we transmit important information and skills to the next generations. What do we consider to be the knowledge and skills and traditions we want to pass on to our children so that they can continue to nurture their families and have a connection with the love and care of previous generations of mothers and grandmothers? These traditions and skills can slip away so easily, and how do we decide which things are truly of ongoing value?

I know that I want to become more deliberate in gathering the information I can from my mother and other family members while it is possible to do so. I also want to be sure to take time to share this information with my daughters so that in some form the knowledge and love of their grandmothers can continue to be of use and value to generations to come.

Trudy Schroeder provides project planning and management services to the community through Arts and Heritage Solutions.

Canadian innovation in pelvic health comes home to Winnipeg

The opening of UROSPOT Winnipeg marks a meaningful step forward in pelvic health awareness and access to care for Manitobans.

“We’re on a Mission to restore pelvic floors across the country and give Canadians the freedom and flexibility to live fully and confidently without worrying about bladder leaks and urgency,” says Sigrun Watson. “As someone who grew up here, it’s incredibly meaningful to bring this life-changing innovation to my hometown. Manitobans deserve access to options for effective, stigma-free pelvic health care—and now they have it, right here at home.”

“Pelvic floor health is an absolutely critical—yet often overlooked—part of women’s healthcare,” said Watson, owner of UROSPOT Winnipeg. “Our pelvic floors tend to weaken gradually with age, after childbirth, and due to certain medical conditions. When pelvic floor muscles become weakened, it can lead to a range of issues, including bladder leaks, urgency, frequency, pelvic organ prolapse, pelvic pain, and impaired sexual function. These problems don’t just cause embarrassment or affect confidence—they often trigger a cascade of consequences like avoiding exercise, intimacy, and social activities, along with anxiety, sleep disruption, and

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You should consider having the following in place

The preparation of a will may seem like a daunting task, however, it is essential to ensure that your property is disposed of according to your wishes upon your death. If you pass away without a valid will, the law states what is to happen to your estate.

Power of Attorney

A power of attorney is a document which appoints an individual to handle your affairs in the event you become mentally incapable of making your own decisions. Nothing prevents you from continuing to make your own decisions while you are still competent. A power of attorney is an extremely valuable document to have in place in case anything happens to you which affects your mental ability, such as a stroke, coma or dementia.

Health Care Directive (Living Will)

A health care directive, commonly called a living will, is a document which appoints an individual to make decisions with regard to your health care only, while you are alive but unable to express your decisions yourself. This document is distinct from a power of attorney and deals only with health care decisions such as whether life sustaining treatments, such as CPR or blood transfusion, should be continued or withdrawn.

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Hon. Uzoma Asagwara, Volker Beckman, Jeff Bereza, Brent Buchanan, Marianne Cerilli, Dr. Romie Dhaliwal, Romel Dhalla, Dorothy Dobbie, Shauna Dobbie, Zofia Dove, Stefano Grande, Jim Ingebrigtsen, Michael Issigonis, Evelyn Jacks, Kevin Klein, Ian Leatt, Fred Morris, Darlene Ronald, Seneka Samarasinghe, Trudy Schroeder.

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NeeStaNan will prevail

In light of all the news about more government investment in the Arctic Gateway rail line and the Port of Churchill, many people are asking if NeeStaNan still has a chance.

NeeStaNan is the Indigenous-led project to build a port near the end of the Nelson River, close to where commerce between Europeans and First Nations began in this part of the world. According to the Centre of Excellence in Innovation and Marine Security, headquartered in the East, it would be foolish to not support the second port, especially since the plan is not only to be Indigenous led, but funded by private money. It will entail building a railway on a hard, esker ridge that avoids the permafrost swamps that plague the Arctic Gateway line. A second port will provide a measure of confidence for shippers who have to worry what will happen if a cargo going through Churchill, or indeed, through Port Nelson, gets held up by a breach in the railroad, stuck in the ice, or delayed in some other way. Now, there will be an alternate route. This will also reduce insurance costs for shippers. And NeeStaNan will ultimately be supported by an all-weather road extending the other 150 kilometers to the Bay connecting to the existing road from Thompson to Gillam.

So how will NeeStaNan work? Fox Lake Cree Nation will own and control a new spur line from just north of Amery to the Bay, and they will own the port. They are gathering support from neighbouring communities who will have partnership shares. Fox Lake already has national clearance to build the facility. This is Phase One of a larger plan to build a corridor from Manitoba to Alberta to facilitate the movement of a wide range of exportable products.

From the outset, NeeStaNan has reached out to Arctic Gateway to create a co-operative approach to the nation building project – opening up the prairies to the world through Hudson Bay. We must all be striving to find the very best way to do this together rather than one trying to exclude the other. Indeed, both projects have everything to gain through such cooperation. NeeStaNan will bring additional paying traffic on the Line from The Pas to Amery. Both will win from security assurances mentioned at the outset. Additionally, Port Nelson has a longer shipping season that can be used by Churchill.

The premier has been taught to believe that NeeStaNan would be of more benefit to Alberta than to Manitoba, but it is just the other way around. NeeStaNan will return to Manitoba much of the original advantage we previously had as the Gate-

way province, but now we will be the Gateway to the World. Another NeeStaNan advantage is Robyn Lore, the original proponent of Port Nelson, who brings a vast number of international contacts, shippers and influencers with him to the project. We will have an edge in building the business, thanks to these contacts and Robyn’s experience. We fervently believe that this project will be transformative for Manitoba, not just because of the revenue it will attract –presumably, Churchill will also attract revenue – but because it liberates northern First Nations from their soulkilling dependence on government. These folks will own the railroad and port – that means they will have 51% control over access to tidewater through Port Nelson. They stand to not only bring in billions of dollars, but the spin off economic opportunities that accompany NeeStaNan are huge. Think of the business that will be generated in communities such as Fox lake and York Factory just through things such as construction and maintenance, local stores and shops, jobs in engineering and digital expertise for the kids of the future, perhaps manufacturing of local goods based on traditional indigenous knowledge . . . and they won’t have to check with the Minister of Indigenous Affairs to see if they can pass a dog bylaw.

Winnipeg will return to being a leader in banking, insurance, manufacturing and commerce as it once was. CentrePort will become all that it was meant to be as the ports grow, and international shippers use the duty exemption to their benefit. There will be myriad new jobs and all sorts of expertise that will be needed as business heats up. Our universities and colleges will grow. We were once leaders in medicine and innovation; we sent rockets into the stratosphere – all that can be ours again.

And the beauty of it all is that NeeStaNan means “All of Us”. NeeStaNan will see the original First Partners working together once again, dependent on and strengthening each other in a mutual celebration of reconciliation.

So, NeeStaNan is not going away. We know our project will help recoup some of the $562 million in tax dollars that have been invested in the Arctic Gateway railway and port, otherwise known as Churchill. At NeeStaNan, we have the energy and creativity to turn this once in a lifetime opportunity into a reality instead of just another endless promise.

Dorothy Dobbie is a special advisor to the NeeStanNan Project and a former MP who served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian and northern Affairs.

Dorothy Dobbie

The Port of Churchill has never lived up to its promise.

Canadians are being told they must make 20% of their vehicle purchases Electric in 2026. Are you buying this?

Should EV sales be mandated? If you know me, you don’t even have to read this to predict that my answer will be No.

Why? Because I see this as a serious overreach by government. They are also stupidly setting themselves up for failure. The timelines just don’t work.

The Liberals must know that. They have been mandating all sorts of things for the past 10 years, but when it gets close to the deadlines, they dodge the accountability by adjusting the deadline. They still have a lot of adjusting to do – ten years ago, in this paper, I was predicting that it will take most of this century to transition to new forms of energy. I see no reason to change that prediction.

98.3% end up in landfills. Sodium is being explored as a substitute for lithium but, once again, we are not there yet.

I am not against novel forms of energy. I do think we will find new energy sources or better ways to use the ones we have. I have explored several new energy options, some of them seemingly revolutionary, but all with the same challenge. How do you store that energy for later use and distribution? That was the first lesson I learned more than 30 years ago when I toured a plant in Israel where they were trying to solve just that enigma.

However, that didn’t curb my interest in looking at new ways to power our world.

We were all excited about using wind …until we learned that making the windtower blades takes huge amounts of resources and energy to produce, that they wear out, and that they cannot be recycled.

Every reader of Ayn Rand was excited about the idea of solar energy, until they learned that collecting it takes vast amounts of resources and land, and solar energy offers the same storage and recycling challenges.

I was intrigued by the paint that contains photovoltaic cells, but the obvious drawback is that the sun doesn’t shine all the time, especially at night.

Small nuclear plants seem to hold promise, but we aren’t there yet.

It was cool to learn than all living plants are their own little energy factories, but how could you scale that up for other uses and, again, the issue of usable storage arises.

Even the earth pulses with energy but collecting, storing and distributing that energy is so far beyond our reach.

Studies done to show the efficacy of alternative energy tend to reveal the ultimate truth. It takes a huge amount if traditional energy to create the new technologies, plus enormous resources of critical minerals to develop storage capacities. Lithium nickel batteries, for example, are a resource sinkhole and while they can be recycled, they seldom are as it is cheaper just to make new ones. An Australian study found that

Electric cars and the road ahead

TDobbie vs Dobbie

The point is that it takes time to adjust to all the nuances presented by new technology. And the best way to get there is to let nature, guided by community-wide selfinterest, guide us.

he federal government’s electric vehicle mandate is one of those policies that will touch us all, whether we buy an EV or not. By 2026, 20 percent of all new cars sold are supposed to be electric, rising to 60 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2035. That does not mean every car on the road will be electric by then, and it does not mean you will be barred from owning or driving a gas-powered car. It means that after 2035, you will not be able to buy a new gas-powered one. You can keep driving your old Chevy as long as it runs. You can also sell it.

driver covering 15,000 kilometres annually might spend $2,000 or more on fuel for a gas car. An EV owner charging mostly at home might spend $300. That difference adds up quickly.

Of course, cold weather is a fact of life here. At -20 Celsius, an EV may lose a third of its range, which makes a long drive from Winnipeg to Regina – or even Brandon – less comfortable. Charging infrastructure is also thin on the Prairies. Canada has about 37,000 charging stations today, concentrated mostly in Ontario, Quebec and BC. By contrast, there are thousands upon thousands of gas stations, often right where you need them. More chargers are being built, but it will take time before stopping to plug in feels as routine as stopping to pump gas.

Dobbie

The idea that you can pass a law trying to force compliant acceptance of a technology on a free society is not only anti-democratic, but also futile. People will accept use of coercion for minor things such as the inconvenience of wearing a seatbelt, but not for a financial hit as large as this. As we recently learned from the airline workers’ strike, civil obedience has it limits.

Which brings me to the key question. How can you force to people to buy what they do not want, or worse, cannot afford? The proposed $5,000 rebate on new EVs is meaningless to most when it is against a $40,000 to $60,000 expenditure. And it is totally baffling that government insists on policies such as the punishing tariffs they placed on Chinese-made products that keep the prices high.

How can you force car dealers to sell 20% of a selected part of their inventory? You can’t. Some have suggested that you can force manufacturers to limit their production of gas-powered vehicles. Really? And you think you can keep those manufacturers in Canada?

The fact is that EV sales are down in Canada at about 8.7% in 2025.

The biggest plunge has been in B.C. (down 11.5%) and Quebec (down 54.4%). But gas-powered car sales are way up. What is the reason? There are probably multiple causes – everything from a post COVID inventory resurgence in the gas-powered industry, to a retraction of provincial subsidies, to negative experience with EVs in colder climates or challenging terrain. In the prairie provinces a lack of level three charging stations is a big deterrent for those who do a lot of city-tocity travel. There are also issues with lack of maintenance encountered with out- of-order charging stations.

No doubt all these issues will be resolved over time. But time is the essence of this issue. It is a mistake to try to force a society to do something that it is not ready to accept. Inevitably, this rushing will cause expensive mistakes and oversights.

People will switch when they are ready, and some will never be ready, but taking the “Big Brother” approach to change won’t work.

For perspective, Canadians bought about 1.8 million new vehicles last year. We also purchased around 3 million used ones. At the same time, roughly 1.5 million older vehicles were scrapped. The whole system is like a rolling tide, with cars constantly flowing in and out of the national fleet. There are about 25 million vehicles on the road in Canada right now. Even if every new car sold after 2035 is electric, it will still take years for the fleet to turn over. That is why this mandate is not about taking away what we drive now. It is about steering the future of what is sold.

Despite those hurdles, the case for the mandate is strong. Without rules, change happens slowly. Automakers have been selling gasoline cars for more than a century, and they would keep doing so indefinitely without pressure to adjust. Governments have stepped in before, with seatbelts, airbags and fuel efficiency standards; each time, industry complained and then adapted. The same will be true here.

Cost is one of the gravest concerns about EVs. EVs are priced higher than their gasoline equivalents. Even with federal rebates (which are currently on hiatus) the upfront sticker shock has put them out of reach for many families, but prices are going down. A few years ago, the cheapest EVs on the market were close to $50,000. Today, you can find new models for $35,000 to $40,000 and used EVs for much less. As more manufacturers shift their production lines, economies of scale will kick in. Batteries make up a big part of the cost, and battery prices have fallen sharply over the past decade. Analysts expect them to keep falling as factories expand. The first computers cost a fortune; now we carry one in our pocket. Cars will not come down to cell phone prices, but the principle is the same.

The running costs are already firmly on the EV side. Driving 100 kilometres in a gas car costs about $14 in fuel. Driving the same distance in an EV costs around $2 on your hydro bill if you plug in at home overnight. Even if you use a public charger, the cost ranges from $5 to $12, depending on whether it is a slower level 2 charger or a highway fast charger. Either way, the savings over a year are striking. A

For Manitoba, the opportunity is unusually good. Our electricity is already almost entirely hydro: 97 percent. Switching from gasoline to electric cars is not just a climate win, it is an economic one. We keep our fuel dollars at home rather than sending them to Alberta, Texas, or overseas. EVs running on Hydro power are about as clean as driving can get.

The transition will not be instant. It will not be without frustrations. Buying an EV today often means waiting months for delivery. Winter range is not yet what drivers would like. Upfront costs are still high. But those barriers are falling year by year. Prices are easing, range is improving, and more models are coming to market. The EV mandate is not a finish line but a push in the right direction.

Whether Ottawa’s timelines prove realistic … well, let’s wait and see. Hitting 20 percent by the end of next year when we are around 10 percent now will be hard. Sixty percent by 2030 is even more ambitious. But even if we miss, we will still be further ahead than if we had never tried. For Manitobans, the shift will mean more charging stations, better cold-weather performance, and a different way of thinking about travel. In return, we gain lower costs, cleaner air, and quieter roads. The cars of the future will be different, but the freedom they bring will be the same. The only question is how quickly we are willing to make the change.

Dorothy

Shauna Dobbie

Overtime soars, Winnipeg fire trucks sit empty and Council ignores the risks

Winnipeggers are paying some of the highest property tax increases in recent history. You see it on your bill, you feel it in your mortgage payments, and you have been told it is necessary to keep the city running. Yet when your house catches fire or a loved one suffers cardiac arrest, you are left waiting longer than in any other major Canadian city for help to arrive. That is not speculation. It is a fact.

I had a long conversation with Knick Kasper, President of the United Firefighters of Winnipeg, who laid out the reality in plain numbers. Between August 11 and 17 of this year, 197 positions were filled by overtime at a cost of $262,555. Even with that spending, trucks were still taken out of service because not enough staff could be found. Minimum staffing is 167 firefighters per shift, yet Winnipeg regularly starts 10, 20, or even 30 short. That means fewer trucks are on the road when you need them.

That single week in August cost taxpayers $262,555 in overtime. At that rate, the annual bill is over $13 million. Last year, Winnipeg spent more than $10 million on firefighter overtime alone, enough to hire 70 full-time firefighters fully compensated. Instead, the city chose to pay a premium for fewer people, while response times fell further behind.

Across Canada, the industry standard for response time is four minutes or less for the first fire suppression apparatus to arrive. Winnipeg’s standard is the same. But we are not close. In 2021 the city’s average response time was 8 minutes and 20 seconds. That is nearly double the standard. The national median was in the mid-six-minute range. Winnipeg was last in the country. That was before call volumes climbed even higher. Fires are up 84 percent since then, vacant building fires are up 245 percent, medical calls are up, and the population has grown. Yet Winnipeg has fewer fire trucks than it did last year. The result is obvious. Longer response times and greater property loss.

Kasper said that every second counts when a fire starts. Fires double in size every 30 to 60 seconds. A victim’s chance of survival in a cardiac arrest drops 10 percent every minute without intervention. Citizens are not just inconvenienced by these delays, they are endangered by them.

City Hall has known this for years, Kasper told me, and he is right. The City’s own audit department warned as far back as 2009 that the fire service was understaffed and that the city would spend more on overtime premiums

than on regular staffing. The recommendation was a staffing ratio of 1.34. Winnipeg has sat at 1.28 for decades. The result is chronic overtime. Year after year, the budget is blown. Year after year Council pretends to be surprised. They tuck the shortfall into reserves, borrow more, or quietly shift funds, but the pattern never changes. The money already exists. It is spent every year. The issue is not revenue. The issue is allocation. Instead of hiring permanent firefighters, the city wastes millions on overtime while pushing staff to exhaustion. Some firefighters work more than 100 extra shifts a year. Some are leaving the service altogether, something unheard of in Winnipeg until recently. In 2024, WFPS employees lost 17,600 hours to psychological injury. Firefighters accounted for only 16% of that total. Burnout is no longer a hypothetical risk, it is measurable, and it is growing.

The provincial government has played a small part. Manitoba provided $3.4 million for 24 additional firefighters, the first increase in decades. That brought the ratio from 1.28 to 1.29. In real terms, it is barely a dent. Kasper estimates Winnipeg needs at least 59 more positions just to fill existing trucks, never mind expanding to meet demand. City Hall points to the province and says health care is a provincial responsibility. That is only half true. Winnipeg operates a blended model where firefighters also respond to medical calls, a system that has worked in the past, and that system has its own issues. But the city’s core responsibility under provincial law remains fire suppression. That is squarely on the Council’s desk. Blaming the province may score political points, but it does nothing to put a fire truck in your neighbourhood when you need it.

Kasper told me the absurdity is that Winnipeg had more firefighters on duty and more fire trucks in service in 1975 than we do in 2025. The city has grown by 40 percent since then. Call volumes have surpassed projections for 2040, sixteen years ahead of schedule. Yet apparatus have been pulled from service. In early 2025, the Scott Gillingham administration eliminated three of the busiest trucks in North America, each handling about 7,000 calls a year. They shuffled resources downtown and added a ladder truck, but at the cost of losing a four-person engine company. The city effectively reduced capacity in a system already at the breaking point.

This is not just about response times. Insurance rates are tied to fire protection standards. When Winnipeg performs at the bottom nationally, insurers take note. Prop-

The Gypsumville meteorite crater

Continued from page 1

day is Gypsumville. It formed a 40-km-wide, what geologists call, complex crater with a central mountain and an elevated ring within the approximately two-km-deep crater. The collision was earth-shattering, causing a huge explosion with fireballs ejected in all directions, a dust column many kilometres high, and extending hundreds of kilometres away. The effects can be compared to a volcanic eruption from a not simple volcano, but a super volcano like Yellowstone, which is the closest active volcano to Manitoba.

In the 1960s and 1970s, most geologists called this crater a volcano! Then the Geological Survey undertook some drilling operations to identify this round structure. Years later geologists have identified about 180 meteorite craters around the globe, and more will be found with further investigations.

During the last Ice Age, which ended about 12,000 years ago, the province was covered by huge continental glaciers moving downhill from Hudson Bay in all directions. In Manitoba the flow was towards the southwest. The glacier is like an enormous bulldozer leveling the land, but also (most important) digging rocks underneath the glacier the same way as our streets are dug by snow and ice in the winter. A bit of water enters a crack in the rock or pavement and later freezes by expansion which breaks the rock/pavement. The more times it freezes, the more breaking it does.

Finally the Manitoba glacier stopped. It had encountered a rock that it could not dig into: a layer of clay; something that one can scratch with a fingernail, had actually stopped the glacier!

erty owners pay more to cover higher risk. The financial cost of underfunding the fire service extends far beyond the city’s payroll.

When fire trucks arrive nine minutes after a call instead of four, homes are lost, neighbours’ homes are threatened, and lives that could have been saved are not. Firefighters stand outside watching structures burn because it is too late to enter safely. This is not the fault of the men and women on the ground. They continue to show up, working gruelling overtime shifts, sacrificing their mental health, and in some cases, their lives. The failure is political. Council has the data, the audits, and the warnings, yet they continue to budget as though the problem does not exist.

Any business executive understands this. It is more cost-effective to hire permanent staff than to lose millions on overtime. Winnipeg spent enough in 2024 to cover 70 firefighter positions, according to Kasper. Sadly, that doesn’t surprise me. We hear the same things every year—many times when Gillingham was Finance Chair for Brian Bowman—and now again. The issues are often that snow removal was over budget, or police and fire overtime caused budgets to be exceeded, because that’s an easy explanation. This Council hopes you won’t complain if it’s snow removal or your safety. We hear that no member of council has significant business experience, and it shows.

Kasper and his members are not asking for endless new funding. They are asking the Council to stop wasting the money it already spends. Hire the firefighters. Fill the trucks. Protect the citizens.

When you pay higher taxes, you should expect core services to improve, not decline. Winnipeg’s fire service is a clear example of government mismanagement. Council has known the issues for decades but chose not to act. Instead, they passed the costs onto taxpayers, firefighters, and victims of preventable delays. It is straightforward. If the city can spend $10 to $13 million annually on overtime, it can afford to hire more firefighters.

If City Hall continues to ignore the evidence, every preventable death, every burned-out home, every inflated insurance bill belongs to them. This is not the fault of the men and women working themselves into exhaustion. It is the direct result of a Council that has gambled with public safety for too long.

Winnipeggers deserve better than political excuses. They deserve protection that meets national standards. They deserve leaders who take their duty of care seriously. Until Council accepts that responsibility, every call to 911 is a roll of the dice. And City Hall is holding the dice.

Kevin Klein is the publisher of the Winnipeg Sun.

The collision also devastated living organisms at the time: Although most Life existed in the oceans, some had moved onto the land about 173 million years before, creating some early (primitive) reptiles. The dinosaurs (more advanced reptiles) had only just appeared for the first time on Earth, and they were also the beginning of the mammals like us some time before that.

Later events around Gypsumvile: An ocean had covered the Prairie provinces and later the water retreated and revealing the land again. This time, some of the ocean water remained inside this crater and evaporated slowly. When it was dry, deposits of gypsum were left inside the crater, hence the name Gypsumville.

What can one see in and around the Gypsumville crater? There are some very strange rocks that need to be figured out, yet. One of the easiest to identify is “lava rock”, something one has in the barbecue cooker. While it might look like lava rock, if formed by the meteor collision it just looks like lava because the process that formed it was similar to lava exploding from a volcano.

Diamonds have been found in other craters in places where carbon material from wood or organic fossil was present in the rock when the meteor collided. The force of the collision was so high that it turned carbon into diamond, a process that only takes place deep under the surface of the Earth where the temperature and pressure are tremendous.

Many people are curious to explore nature and

find new things. Well, Gypsumville

is one of these places. It is very accessible from Highway 6 and has a network of smaller roads and paths. With the help of a

Kevin Klein

crater

cell phone you cannot even get lost.

Michael Issigonis is a former professor from the University of Brandon who is a researcher into Geology, Ancient History, Indigenous languages, Weather, and Climate Change.

Michael Issigonis

Meteor crater at Gypsumville

Rate your politician – rate yourself part 1

After three terms as an MLA, I was invited to teach a few university courses on women in politics. Beyond the surreal experience of teaching texts that referenced my recent experience, was the challenge of expanding the political literacy of students. Some students, like many voters, had no frame of reference or understanding of political ideology, no idea what the difference was between political parties or different political interests, so no effective way to assess politicians. Because I try to minimize lecturing when I teach, opting instead for creating engaging learning activities, this approach developed as a way to make sense of politics, think about public policy, power, and our notion of democracy. It can also be gamified. Let’s play Rate Your Politician. There are three main areas to rate your politics: policy, procedure/process, and the use of power or Power Styles.

When thinking about politics people often think first about policy. The list below of key policy areas that can help get at the spectrum of political approaches and world views.

1. Public ownership, and investing in public services

2. Intervention into economy: laws, taxes, planning

3. Types of taxation, user fees.

4. Government spending on social programs, public health & education

5. Human rights; Indigenous, Youth, LGBTQ, Women

6. Equity or equality and policies about redistribution of wealth

7. Environment protection, sustainability, anthropocentrism or view of nature

8. Unions and worker rights, organized labour

9. War & militarization

10. Criminal Justice and reliance on various punishments and loss of rights

In groups students were assigned an ideology to research and asked to list how each ideology responded to the ten policy areas listed above. With students the

emphasis was on why people have the political positions they have, what are their underlying values and beliefs. What I invite you to do, is go through each policy area and consider how your politician views each one, and how you view each one. Then you can compare that to various political ideologies such as state communism on the left, to democratic socialism, social democracy, liberalism, in the centre, to libertarian, social and fiscal conservativism, and fascism on the right. In some courses we considered various forms of feminism from socialist feminism, and eco-feminism to liberal feminism, as well as Indigenous and Green politics. You can rate a politician on where they stand on various policy areas using a grid with a scale of 10 to 1 on a horizontal axis with 10 on the left and 1 on the right. You can see how politicians match where you stand.

Besides policy, another aspect of politics is political procedures. On a scale we can put authoritarianism at one pole and deliberative participatory approaches other end, with representative democratic voting in the centre. This is the vertical axis below with 1 as autocratic and 10 as collaboration. From dictating, to debating to deliberating with dialogue. I have added levels of community engagement to help to understand this axis of politics. Community engagement stages go from no engagement where the community is informed of decisions, to consultation where people are asked their opinion and input with no guarantee it will have any impact on the outcome, to more involvement but not equal cooperation, to participatory collaboration, and then full delegation where the community decides and acts on its own. This full empowerment is often offloading that absolves government of responsibility and accountability.

Consider rating politicians support for the following list with

1. Dictatorial and Autocratic - Inform public about decisions being made

2. Representative Democracy decisions made on

behalf of others with out full input

3. Polling and consultation - Represent others with input

4. Referendum - Vote for or against

5. Delegate voting

6. Run off voting

7. Deliberative Polling

8. Citizen Assembly – with voting

9. Consensus – stake holder representation

10. Collaborative decision making, participatory democracy.

You can ask yourself, does your politician support collaboration, inclusion, participatory democracy? Or does their notion of democracy end at voting, and majority rules? The tyranny of the majority is rejected by notions of multi-culturalism, but we have not yet created the procedures like citizen assemblies, or electronic town halls, or joint committees that engage the public and stakeholders directly in consensus or participatory discourse and decision making.

You can rate your politician across on this scale. In classes this was always a fun discussion.

Now I support electoral reform to proportional representation, but I am much more interested and focused on what I call ‘democracy between elections’, and the move to more community engagement and participatory collaboration, as the evolution of our democracy. Communities can be much more engaged in identifying issues and addressing them. The stakeholder inclusion will require new structures and procedures for joint committees, and this will require new skills drawn from facilitation, and conflict resolution. More on this next time as we explore Power Styles and what is needed for collaboration, as well as addressing thought distortions and biases.

Marianne is an educator and former MLA who works at the intersection of learning, community development and politics.

Canola sales matter to all of us – what are we doing about this?

Continued from page 1

Saskatchewan’s Premier Scott Moe is speaking out. Alberta is working to diversify markets. In Manitoba, there is silence. Premier Kinew and Agriculture Minister Ron Kostyshyn have offered little more than appeals to Ottawa. Farmers do not need sympathy or more debt. They need leadership and solutions.

Why is this government not pursuing the same markets Australia is already selling into?

Why are we not working shoulder to shoulder with Alberta and Saskatchewan on a Prairiewide response? Why are Manitoba’s farm families being told to wait quietly for Ottawa to act?

Recently, I had the privilege to present a Manitoba Legacy Farm 150-year certificate to the Fraser Farm in my constituency of Portage la Prairie, marking the continuous operation of

a family farm located in Manitoba. This family and its descendants have been farming this land since 1873. It is devastating to consider that families like the Frasers may not have the ability to continue their legacy, or pass their farm on the future generations, given the tariffs facing them today.

This crisis affects more than individual farms, though. Companies like Richardson International, Bunge, Parrish & Heimbecker, and Paterson Grain employ thousands and depend on stable canola markets. When canola stalls, jobs stall. Rural economies and local businesses stall. The stakes are clear.

This issue also goes beyond the farming community – it impacts every one of us. The Premier is fond of stating “the economic horse pulls the social cart”. Well, canola adds billions

to our local economy. If he truly believes that, then turning his back on Manitoba farmers and ignoring one of our province’s strongest industries is placing much more than farmers at risk. Addressing the healthcare crisis, improving public safety, ending chronic homelessness, and reducing the rising cost of living are all part of the social cart our economic horse is called on to pull.

There is an economy outside the Perimeter Highway, and it is built on agriculture. Every corner of this province grows canola. Every farm family deserves better than to be treated as an afterthought. And Manitobans deserve better than lip service when the industry that supplies the world’s food and is the backbone of our economy is in trouble.

Jeff Bereza is the MLA for Portage La Prairie.

Coming: The Spirit Way story - how Thompson wowed the world

The idea of building the Spirit Way pathway began when a few Thompsonites wanted to showcase their community in a positive light to increase community pride and to draw in tourists heading to Churchill each year. They felt Thompson had many great and unique things to say that were untold and unrecognized.

The story began in 2004 when the City of Thompson was in depressed mood. A three-month municipal strike had held up garbage pickup, cleaning winter sand off streets, potholes loomed, and the City was in an overall grubby state. To overcome the negative mood, a few volunteers and civic minded citizens brainstormed and started an organization called Spirit Way Inc. They were determined to showcase positive things to say

about the community and seek superlative ideas.

Over the next four years, that group went into overdrive. They met every week to implement a Master Plan prepared by Design North who consulted with many potential Thompson stakeholders. The group began planning, fundraising, organizing, managing, and implementing ideas that eventually resulted in a 2.5 km walkway with 18 Points of Interest called Spirit Way. Furthermore, more ideas percolated far beyond the first common vision.

Along the way came massive support and participation from many parties. It was somewhat unanticipated but appreciated by the organizer. In such a story there are countless people who provided levels of support that must be recognized. This book is also a tribute to them. Some have left Thompson, and some have passed away. RIP. Conversely, there are struggles and hur-

dles when bold initiatives are undertaken. Naively, the Board felt everyone would support the goal of bragging about their community, but with successes also come mini failures that Spirit Way had to overcome. Hence, there are numerous backroom stories that also need to be told.

Over the next 17 years, an incredible array of actions, stories, events, and

battles occurred too numerous to mention here… The Spirit Way volunteer Board brought renowned Canadian and American university biology professors to Thompson. We hosted international conferences, won tourism awards and accolades, raised nearly $3 million, hosted the largest event ever held in Thompson’s history, and generated a great deal of positive media attention for a city that was often being mentioned and stereotyped as a “declining mining town”. Not surprisingly and along the way, they were also detractors and opponents that tried to sabotage the efforts. The Good, Bad, and Ugly of those 17 years of effort are now being chronicled in “The Spirit Way Story”. It will be a limitededition book. Some 130 pages will cover most of the stories. The quantity to be printed is yet to be determined. It will be released at the end of September.

If you’d like a copy of that book, please contact: vjbeckmann@yahoo.com.

Marianne Cerilli

Volker Beckman

Jeff Bereza

It’s about trust: fixing what’s wrong at the Canada Revenue Agency

Are you happy with your relationship with your tax department? After a tough tax season, Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is forging ahead with an increasingly digital relationship with over 30 million taxpayers with whom it interacts. But there are some big bugs that need to be fixed to maintain trust with the tax filing public.

The backdrop. More than half a century ago, Finance Minister Edgar Benson, through a Royal Commission on Taxation, launched a new framework for a tax system we still largely follow today, and nudged us into the information age with a new T1 tax return suitable to a computer-based tax system. We’ve come a long way since then. Today, only 6% of Canadians file a paper tax return.

It’s really an incredible feat that the majority of Canadians interact online with their tax department.

However, according to the performance indicators in CRA’s 2025-2026 Departmental Plan , its public perception trust factor is slipping off target and social benefit recipients are increasingly dissatisfied with their experience.

It begs the question: with all the pros that come with prioritizing digitization at CRA, are we compromising the very ideals of our system of self-assessment –- fairness, equity, simplicity and compliance – and in the process making it more difficult to meet social and economic goals?

An essential financial service. Filing a tax return is the most important financial event of the year for millions. Recall that during the pandemic, tax preparation services were considered essential services to enable access to important federal tax credits like the monthly Canada Child Benefit, and the quarterly GST/HST Credit.

A T1 is also required to qualify for income-tested benefits like the Canada Dental Care Plan, the Old Age Security and the new Canada Disability Benefit introduced this month, amongst other provisions.

Filing is also an important first financial step for newcomers to Canada, who must file to access benefits and comply with their new responsibility to self-assess, file on time, and report accurately.

A difficult relationship. The push towards digitization has exasperated the relationship between CRA, taxpayers and their professional tax filers, who assist in navigating often mind numbingly complex tax laws and procedures. Communicating with CRA has become increasingly difficult and time-consuming. Here are some recent issues:

Have a question? The government wants you to navigate the thousands of website pages which are constantly being updated, not always consistently or in a timely manner, and often with conflicting information in legalese most laypeople can’t understand. Another issue: the assumption that all taxpayers have access to a computer and the internet. This is an expensive pre-requisite to an essential relationship.

Phone for help? It’s not uncommon to wait 2 or more hours to speak to someone about a tax matter. A tip from CRA: if a wait time is provided, service representatives are available; if not, your call will be directed to the automated line that provides just three pieces of information: the status of your tax return, an estimate of your refund and whether you have a CRA account balance. Not what you were looking for? Try calling back on another day at a different time. Hopefully you’ll get someone qualified to answer the question.

Don’t check your email? That’s a problem. If CRA requests more information or starts an audit, will you know about it? It’s important to sign up for MyAccount or My Business Account, to manage this relationship and check for email from CRA frequently. Leave it to a tax pro? It is also becoming more difficult for taxpayers to get help from tax professionals. Starting July 15, authorizing a representative requires the opening of an online CRA Account. Without authorization, pros can no longer set up direct deposit information or change personal information on behalf of the taxpayer. The catch? Data from a Notice of Assessment must be provided.

Many tax filers don’t have the computer or the tax literacy skills to do this, which is often why they use these services.

What happens if you are a first-time filers such as a newcomer to Canada or a young adult filing for the refundable GST/HST credits? You won’t have the required tax information to set up MyAccount. You may be able to give your tax pro signed consent, but CRA may still call you to verify this.

Error or omission on the return? This past tax filing season was the worst many professionals have experienced in years: CRA’s computer systems were unable to reliably post copies of T-slips, thereby increasing the potential for tax filing errors for which the taxpayer could later face penalties and interest.

Tax professionals are now bracing themselves for a busy offseason as tax collections and audit activities ramp up. It has been taking months, even years, for taxpayers to recover refunds owed to them when their returns are pulled for verification: four months to verify a spousal support deduction claim, eight months for a Disability Tax Credit transfer from a spouse; seven months for a trucker’s meal expense claim. The list goes on and on.

Even when using all online filing options correctly,

waits of up to a year are not uncommon for tax filing adjustments to prior filed returns. Many times, those adjustments are due to CRA-initiated errors on returns filed correctly in the first place. Meanwhile tax refunds are held up or in the case of taxpayer debt, expensive interest costs are accumulating.

Time to take a step back. In high pursuit of digitization and the advantages it offers, interacting with CRA has unfortunately become a time-consuming, stressful and expensive exercise for many taxpayers and their advisors. Both stakeholders are held to an extremely high standard of accountability; their tax department must be too.

Canada is a country in which 94% of its citizens participate voluntarily in their tax system. It is critical that this important position of trust be upheld as we forge forward in a digital world. Perhaps it’s time to take a step back and think about fixing the bugs in the relationship.

Evelyn Jacks is an award winning business leader, a tax literacy advocate, and best-selling author of 55 books on the subject of tax planning and family wealth management. Connect with the Knowledge Bureau News Network to hear her podcast, Real Tax News You Can Use.

66% of

Canadian families haven’t discussed their final wishes*

Choosing funeral and cemetery plans can be overwhelming to a grieving spouse. Plan the details now. Together. Order your FREE Estate Planning Kit by calling or visiting the locations listed below.

Chapel Lawn Funeral Home & Cemetery 4000 Portage Ave., Winnipeg, MB 204 - 819 - 4297

Glen Lawn Funeral Home & Cemetery 455 Lagimodiere Blvd., Winnipeg, MB 204 - 900 - 8547

Glen Eden Funeral Home & Cemetery 4477 Main St., West St. Paul, MB 204 - 817- 8621

Desjardins Funeral Home 357 Des Meurons St., Winnipeg, MB 204 - 813 - 6063

*Research conducted by Willful and Arbor Memorial Inc. in a 2020 survey.

Evelyn Jacks

Is it dry eyes or allergies? Manitoba’s smoky skies are making it hard to tell

If your eyes have been feeling unusually dry, itchy, or irritated lately, you’re not imagining things. The smoky skies from wildfires across Manitoba have created poor air quality conditions that are aggravating eye symptoms for many –especially older adults.

What’s tricky is that two common eye conditions –dry eye syndrome and eye allergies – share overlapping symptoms, but require different treatments. And to complicate matters even more, many people experience both conditions at the same time.

What’s the difference?

eye circles – sometimes called “allergic shiners”can also be signs of eye allergies.

Dry eye, on the other hand, is more often described as a scratchy or gritty feeling, like an eyelash in the eye. People with dry eye may experience tired eyes, light sensitivity, and intermittent blurry vision, particularly at the end of the day or after screen time. Ironically, dry eyes can also produce excessive tearing – the eyes trying to compensate for dryness by flooding with tears that don’t actually soothe or hydrate the eye surface.

Dr. Romie Dhaliwal

All About Eyes

While both dry eye and eye allergies can cause burning, redness, watery eyes, and blurry vision, there are a few key differences. Itchiness, for example, is the hallmark of eye allergies. If your eyes are itchy enough that you feel the urge to rub them constantly, you’re likely dealing with an allergic reaction. Swelling of the eyelids, puffiness under the eyes, and even dark under-

Why it’s so common right now

Wildfire smoke is filled with tiny particles that irritate the eyes, leading to inflammation, tearing, and discomfort. This smoke exposure can trigger allergic responses in some people and worsen dry eye symptoms in others.

For those over 55, the situation can be even more frustrating. As we age, our eyes naturally produce fewer tears, and the

Join us at Teddy Bears’ Picnic

tears we do make can be of poorer quality. Hormonal changes, certain medications (like antihistamines, decongestants, or antidepressants), and underlying conditions such as thyroid disease or arthritis can all contribute to dry eye.

At the same time, environmental allergies to pollen, dust, mold, and even pet dander or fragrances can cause the immune system to react with eye inflammation. This results in histamine release, which increases swelling and itchiness. The treatments for one condition can sometimes make the other worse. For example, antihistamines for allergies can reduce tear production, intensifying dry eye symptoms.

What you can do

The most important step is getting the right diagnosis. Trying to guess whether it’s dry eye or allergies can lead to using the wrong drops and worsening symptoms.

If allergies are to blame, antihistamine drops or oral medications can help. Cold compresses and avoiding known triggers –like going outside when pollen or smoke levels are high – can also provide relief. Artificial tears can help flush allergens

from the eyes, especially if used frequently throughout the day.

For dry eye, treatment focuses on restoring moisture and improving tear quality. Preservative-free artificial tears are often the first step. For more chronic cases, we offer in-office treatments like Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) and Radio Frequency (RF) which helps treat underlying eyelid inflammation and Meibomian gland dysfunction – one of the most common causes of dry eye.

When to seek help

If your eyes are red, burning, or watering persistently – and especially if you’re unsure what’s causing it – it’s time to book an eye exam. Left untreated, both dry eye and allergies can interfere with vision and quality of life. In rare cases, untreated dry eye can even lead to long-term damage. At Academy Optical, we use advanced diagnostic tools to determine what’s really going on and build a treatment plan tailored to your needs. Whether you need relief from allergies, dry eyes, or both, we’re here to help you see clearly and comfortably again!

Dr. Romie Dhaliwal, B. SC., O.D. is the owner and optometrist at Academy Optical.

on Sept. 7 and help support worldclass research

We’re delighted to host the 36th annual Teddy Bears’ Picnic! All of us at the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Manitoba are looking forward to seeing you at Assiniboine Park on Sept. 7.

This free and beloved family event is so important because it gives kids a chance to learn about what happens in hospital and in research settings. It helps kids feel more comfortable getting the care they need, if or when they need it.

This Manitoba tradition also highlights the importance of HSC Children’s Hospital, the health care teams caring for our kids, and the urgent needs for funds that help improve health outcomes for kids who need care.

Bears’ Picnic! Thank you! Your generosity helps purchase life-saving tools and equipment. Donations also help fund leadingedge research at Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba (CHRIM) so kids continue to get the best data-driven care, medication and treatment.

CHRIM is the research division of the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Manitoba.

Ataleigh was only three years old when her mom Lea noticed her daughter’s odd symptoms. She lost weight very fast, urinated frequently, drank a lot of water and complained of headaches and dizziness.

Ataleigh was an active child and Lea initially thought all these signs were typical for a toddler. The family visited a local walk-in and were reassured when the doctor said Ataleigh had a common stomach bug.

Stefano Grande Healthy Living

Your donations help support life-saving pediatric research projects at CHRIM like DREAM (Diabetes Research Envisioned and Accomplished in Manitoba). This kind of research helps kids like Ataleigh.

Last year $261,527 was raised at Teddy

Her parents Lea and Steven shared Ataleigh’s story with us and I thank them sincerely for doing so. Here it is.

The next 24 hours after the appointment, Ataleigh’s health took a turn for the worse.

Ataleigh was rushed to HSC Children’s Emergency. Nurses and doctors began checking for her vitals as Lea held her daughter in her arms. Within minutes of settling into a room doctors diagnosed Ataleigh with type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that makes it difficult for the body to make insulin. The health care team explained that Ataleigh’s symptoms were because she went into diabetic ketoacidosis, a reaction to her body’s lack of insulin. Without enough insulin, the body begins to break down fat as fuel, which causes a buildup of acids in the blood. Those acids are called ketones.

“You never think something will happen to your child until it does,” says Lea. “And when you need HSC Children's, they are there for you. Without the Chil-

dren’s Hospital, Ataleigh wouldn’t be here today. It means everything to us, especially because we were treated so well during such a difficult time.”

Lea and Steven are very grateful to the nurses, doctors, and health care staff at HSC Children’s for giving Ataleigh the best and most compassionate care. They are especially thankful to the resident doctor who shared Ataleigh’s diagnosis.

“We know the Children's Hospital is there to support us now and in the future,” says Lea.

•

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It will be so wonderful to see you and your families at Teddy Bears’ Picnic this year. When you’re there, visit the I Want to be a Scientist tent put on by CHRIM researchers and budding scientists who will guide kids through fun experiments.

Let me share something else with you.

More than 300 world-class pediatric medical researchers, technical staff, students, and support staff at CHRIM are involved in over $22 million of research studies and clinical trial activity each year.

This work is made possible because of donors like you. In addition to diabetes research, researchers unlock the mysteries of childhood diseases and find medical breakthroughs and cures for other childhood illnesses like pediatric cancer, asthma, allergies, neurodevelopment, mental health and more.

Please support the life-saving research this world-class institute does. You can do so at the Teddy Bears’ Picnic, or at goodbear.ca.

Stefano Grande is the president and CEO of Children’s Hospital Foundation of Manitoba.

Fourth generation greenhouse operator, Terence Gyselinck, carrying on family business

The year was 2014 and the Gyselinck family, operators of Riverside Greenhouses in St. Vital was at a crossroads. Julie Gyselinck, the family matriarch, had an offer to sell the St. Vital property at the same time that her children, Richard and Diane, who had been running the business since 1984, were considering retiring.

But Richard’s son, Terence, wasn’t ready to see the business, that had been in operation since the 1930s, close.

“I had been working in the business all of my life,” Terence Gyselinck notes. “I wasn’t ready to give it up.”

His parents had insisted that he pursue further education after high school. Thus, he earned a degree in business at the University of Manitoba in 2012, and had returned soon after to put his new knowledge to work in the family business.

of the parking lot – an arrangement that has been ongoing on a year-to-year basis for more than 40 years.

Terence now operates the family business out of a five-acre parcel of land on north McPhillips just south of the Perimeter Highway. He started in his new location with eight greenhouses salvaged from the St. Vital property.

The upshot was that while the family did sell the St. Vital property to developers to build condos, Terence, with his father’s support, relocated the business to northwest Winnipeg and continues business as usual, although on a slightly smaller scale.

Terence Gyselinck reports that it was his great grandfather, Theo Bosch, his grandmother’s father, who founded the family greenhouse operation, originally called Red Valley Greenhouses, a few years after coming to Manitoba from the Netherlands in 1925. His grandfather, Daniel Gyselinck, whose family came from Belgium, married Julie Bosch in 1949. The couple had three children. He was originally a mechanic at River Brother's Garage on Corydon Avenue. He joined his wife’s family in the greenhouse business on St. Mary's Road sometime in 1965.

“It was a different time back in the 1950s and ‘60s,” Gyselinck notes. “There were a lot of independent market gardeners selling fresh vegetables at outdoor farmers’ markets.”

By the early 1980s, he continues, the trend saw most producers opening their own produce stores. Terence’s father, Richard, chose a different route. Richard’s father, Daniel, had been supplying Canada Safeway stores in Winnipeg with bedding plants since the early 1960s. Instead of opening his own retail store, in 1984 Richard made arrangements with the Safeway store – now operating under the Freshco banner – at the corner of Jefferson and McPhillips in Garden City to open a pop-up store in the spring and summer on the north east corner

“It was a huge learning curve moving the operation to a new location,” he noted in an interview seven years ago in Grower Magazine. “I had to learn about construction and the other aspects of operating a greenhouse. My father was a great help, providing guidance throughout the transition and adding valued insights on both building and running the business.”

Terence reports that his selling season at the polo-up location runs from May through to end of July. After a short time to recharge, he notes, he begins preparing for next year. “There is a lot to do,” he says. “We have to place our orders for plants and trays well in advance. There is budgeting to do, bookkeeping, maintenance. There is always something to work on.”

He notes that his sister, Taylor, helps him in the offseason while, in the spring and summer, he hires temporary staff. “We take on a lot of students during our busy season. They are good workers and eager to learn.”

The demographics in the neighbourhood have changed considerably in the last 40 years, Terence observes, and the demand for plants reflects that. “Our customers used to be largely of eastern European stock,” he says, “Ukrainian, German and Jewish. Today, we have large numbers of Filipino and East Indian customers. Our hottest sellers now are eggplants and pepper – especially banana peppers.”

He adds that poinsettia sales – once a Christmas staple - are well down in recent years and very few greenhouse operators still grow them.

Looking to the future, Terence says that he would like to build his own retail store alongside his greenhouses. “While I appreciate the support we have received over the years from Freshco – and Safeway before it,” he observes, “It is somewhat stressful doing this on a year-byyear basis. It would be nice to have a more permanent place.”

Terence Gyselinck is proud to be keeping a longstanding family business purring along. He also loves what he is doing and is looking forward to many more years in business.

Life Story: Ranjitha

emony was held at Whyte Ridge Community Centre on June 25, 2022, with the participation of SLSM members.

Ranjitha, the wife of renowned song lyrics writer Augustus Vinayagaratnam (1938-1986) passed away. The funeral was held on July 28, 2025, at Thomson in the Park Funeral Home.

Ranjitha was born in Kalutara in 1938. She was the third child of a family of six. She completed her initial education at Holy Family Convent in Kalutara South. After successfully completing her school education, Ranjitha joined Teacher Training College Maharagama (now the National Institute of Education) and graduated as an English trained teacher.

After she got married to Augustus, Ranjitha moved to Panadura and settled over there. In Panadura, she raised two daughters, Sandhya and Kavja. Ranjitha served in a number of government schools. She was attached to Mahanama Maha Vidyalaya in Panadura until her retirement. Augustus spent a very busy life in government service. He was a national award holder as a writer of song lyrics because he wrote with deep meaning. Ranjitha was very supportive of his ambitious day-to-day life. Her loving husband passed away at age 48, while her two daughters were still young. As a result, Ranjitha’s family responsibility was aggravated. But she faced this with a strong spirit. During my tenure as the President, Sri Lankan Seniors Manitoba, the board decided to conduct a felicitation ceremony to express gratitude for the late Augustus. The cer-

Thanks to his outstanding linguistic skills, Augustus was not only an award-winning songwriter, he was an author of a few Sinhala books. He wrote poems, and short stories for many newspapers, he was a magazine editor, theatre group member, and an avid reader both in Sinhala and English. As a profession, he served as English-Sinhala-English translator at the Treasury, Finance Ministry and as an information officer at the information department. As he valued education, he encouraged higher studies for his two daughters.

SLSM sent an honorary invitation to daughter Sandhya and her loving mother, Ranjitha. SLSM board member Jayawardena gave a speech lauding the services of Augustus for all he had done to enhance Sri Lankan culture. Further, all of us sang three hit songs and those lyrics were done to enhance Sri Lanka culture.

Ranjitha was not only a devoted Buddhist but also an active member of Kovilagodalle Temple in Panadura. She regularly focused on rituals such as reciting sutras and offering food for monks and needy people. Invited two Swaminwahansela (Monks) namely Anithasamadhi and Kalyanadeera from Mahamevnawa Winnipeg.

Sandhya and her husband Hiran Fernando immigrated to Winnipeg. Subsequently, Kavija and her husband Namal Fernando followed them. In 2007, Ranjitha joined them permanently.

May Ranjitha’s journey in Samsara be short and may she realise the ultimate truth!

Myron Love

Senaka Samarasinghe

Vibrant colours, vibrant flavours - it can only mean, Greek Salmon

Greek salmon is a dish that captivates with its vibrant flavors and sultry allure. As it sizzles on the grill or in a pan, the air fills with a tantalizing blend of herbs and spices – oregano, garlic, and a hint of lemon – that beckons you closer. The rich, buttery salmon fillet glistens, promising a melt-in-your-mouth experience that few dishes can rival.

What sets Greek salmon apart is its perfect balance of freshness and depth. Each bite is a delightful dance of flavors, where the succulent fish meets the zesty brightness of lemon and the earthy notes of olive oil. The drizzle of tangy tzatziki, cool and creamy, adds an irresistible contrast that makes each forkful an adventure for the taste buds.

The cooking process itself is an invitation to indulgence. As the salmon grills, the skin crisps to perfection, adding a satisfying crunch that complements the tender flesh beneath. The smoky aroma mingles with the herbal notes, creating an intoxicating scent that lingers in the air, evoking memories of sundrenched Mediterranean coasts.

Imagine sharing this dish with loved ones, the table adorned with fresh vegetables, olives, and warm pita bread. As laughter fills the air, the bright colors of the meal reflect the joy of the moment, each bite a reminder of the beauty of togetherness. The succulent salmon, paired with the vibrant accompaniments, creates a feast that feels both luxurious and grounded in simplicity.

In essence, Greek salmon is more than just a meal; it’s an experience—a celebration of flavors that transports you to sunlit shores, where each bite evokes the warmth of shared moments and the thrill of culinary discovery. It’s a dish that invites you to linger, savor, and relish the beauty of life’s

Here is what you will need:

For the salmon

1 lemon, thinly sliced

Full stop!

On the front lines for over 34 years this is what I see.

She has the biggest heart. She washes, feeds, changes diapers of those who are the most challenging, the hardest to care for, where even immediate family members are at a loss, exhausted, seeing no way out. She is always ready to help. There are not many like her left around. She told me once, “I really like to be near those who are the most challenging, when no one else seems to know how to connect with them”. Her presence creates miracles. Those who are the most combative succumb to her way of caring. I have witnessed it in action! Those most scared and angry can sense her true caring, and not only calm down but actually communicate with her. “How does she do it?” you might ask. It would be hard to explain unless you are on the receiving end. No school or book can teach it. She’ll be the first to say, “I don’t know how it works”.

1 small red onion, sliced

4 salmon fillets (350 grams), patted dry with paper

towels

Salt and freshly cracked ground black pepper

When serving

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Juice of 2 lemons

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon dried oregano

½ teaspoon red pepper flakes

Freshly ground black pepper

1 ½ cups cubed feta

1 cup cherry tomatoes halved

¼ cup sliced kalamata olives

¼ cup cucumber cut into small chunks

½ medium red onion sliced

1 tablespoon freshly chopped dill

The all important how to: Preheat oven to 375°.

A few days ago, I went to the unit where she often works. I intended to see the patients and family members, but being a caregiver myself for many years and being in a role like hers before, I understand professionally the great burden of her role. I often stop, listen and support coworkers like her, because I know how much her role matters and how hard her work is. In fact, I often wonder what would we as a society do without workers like her.

These days you will notice that many, if not majority, of health care providers speak with accents. They originate from countries all over the world. The projection is that their numbers are increasing. The front-liners in our health care system are becoming mostly immigrants. They look after our elderly, our sick, and the most vulnerable in our population. If you had the privilege to hear about the life journeys of these health care providers, you would quickly realize

Don’t throw it away!

Grands ’n’ More connect you to Art From the Attic

Grands ’n’ More Winnipeg has already succeeded in bringing in nearly 2,000 pieces of art from Winnipeg donors. Donations are accepted until September 6/25 at several drop-off locations in the city, or pickups can be arranged. The Art will be sold at great prices on October 5 at the St. Vital Centre.

To find out how to get your donated art to us, email gnmafta@gmail.com or

Using a large casserole dish place the sliced red onion at the bottom then lay the lemon slices atop. Place the salmon fillets, skin side down, on top of the lemon and red onion. Season with salt and pepper, then place in the oven for 20 minutes or until the salmon is opaque. While the Salmon is cooking, using a large bowl, add the olive oil, along with the lemon juice, garlic, oregano, and red pepper flakes, and black pepper, whisk together. Once the mixture has blended add the feta and toss gently, the goal is to coat the feta in the oil mixture.

Cover with saran wrap and place in the fridge for about 15 minutes. Remove from the fridge, adding tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, chopped red onion, and dill. Using a large serving spoon carefully blend all ingredients. Remove the salmon from the oven once cooked and top with feta mixture. I love to serve this with a fresh crisp Greek salad, it all comes together perfectly and new potatoes. Ian Leatt is a trained chef from across the pond.

the caregivers themselves are, more often than not, people who have endured and overcome the greatest traumas, losses and horrific circumstances of life. This is why they are so compassionate, they are far too familiar with the pain and challenges of life. Their hearts are fully open.

In my recent conversation with the caregiver mentioned earlier, I learned that just a few days ago one of her closest loved ones passed away in her arms, and another close family member is battling a terminal illness. My colleague was and is the primary caregiver for both generations, her children and her parents. So not only is she professionally caring for deeply demented patients, our loved ones, she is looking after her own family as well!

How does she do it? I honestly don’t know. She shared with me that she told her parent to go, to let go, basically giving permission to die, because she knew the likelihood of the loved one being in a wheelchair after the sickness was too great, and she knew that wouldn’t be the wish of her gravely sick parent. She set that loved family member free. Wow! What a strength! I am having a hard time letting go of my elderly dog, never mind

a family member. She has awareness and strength unmatched by many.

In my professional service I witness many people, family members, who have a problem with letting go, with letting people die in a dignified way.

We much too often keep them here for us. Letting go means meeting and facing the pain of our grief rather than prolonging their suffering. We agree to drastic procedures to prolong their lives. One reason is that we fear death and are afraid of the pain of grieving. Our front-liners do what we are afraid to do. Never mind that they perform duties which no other professionals, or, frankly, family members, would be inclined to carry out, our health care aides are among the most underpaid, unappreciated, and undervalued health care providers.

The above-mentioned young lady is one of them.

If you ever meet health care aides like her, make the point of treating them with the utmost respect!! FULL STOP

Zofia Dove is an international keynote speaker, author and producer, host and director of the series “Discovering Beauty Everywhere”.

call 240-583-8633.

Art From the Attic is an annual sale of donated art, first held in 2015 (a COVID-related hiatus sent us online for a bit). The 2024 sale at the St. Vital Centre raised more than $40,000 for the "Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign" of The Stephen Lewis Foundation.

The funds go to locally managed community organizations in 14 countries in

sub-Saharan Africa and are directed to programs supporting grandmothers who have raised or are raising grandchildren orphaned by AIDS, who still deal with the ongoing impact of HIV and AIDS in their communities. These grandmothers have had to manage parenting children again, finding ways to earn income, and finding ways to advocate for their rights to family property, need for income and health supports for

the aged, and for human rights.

The Winnipeg grandmothers and “grandothers” who work most of the year to organize and promote Art From the Attic are all volunteers, and almost all are seniors. New volunteers are always welcome.

For more info about the event or about Grands 'n' More Winnipeg, email Sharon Twilley at "twilleys@gmail.com" or call 204-257-4886.

Ian Leatt Foodies

Zofia Dove Dove's Discoveries

Michael Blais takes the reins of Manitoba Opera

Darlene Ronald

Longtime senior staff member Michael Blais is Manitoba Opera’s new executive director. Blais was the company’s director of operations and has been part of the administrative team since 2010.

The position of executive director is a newly created position that was created following a leadership transition review the company underwent when longtime General Director & CEO Larry Desrochers announced he would not be renewing his contract which expires next May.

“The board of trustees and I are thrilled that Michael accepted the appointment of executive director. He brings over 25 years of experience in the performing arts sector, with 15 of those right here at Manitoba Opera,” commented Board of Trustees Chair Lori Yorke.

“The board is looking forward to working with Michael and Larry over the next year to complete the leadership transition and position the company to grow and to adapt to the ever-evolving arts environment. This is a significant moment in Manitoba Opera’s evolution,” added Yorke. “As we begin the search for a new artistic director – someone who can build on the company’s artistic vision and deepen its connection with the community – we are also continuing the work of transition. In the months ahead, we’ll focus on reinforcing the new leadership structure, transferring key institutional knowledge, and advancing strategic priorities of the company.

the company’s new executive

the

“I’ve had the privilege of growing alongside the organization – working with the community, our board of trustees and staff, patrons, as well as donors, sponsors, and funders to support the great work our artists and company does,” said Blais. “I’m honoured to continue serving Manitoba Opera in this new capacity, and I’m excited to help lead this next chapter for the company.”

As executive director, Blais will report to the board of trustees and will lead the organization in partnership with the artistic director. The executive director is responsible for the organization’s strategic leadership, financial management, fundraising, and administration, and plays a central role in sustaining Manitoba Opera’s reputation.

This key leadership role oversees all aspects of the company’s operations,

Step into the spotlight!

including development, marketing and box office, governance, community engagement, education, and human resources. The executive director works closely with government agencies, donors, and arts partners to strengthen Manitoba Opera’s financial and organizational capacity, champion its vision, and support innovative programming that reflects the diversity and vibrancy of the community.

Blais’ first production as executive director will be the season opening Puccini thriller Tosca this November. It was the first staged production the company presented when Blais joined the team in 2010.

“Tosca was the first opera that really resonated with me, and I still love it to this day. It all feels very full circle in a lot of ways, and I’m looking forward to

Brent Buchanan Launches Acting Classes for Winnipeg's 55+ Community

Were you in a play many years ago and still remember the thrill of the stage? Or are you a curious newcomer who has always wanted to unleash your inner performer? Brent Buchanan of Artist’s Alley is inviting you to find that acting bug inside of you. He is officially assembling new students for a series of acting classes designed specifically for individuals 55 and over who are looking to learn simple acting techniques, boost their physical and mental wellness, and share a great time with like-minded individuals of all skill levels.

We sat down with Brent Buchanan to discuss his career and what inspired him to create this unique opportunity for the 55+ community in Winnipeg.

Mining for Manitoba stories

For Buchanan, the inspiration behind starting these classes is rooted in a deep appreciation for local narratives. "I was inspired to create these classes because I’m interested in Manitoba stories and I feel that the 55+ community has a lifetime of experiences to share," he explains. "Every individual’s story is so unique. Everybody’s life is a great story, filled with tribulations, victories and growth. There’s no better vehicle to me than theatre to bring the life, the heart and the love out of a story."

Beyond simply teaching acting, Bu-

chanan hopes to cultivate a space for connection and shared experience. "Theatre environments create a certain camaraderie and a sense of community is formed," he says. "It’s the community aspect that I hope to bring together... the intimate nature of story telling (acting) in an ensemble is what excites me about these classes.

More than a hobby: the wellness of theatre

The classes also aim to promote wellbeing in a holistic way. Buchanan emphasizes the physical and mental benefits that come from the craft.

"When you’re an actor, your body is

your tool," he notes. "We’ll do a series of light stretching, and it’ll all be based on your own ability. We'll also work on our voice, stage movement, and posture." He compares the experience to playing a sport, where the engagement is total. "You don’t notice you are working, but when you’re acting, you’re physically and mentally engaged with your partners, objectives and the audience. It’s an exhilarating physical experience for people of all ages and physical ability."

What to expect when you walk through the door

For those feeling a bit nervous, Buchanan stresses that the class will be a welcoming space for everyone. "You can expect an open, calm, and kind environment where there are no mistakes," he assures. "We learn together, we share together, we support one another."

A typical session will be lightly active and tailored to the individuals in the ensemble. Students will participate in improv warm-up games, body warm-ups, scene study, monologue work, and voice projection exercises. They will even do some writing to tell their own stories.

Classes will be held once a week for 10 to 12 weeks ( depending on class size) and held out of the Bourkevale Community Centre in Winnipeg beginning at the end of September 2025. The classes will

experiencing it again through the lens of my new role,” he commented.

“Michael is an excellent choice for the company,” said Larry Desrochers, General Director and CEO, at the time the announcement was made this summer. “His deep knowledge of the organization, unwavering commitment to the arts, and proven leadership make him uniquely qualified to take on this role. I have every confidence that under his guidance, Manitoba Opera will continue to serve the community with clarity of mission, creativity, and integrity.”

Desrochers, who was hired in 2000 as general director & CEO, will act as the interim artistic director while the search is conducted to fill this role. He will continue to support the organization through this transition process until May 31, 2026.

culminate in a performance night at the Bourkevale Community Centre in early December 2025. "You can invite your friends and family, and they can come and enjoy an evening of entertainment while you strut you stuff on stage.” Buchanan says excitedly. "We’ll have lights, a soundscape and simple but creative sets that help us showcase our skills”.

A lifetime of experience

Buchanan brings over 25 years of professional experience to the classroom. His journey began in Carman, Manitoba, before he attended the prestigious George Brown Theatre School in Toronto. He has since worked as an actor, director, and stage manager and been on stages in nearly every major city in Canada.

"It’s been life-changing. It’s my calling," he says passionately. "It’s where I face my biggest challenges and reap my most triumphant rewards.

"I’m excited about all of it," Buchanan concludes. "I’m excited about meeting new people, mining new material and teaching people the craft of acting with a simple curriculum that can be tailored to any individuals needs with ease and joy.”

To join Brent’s classes or to learn more, visit Brent's website at www.artistsalley.ca. You can sign up directly on the site, email or call him with any questions you might have about the classes.

Michael Blais is the new executive director of Manitoba Opera.

A scene from the 2010 production of Tosca which was produced by the company the season

director Michael Blais joined the admin team. Tosca will be opening

2025/26 season in November. Photo by Robert Tinker.

Brent Buchanan.

A hat trick – my visit to Maple Leaf Gardens and beyond

Between July 24 and July 27,2025, I visited Toronto as City Number five in my Winnipeg Blue Bomber Road trip. My hotel was located next to the Mattamy Athletic Center (formerly Maple Leaf Gardens). I came home with three (a Hat Trick) different stories.

Story # 1: No phone = no ticket

In mid-January 2025, I sent, via snail mail, a $100 cheque for my paper ticket. This system has worked flawlessly with other CFL teams. The Argos were defending Grey Cup Champions with the lowest attendance despite being located in the biggest CFL market. The initial response took over three months. The situation seemed to be resolved until I found out that every ticket had to purchased digitally.

A couple of cell phone experts advised me that my cell phone was too old for the App needed to buy an Argos ticket. The Argos returned my cheque to me via snail mail without even a short letter of explanation.

Story #2: Remembering arena history

Maple Leaf Gardens is perhaps the most well-known Canadian building. There are many Gardens memories associated with Winnipeggers. In 1931, Chicago Black Hawks Goalie Charlie Gardiner won the first game ever played in the Gardens. In 1932, Dick Irvin (1892-1957) was the first Toronto Maple Leaf head coach to win a Stanley Cup in the Gardens. Dick grew up on Atlantic Avenue in the North End.

From the desk of a gadfly

A relative bought me a digital ticket. The ticket was transferred from her phone to mine. When I arrived at BMO Field an hour before the Kickoff, I discovered a table reserved for digital ticket problems. After determining that my transferred digital ticket would not work, a paper ticket was finally printed. Toronto won the game 31 to 17. The Bombers are now 3 and 3 (two games in Calgary) in the road games that I have attended.

It seems that the CFL getting carried away with going digital. How many fans has the CFL lost by being too rigid about the need for digital tickets? Does the CFL keep track of the number of fans lost due to enforced digitalization? Does the CFL have a digital ticket guideline for teams? Although the CFL produces a great product, there are several markets without enough fans at their games. During the current season, four teams (including the Argos) are averaging less than 20,000 fans per game. When purchasing a ticket, fans should be able to decide between cash, credit cards, debit, or their phones.

Andy Bathgate scored the 1964 Stanley Cup winning goal. Terry Sawchuk was in goal on May 2, 1967, when the Toronto Maple Leafs won their last Stanley Cup.

Another interesting memory happened 75 years ago. In May 1950, Winnipeg was devastated by one of the City's worst floods. On May 26, 1950,15,000 packed the Gardens for the Red River Relief Rally. The event was broadcast on about 800 radio stations. The event was hosted by Carman-born American actor Jack Carson and British actor George Formay. One of the performers was Winnipeg's Giselle LaFleche Mckenzie.

Maple Leaf Gardens is now the Toronto Metroplitan University's Mattamy Athletics Centre. The building features a 2,600-seat arena, a gymnasium, and a fitness centre. At the east end of the building, there is a Loblaws Grocery Store with a Maple Leaf Logo on the floor.

The building's history is remembered with pictures on the wall featuring Conn Smythe, Foster Hewitt, Ace Bailey, King Clancy, and many others.

In October 2024, I discovered the Montreal Forum had also been repurposed in a similar way. In 2004, Winnipeg should have found a way to repurpose the Winnipeg Arena.

Story #3: Downtown Winnipeg, a ghost town

On my recent trips to Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, I have noticed scores of people walking around downtown. On August 19, 2025, around noon, I walked around BY MYSELF through Winnipeg's Portage and

Main Concourse. Winnipeg is obviously missing the downtown vibrancy of other cities. Many Winnipeggers simply do not want to go downtown.

Unfortunately, a couple of recent City Council initiatives will make even more Winnipeggers avoid downtown. The elimination of the use of cash for parking meters will discourage people, who don’t have the most modern cell phones, from visiting Downtown when going out for lunch or shopping.

It should be remembered that the Canadian Mint, which employees 350 people, is located in South East Winnipeg. Governments should find a way to preserve local jobs. Secondly, most Winnipeggers have become used to transit service without any transfers right into the heart of downtown. The new transit system has eliminated this convenient service for many Winnipeggers.

I have a partial solution. Winnipeg with the help of senior governments can save the Portage and Main Concourse.

When the Concourse was built, Alderman Joe Zuken questioned whether the City was getting a proper deal. These concerns have lingered for a half of a century. On March 7, 2024, a city news release states that it costs the city almost a million dollars every year to maintain the concourse. Repairs are estimated at a least $73 Million. However, City Council should start realizing and promoting the benefits of the Concourse. During bad weather, Winnipeggers and tourists can walk from the Fairmont Hotel all the way to the Bay building without going outside. Let's find a proper business model and promote this asset. Winnipeg cannot simply eliminate our assets when they need expensive repair or replacement.

It was a great trip. When I got back, I started my first online petition. I am calling for the restoration of Portage Avenue Transit Service from downtown right to front door of the Grace Hospital. The Petition has 749 signatures The petition can be signed or shared at change. org/p/regular-transit-service-to-the-grace-hospital.

Fred Morris is a Grandfather, Sports Fan and Political Activist.

The northern Peso: managing Canada’s economic decline

Part 1 of 2

“A new pipeline to tidewater is not merely an infrastructure project; it is an essential tool of national economic strategy.”

There are moments that forge a nation’s character. For Canada, the early 1990s was such a moment. Staring into a fiscal abyss, the country was openly questioned by international observers, with The Wall Street Journal famously branding the Canadian dollar the "northern peso."

The nation had hit a "debt wall" after decades of fiscal profligacy, leaving a legacy of recession, punishing unemployment, and a debt burden that threatened the foundations of the Canadian state.

Contrast that galvanizing crisis with today's economic landscape. The overt panic is gone, replaced by an insidious and perhaps more dangerous malaise. The current era is one of managed decline, marked by economic stagnation, persistent inflation, and a quiet, quarter-byquarter erosion of the average Canadian’s standard of living. This decay is papered over by a new global economic orthodoxy, a comforting but perilous philosophy that treats sovereign debt not as a threat to be conquered, but as a manageable side effect of perpetual government stimulus. The intellectual and political shift from the hard-won fiscal discipline of the 1990s to the modern, and failing, consensus of "growing our way out" represents a dan-

gerous delusion for Western democracies. This was infamously incorporated into core government thinking by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when he said, “the budget will balance itself.”

To understand the flawed logic of the present, one must appreciate the brutal clarity of the past. The Canadian economy of the early 1990s was in a state of nearcollapse. The unemployment rate soared to a staggering 11.4% in 1993, the highest level since the Great Depression. At the heart of this crisis was the national debt. Relentless borrowing caused the federal debt-toGDP ratio to climb relentlessly, on its way to a peak of 83.6% in March 1996. By the mid-1990s, a stunning 37 cents of every federal tax dollar was consumed by interest payments.

Romel Dhalla On The Money

The policy response, engineered by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and his Finance Minister, Paul Martin, was a pragmatic and unflinching application of what became known as the "Washington Consensus."

The pivotal 1995 federal budget was a declaration of war on the deficit. Total program spending was slashed by almost 10% over two years, a reduction of over $25 billion. Key state-owned assets, including Petro-Canada and the Canadian National Railway, were sold off to the private sector.

The results were as swift as they were dramatic. The federal government balanced its budget by fiscal year 1997-98, marking the beginning of eleven consecu-

tive years of budget surpluses. The federal net debt-to-GDP ratio was slashed from its peak to a manageable 32.7% by 200708. This fiscal consolidation, amplified by a bustling US economy and the benefits of NAFTA, unleashed a virtuous cycle of prosperity. From 1997 to 2007, Canada's growth in investment and employment outpaced that of every other G7 country.

In the decades that followed, a new and seductive economic philosophy took hold. This new orthodoxy argues that a government can outgrow its debt so long as the economy’s nominal growth rate remains higher than the interest rate on its debt. The preferred strategy is to use government spending to stimulate demand and economic growth, believing that mass immigration and government investment into “green” innovation and technology will create a sufficiently high growth rate to shrink the debt over time. It is a strategy that promises a painless solution, and it is a fantasy.

The first pillar, a belief in a productivity boom from technological innovation, is a form of magical thinking for most countries. True, paradigm-shifting innovation is not a widely distributed global phenomenon; it is an intensely concentrated one. The inputs that fuel it, research and development (R&D) spending and venture capital (VC) investment, are dominated by a global duopoly: the United States and China. Together, these two superpowers account for well over half of all global R&D expenditures and the vast majority of VC investment. For a country like Canada to predicate its fiscal salvation on becoming a world-leading "innovation nation" is to ignore these overwhelming structural realities. To add insult to injury, Canadian innovation focused on green

technology and infrastructure, both of which were deeply insufficient and simply raised energy prices. Instead, the US and China lead the world in solar and energy storage tech. This isn’t to say Canada should not support venture capital investments, it must, but it should focus driving VC investment into areas that demonstrate clear innovation around productivity, like AI.

The second pillar is a reliance on mass immigration to expand the labor force and drive aggregate demand. While high levels of immigration undoubtedly increase a country's total GDP, this does not automatically translate into a higher standard of living. Recent Canadian economic data reveals a deeply troubling trend: while headline GDP has been flat, GDP per capita, the most accurate measure of individual prosperity, has been in a sustained decline. This is the predictable result of a strategy that prioritizes quantity over quality. It allows governments to report positive headline numbers while the average citizen gets poorer.

Part two will appear in the October issue of Lifdestyles 55

Romel Dhalla, is President of Dhalla Advisory Corp., provides strategic corporate finance advice to companies and high net worth individuals and was a portfolio manager and investment advisor with two major Canadian banks for 17 years. Contact him at romel@ dacorp.ca. Any views or opinions represented in this article are personal and belong solely to the author and do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that the owner may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity, unless explicitly stated. Any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual.

Fred Morris

Cowboys

nors as Lucas McCain? It was a Winchester 92 carbine that had a wide-loop lever so he could spin it around. My friend Gary, who lived across the lane, had the less-than-real version of it. Then there was Hugh O’Brian in The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp. He was somewhat famous for his gun as well. It was the Buntline Special. What made it special was it had a barrel that was twelve inches long. Wasn’t Hugh O’Brian a special guest one year at the Shrine Circus? I’m sure he was.

I could be wrong but, I also think Gene Berry used a similar model of the Buntline Special when he starred in Bat Masterson. The real Bat Masterson, who was born in Quebec in 1853, and Wyatt Earp were real people and were, in fact, the best of friends in the late 1800s. I’ll end the shootout with Steve McQueen in the role of bounty hunter Josh Randall in Wanted:

Dead or Alive. He handled a fantasized chopped-down Winchester 92 with a nine-inch barrel. This was also seen in the opening of the television show. Some of these programs can still be seen depending on what streaming services you have.

The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok staring Guy Madison and Andy Devine, who portrayed his loveable sideman Jingles, was another one of my favourites. Bonanza was one of the last of the dying breed of television westerns and starred Canadian actor Lorne Green. It ran from 1959 to 1973. At one point it was ranked as one of the 50 Greatest TV Shows of all time.

Didn’t we all tune in Sunday evenings to watch the Cartwright family? Let’s not forget Hop Sing? Gunsmoke was broadcast from 1955 to 1975 and was the longest-running prime-time television western in history. I had a Marshal

Sri Lankan seniors

Yathra Newspaper Publisher: Visited Bennette’s home, Brampton in Toronto

As Chandani and I were unable to visit all our friends, we asked some of them to visit us on June 29, 2025.

I invited Chandrarathne Bandara (Chandra) to visit in Bennette’s home. Chandra was one of my co-workers in Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka. Chandra is an author and news reporter. Further, he is the editor and publisher of Yathra newspaper in Toronto. It is printed in Sinhala. Chandra allocates space monthly in his paper for SLSM proceedings. Chandra sends 30 copies of Yathra and Sri Lankan Seniors Manitoba pay the postal charges.

Dillon cowboy hat when I was a kid!

Texas John Slaughter was another character based on an actual historical figure. John Horton Slaughter was a real Texas Ranger. I don’t know if he

thought to visit Chandani to pay gratitude for her Maths teacher.

Chandani’s student in Visakha Vidyalaya, Rasangala. Weerasekara left Vishaka when she was thirteen years. Now she is married and settled in Scarborough. We must appreciate her

Why no MRI for the Portage Hospital?

Iread an article in your paper regarding the lack of an MRI at the new Portage General Hospital written by Jeff Bereza, who, I believe, is the MLA for that district. I believe he was also part of the previous conservative government.

I know this is not the first time he has written an article on the subject asking why the NDP doesn’t add an MRI to the existing construction project.

The NDP inherited this hospital from the previous conservative government who conceived, designed and funded the construction of the Portage General Hospital.

My question to Mr. Bereza is why he didn’t bring his concerns up to the previous government when the design and funding was being made? To install an MRI in a building that’s already designed and under construction will be more difficult and more expensive than if it had been in the initial plans. Do not blame the NDP for the lack of an MRI but the previous government.

I would like to end this letter by saying I agree 100% that an MRI should be placed in the Portage Hospital.

Arthur Matthews

Editor’s note: We forwarded Mr. Mathew’s letter to Jeff Bereza so he could respond. Here is his reply.

Chandra does not know Rasanjala, but he knows her younger brother. I invited Chandra to visit Winnipeg to meet and discuss with SLSM members.

Canada Sri Lanka Youth Exchange Program: 1983/1984

By R. M. Premadasa

I am from Badulla, Sri Lanka. I went to Canada in 1983/1984 under the Canada/Sri Lanka Youth Exchange Program. In that group, there were twenty-one Sri Lankans and twentyone Canadians. We were divided into three groups in Halifax and sent to three villages. My group went to Cape Breton Island in the province of Nova Scotia. I was able to stay with my Canadian partner, Mr. Jonathan. The homeowner was a dairy farmer in the village of Port Hood. In this vil-

They ran out of excuses, but still no MRI!

Thanks so much for your question, Mr. Matthews, and I am happy to get the opportunity to answer you.

I was elected to the position of MLA for the constituency of Portage la Prairie in the general election October 3, 2023. As soon as I was elected, I started asking the question of why there was no MRI included in the new $500 million hospital started by the previous PC government.

I was told that there was not enough need for an MRI at the new hospital.

Shortly after becoming an MLA, I met with over 30 doctors in Portage, and learned that those numbers were not quite what they should have been. For instance, a person that doesn’t have the ability to get to an appointment is not necessarily counted as needing an MRI.

Some folks die waiting for an MRI, and others give up, or go to the US or another province and pay.

At the end of May 2025, 28,015 people were waiting for an MRI in Manitoba, with a wait time of 20 to 45 weeks or 5 to 11 months. This is absolutely unacceptable, and the wait times continue to grow since October of 2023.

The current Portage Hospital was designed with enough power to the facility to handle an MRI. During the construction

wore a huge white cowboy hat that was oddly pinned up in the front but that’s the way actor Tom Tryon wore it. I only remember the chorus from the theme. “Texas John Slaughter made 'em do what they oughter, and if they didn't, they died."

“… a knight without armor in a savage land …” Those are just a few of the lyrics heard at the end of each episode of Have Gun Will Travel starring Ricard Boone. His character Paladin was a gunfor-hire gentleman who worked out of a hotel in San Francisco. This highly rated half-hour show ran for six seasons with him always dressed in black and travelling through the old west helping those who could afford him and often those who couldn’t.

The Golden Age of TV westerns with tall-in-the-saddle-heroes firing off their six shooters that seemed to have unlimited bullets are all but gone. So, close your eyes and picture Roy and Dale riding off into the sunset singing … “Happy trails to you … until we meet again”. Take a trip down Jim’s free musical memory lane podcasts online at Lifestyles55radio.ca

lage, I obtained training on a dairy farm for three and a half months.

Subsequently, we traveled to various places in Canada and went to Sri Lanka with our Canadian partners. During the four-month stay in Sri Lanka, we participated in several programs and visited different locations. At that time, I was 23 years.

When my son and daughter-in-law were studying in Winnipeg, Canada, they arranged Canadian citizenship for me. As a result, I got an opportunity to return to Canada after forty years. At that time, I had the opportunity not only to be with my son and daughterin-law but also to meet two of my old friends from the Youth Exchange Program after forty years.

One of them was Christopher Basarovich, a resident of Winnipeg. The other friend was Bruce E. Davidson, who currently resides in Yellowknife. When Christopher learned that I am with my daughter and her family in Winnipeg, he visited us with great pleasure. There are two pictures of Christopher from 1983, and another photo was captured in 2023.

phase, there was absolutely the possibility to incorporate an MRI into the current construction.

The NDP again said there wasn’t a need for it. This was despite the Portage Hospital Foundation committing a minimum of privately raised $5 million for an MRI.

The government then said there were not enough people to run the machine.

I personally know three techs who work at the Portage hospital who are asking to take the upgrading to become certified on an MRI.

Then there was the argument that there were not enough people to read the reports.

People that read MRI’s might not have been right here in Portage, but they are available remotely all over the world, and that is how a number are read today.

Now that the walls are all closed up and we are getting close to opening the hospital an option would be a mobile MRI, and again I have raised this with the Health Minister, but we still have no MRI.

I have offered to stand on top of the golden boy to take the blame myself or even blame the past government. I have said this in the media several times, and still no MRI.

I will NEVER stop advocating for the need for an MRI at the Portage hospital, and I hope you will join me in this advocacy. Too many people are going undiagnosed, and in the long run, things like this are backing up our health care system.

Thanks,

Jeff Bereza, MLA Portage La Prairie

No sympathy for the truckers

They wanted any driver crossing the border to be vaccinated. We had accomplished so much in fighting back against the Covid virus. Down south, they were very lax with unsurprising results. They didn’t want it to be brought back across the border.

If the drivers didn’t care about themselves then it was too bad for them if they became ill. It was for all of the other people who they might harm. People that might already have even more significant health issues that greatly diminished immunity. People who couldn’t be vaccinated.

Those same drivers could have tried to find driving jobs that kept them on this side of the border, and they could have maintained their selfish unvaccinated selves. Instead, we all had to put up with their show. We have paid the high costs the public had to absorb for investigations and crime trials.

Some amount of wokeism can’t hurt some people getting their far, far right extremist views toned down.

Yours sincerely,

David A.Galbraith

Ed, Note: But David, they had been hauling goods without a vaccine for three years at that point. Most did take the shot, but defended those who were not willing or felt they couldn't. . .

Jim Ingebrigtsen

Patricia Medina with Richard Boone from Have Gun Will Travel. Photo courtesy of CBS Television.

Senaka Samarasinghe

Creative Retirement Manitoba Inc. 204-481-5030, hello@crcentre.ca www.crcentre.ca

WINNIPEG

20 Fort Street Seniors Club

2200-20 Fort Street / FortStSeniors@Shaw.ca

Manitoba Association of Senior Communities

Rainbow Resource Centre 545 Broadway / 204-474-0212 ext 255 OTR@rainbowresourcecentre.org www.rainbowresourcecentre.org

The Salvation Army Barbara Mitchell Family Resource Centre 51 Morrow Avenue / 204-946-9153 sheila.keys@salvationarmy.ca

A&O Support Services for Older Adults Inc. 200 - 207 Donald Street 204-956-6440 / Toll Free: 1-888-333-3121 info@aosupportservices.ca www.aosupportservices.ca

Archwood 55 Plus 565 Guilbault Avenue / 204-416-1067 archwood55@shaw.ca archwood55plus.wildapricot.org/ Bleak House Centre 1637 Main Street / 204-338-4723 bleakhousecentre@gmail.com www.bleakhousecentre.com

Brooklands Active Living Centre 1960 William Avenue W 204-632-8367 / bpscc@mymts.net

Centro Caboto Centre 1055 Wilkes Avenue / 204-487-4597 ext. 1 executivedirector@cabotocentre.com www.cabotocentre.com

Charleswood Active Living Centre A 357 Oakdale Drive / 204-897-5263 info@charleswoodseniorcentre.org www.charleswoodseniorcentre.org

Dakota Community Centre 1188 Dakota Street / 204-254-1010 ext. 217 seniorresources@dakotacc.com www.dakotacc.com

Dufferin Senior Citizens Inc. 377 Dufferin Avenue / 204-986-2608

Elmwood East Kildonan Active Living Centre 180 Poplar Avenue / 204-669-0750 healthrelations@chalmersrenewal.org chalmersrenewal.org

Garden City Community Centre Seniors 55+ 725 Kingsbury Avenue / 204-940-6111 facilities@gardencitycc.com www.gardencitycc.com/seniors

Golden Rule Seniors Resource Centre 625 Osborne Street / 204-306-1114 goldenrule@swsrc.ca facebook.com/goldenruleseniors

Good Neighbours Active Living Centre 720 Henderson Hwy / 204-669-1710 admin@gnalc.ca / www.gnalc.ca

Gwen Secter Creative Living Centre 1588 Main Street / 204-339-1701 becky@gwensecter.com / www.gwensecter.com

Headingley Seniors’ Services 5353 Portage Avenue / 204-889-3132 ext. 3 seniors@rmofheadingley.ca www.headingleyseniorsservices.ca

Indigenous Senior Resource Centre Inc. A1- 100 Robinson Avenue / 204-586-4595 executivedirector@isrcwpg.ca www.asrcwpg.ca

Manitoba Korean 55+ Centre 900-150 River Avenue 204-996-7003 / www.ksam.ca

North Centennial Seniors Association of Winnipeg Inc. 86 Sinclair Street / 204-582-0066 ncsc@shaw.ca / www.ncseniors.ca

North Point Douglas Senior Centre 117 Euclid Avenue / dzedzora107@gmail.com bkuluk751@gmail.com

Old Grace Housing Co-op 100-200 Arlington Street wellness.oghc@gmail.com

Pembina Active Living (55+) 933 Summerside Avenue / 204-946-0839 office@pal55plus.ca / www.pal55plus.ca

Rady Jewish Community Centre 123 Doncaster Street / 204-477-7539 lmarjovsky@radyjcc.com / www.radyjcc.com

Somali Help Age Association 519 Beverley Street / 204-881-6364 somalihelpage@gmail.com

South Winnipeg Seniors Resource Council 117-1 Morley Ave / 204-478-6169 resources@swsrc.ca / www.swsrc.ca

Southdale Seniors 254 Lakewood Boulevard / 204-257-6171 gm@southdale.ca / www.southdale.ca

Sri Lankan Seniors Manitoba 113 Stan Bailie Drive 204-261-9647 / www.srilankanseniorsmb.ca

St. James-Assiniboia 55+ Centre 3-203 Duffield Street 204-987-8850 / info@stjamescentre.com www.stjamescentre.com

Transcona Council for Seniors 845 Regent Ave / 204-222-9879 tcs@mymts.net / www.transconaseniors.ca

Transcona Retired Citizens Org. 328 Whittier Ave. West 204-222-8473 / trco328@shaw.ca

Vital Seniors 3 St Vital Road / 204-253-0555 stmary@mymts.net www.stmarymagdelenewpg.org

Winnipeg Chinese Senior Association 204-291-7798 / wcsa.wpg@hotmail.com www.winnipegchineseseniors.ca

BEYOND WINNIPEG

BEAUSEJOUR

Beau-Head Senior Centre 645 Park Avenue 204-268-2444 / beauhead@mymts.net

BINSCARTH / RUSSELL

Senior Services of Banner County 204-532-2391 seniorservicesofbannercounty@gmail.com

BOISSEVAIN

Seniors’ Services of the Turtle Mountain Area 204-534-6816 / seniorservicetm@gmail.com

BRANDON

Brandon Seniors for Seniors Co-op Inc. 311 Park Avenue E / 204-571-2050 reception@brandons4s.ca www.brandons4s.ca

Health Checks 204-728-1842 / brandonmbhealthchecks.ca healthchecksbrandon@gmail.com

CARMAN

Carman Active Living Centre 47 Ed Belfour Drive / 204-745-2356 www.activelivingcentrecarman.ca

CRANBERRY PORTAGE

Jubilee Recreation of Cranberry Portage Legion Hall 217 2nd Ave. SE / 204-271-3081

CRYSTAL CITY

Crystal City & District Friendship Club Inc. 117 Broadway St. / 431-867-0122 crystalcityfriendship@gmail.com

DAUPHIN

Dauphin Active Living Centre Inc. 55 1st Avenue SE / 204-638-6485 www.dauphinseniors.com

DELORAINE

Deloraine Community Club Inc. 111 South Railway Ave E / 204-747-2846

Seniors’ Outreach Services of BrenWin Inc. 204-747-3283 / sosbrenwin@gmail.com sosbrenwin.com

ELIE

Cartier Senior Citizens Support Committee Inc. 11 Magloire Street, Suite #1 / 204-353-2470 cartierseniors55@outlook.com

ERICKSON

Comfort Drop In Centre 31 Main Street / 204-636-2047 areas@mymts.net

FLIN FLON

Flin Flon Seniors 2 North Avenue / 204-687-7308

GILBERT PLAINS

Gilbert Plains and District Community Resource Council Inc. 204-548-4131 / gpdcrc@mymts.net gpseniors.ca

Gilbert Plains Drop In Centre 22 Main Street North / 204-548-2210

GIMLI

Gimli New Horizons 55+ Centre 17 Loni Beach Road 204-642-7909 / gimli55@mts.net www.gimlinewhorizons.com

GLADSTONE

Gladstone Seniors Inc.

32 Morris Ave. North / 204-385-2205

GRAND MARAIS

Grand Marais & District Seniors 36058 PTH 12 / gmdseniors@gmail.com www.gmdseniors.ca

GRANDVIEW

Grandview Seniors Drop In 432 Main Street / 204-546-2272

HAMIOTA

Hamiota 55+ Centre & Restore Community Co-op Inc. 44 Maple Avenue / 204-764-2658

KILLARNEY

Killarney New Horizons Centre 520 Mountain Avenue www.killarneymbseniors.ca

Killarney Service for Seniors 415 Broadway / 204-523-7115 seniorservice@killarney.ca

LA BROQUERIE and STE. ANNE

Seine River Services for Seniors Inc./ Services Rivière Seine pour aînés Inc. 93 Principale Street / 204-424-5285 src@seineriverservicesforseniors.ca seineriverservicesforseniors.ca

LUNDAR

Lundar Community Resources 35 Main Street / 204-762-5378 lcrc@mymts.net

MANITOU

Pembina Community Resource Council 315 Main Street / 204-242-2241 pembinacrc@gmail.com

MINNEDOSA

Minnedosa Senior Citizens Assoc. 31 Main Street S / 204-867-1956 mdsasca@gmail.com

MORDEN

Morden Activity Centre 306 N Railway Street / 204-822-3555 mordenactivitycentre@gmail.com www.mordenseniors.ca

NEEPAWA

Neepawa Drop In Centre 310 Davidson Street / 204-476-5103 Neepawa-dropin@outlook.com www.neepawa.ca/district-drop-in-center

NOTRE DAME DE LOURDES Club D’age Dor Notre Dame 204-248-7291 / ndslchezsoi@gmail.com

PILOT MOUND Pilot Mound Fellowship Centre 203 Broadway Avenue / 204-825-2873

PLUMAS

Plumas Seniors Citizens Club Inc. 102 White Street / 204-386-2029

PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE

Herman Prior Senior Services Centre 40 Royal Road N. / 204-857-6951 hermanpriorcentre@gmail.com www.hermanprior.com

Portage Service for Seniors 40A Royal Road N. / 204-239-6312 psfsmeals@shaw.ca portageservicefors.wixsite.com/psfs

RIVERTON

Riverton Seniors Activity Centre

12 Main Street / 204-378-5155 rdfc@mymts.net / www.rivertonfc.com

ROSSBURN

Rossburn Community Resource Council 71 Main Street / 204-859-3386 rosscomm@outlook.com

SANDY LAKE

Sandy Lake Drop In Centre 100 Main St. / 204-585-2411

Municipality of Harrison Park - Age Friendly Initiative Committee 204-585-5310

SELKIRK

Gordon Howard Centre 384 Eveline Street / 204-785-2092 executivedirector@gordonhoward.ca www.gordonhoward.ca

SNOW LAKE

Snow Lake Senior Centre 71 Balsam Street / 204-358-2151 snowsrs@mymts.net

SOUTH JUNCTION

Piney Regional Senior Services 204-437-2604 / lgdseniors@gmail.com

ST. LAURENT Age Friendly Committee of St. Laurent 204-906-9607

STARBUCK MacDonald Services to Seniors 204-735-3052 / info@mcdonaldseniors.ca www.macdonaldseniors.ca

STEINBACH

Pat Porter Active Living Centre 10 Chrysler Gate / 204-320-4600 ed@patporteralc.com www.patporteralc.com

STONEWALL

South Interlake 55 Plus 374 1st Street West - Oddfellows Hall 204-467-2582 / si55plus@mymts.net www.si55plus.org

SWAN RIVER Swan River & District Community Resource Council 126 6th Ave N / 204-734-5707 resourcecouncil@srseniorservices.com

Swan River Senior Citizens Centre 702 1st Street North / 204-734-2212 THE PAS The Pas Golden Agers 324 Ross Avenue / 204-623-3663 seniorsthepas@gmail.com

THOMPSON Thompson Seniors Community Resource Council Inc. 4 Nelson Rd. / 204-677-0987 thompsonseniors55@gmail.com thompsonseniors.ca

TREHERNE Treherne Friendship Centre 190 Broadway Street 204-723-2559 / jstate1066@gmail.com

VICTORIA BEACH East Beaches Social Scene 3 Ateah Road / 204-756-6468 ebssinc1@gmail.com www.ebseniorscene.ca East Beaches Resource Centre 3 Ateah Road / 204-756-6471 ebresourcec@gmail.com ebresourcec.weebly.com

VIRDEN Seniors Access to Independent Living 204-851-2761 / sail.cao.2023@gmail.com

WINKLER Winkler & District MP Senior Centre 102-650 South Railway Avenue 204-325-8964 director@winklerseniorcentre.com www.winklerseniorcentre.com

Register by June 26 for summer

3 ways your pelvic health issues may be impacting your quality of life

Is your life impacted by urinary incontinence, sexual dysfunction, or prolapse? If so, it is likely related to your pelvic floor. Pelvic floor issues can have a significant impact on your quality of life and can affect both men and women.

You may often feel alone, but you’re not, and you do not have to suffer in silence. UROSPOT offers 30-minute complimentary consultations where you will learn a lot about your body, get your questions answered and decide what treatment is right for you. UROSPOT will help empower you with knowledge, confidence, and a path to a restored quality of life if you’re experiencing some of these common symptoms.

1. Bladder leaks and urgency. The fear of bladder leaks or constantly need-

ing access to a restroom may cause social withdrawal and avoidance of activities like exercising, attending events, or travelling. Nighttime urgency and frequent bathroom trips can disrupt sleep patterns, leading to fatigue.

2. Sexual dysfunction. Sexual dysfunction is another issue that can result from pelvic health problems. This can lead to feelings of inadequacy, low selfesteem and reluctance to engage in intimacy.

3. Pelvic organ prolapse. Pelvic organ prolapse is a condition in which one or more of the pelvic organs drop from their normal position and protrude into the vaginal canal. This can lead to physical discomfort, frustration, and embarrassment.

Ways to help improve quality of life related to these issues

Fortunately, there are many ways to address these pelvic health issues and improve quality of life. UROSPOT, the pelvic floor experts in your neighbourhood, offer a non-invasive care model that helps both women and men suffering from many types of pelvic health issues. Using advanced technology, their “Kegel Throne” effectively performs the equivalent of 11,000 Kegels in just 28 minutes simply by sitting on a chair. The chair uses high-intensity focused electromagnetic energy to help issues like prolapse, sexual functioning, bladder leaks and urgency.

Complementing this advanced technology, the team of pelvic floor experts

at UROSPOT will customize a care plan for you, incorporating education and health coaching to empower you and foster a sense of freedom as you progress.

UROSPOT is an innovation in health care, disrupting the industry in a powerful and positive way. Poor pelvic health no longer gets to affect every waking moment. UROSPOT offers a complimentary consultation that’s educational, informative, and all about you. Book your complimentary consultation today. Partially covered by physiotherapy benefits.

Urospot is opening soon and will be located at 556 Academy Road. They can be reached at 204-318-8866 or by email at winnipeg@urospot.com.

Building a stronger health care system for Manitobans

When I meet with Manitobans across the province, one message is clear: people want a health care system they can count on. They want to know that when they or their loved ones are sick, care will be there –close to home, delivered by skilled professionals, without long waits or unnecessary hurdles.

That’s why I am proud of the work our government is doing to rebuild health care after years of cuts and neglect. Manitobans are already seeing the difference: more doctors, more nurses, more health professionals, and new clinics designed to provide care where and when people need it.

These are not just numbers. They are people – people who bring their skills, their compassion, and their commitment to serving Manitobans. They are the nurses who comfort a patient in the ER at 3 a.m., the physician assistants who extend the reach of care in communities, the respiratory therapists who ensure our most vulnerable patients can breathe easier. Each one is helping us close the painful gaps that opened under the previous government.

Minister's Message

This year alone, we welcomed over 200 doctors and over 2500 health care workers to Manitoba’s health care system. These doctors are filling critical gaps, from family practices to hospital wards, and ensuring Manitobans in every corner of the province can access care. Alongside them, hundreds of nurses, paramedics, physician assistants, midwives, and allied health professionals are strengthening the workforce that keeps our system running.

Because we must not forget what the health care system looked like just a few short years ago. Under the Conservatives, emergency rooms were shut down, beds were cut, and frontline workers were left unsupported. Those cuts weren’t abstract policy decisions – they had real consequences. Patients waited longer. Staff were stretched thin. Families were left to navigate a system that felt more fragile with each passing day.

If it were up to the Tories again, we know where their priorities would lie. We would see more and more decisions made based on cost savings instead of patient care. That’s how we saw a net loss of over two hundred

personal care home beds and cuts to services for seniors. That’s not the future Manitobans want, and it’s not the future we are building.

Instead, we are focused on strengthening every part of the health care system. We’re opening Minor Injury and Illness Clinics to give families faster access to care for non-emergencies, keeping ERs free for the most urgent cases. We’re expanding surgical capacity, investing in new technology like the Da Vinci surgical robot, eight hundred more hip and knee surgeries in Selkirk, and creating new training opportunities for nurses and doctors right here at home.

And just as importantly, we are listening to the voices of health care workers themselves. Our government has committed to working side by side with nurses, doctors, and staff to ensure their expertise shapes the path forward. When health care workers tell us they need better ratios, safer work places, more mental health supports, or expanded training opportunities, we take those calls seriously. We’re listening to the voices of seniors by establishing the Independent Office of the Seniors Advocate.

Where once Manitobans were hearing stories of closures and cuts, now we are seeing investment and renewal. Families in rural and northern Manitoba are getting more consistent access to care. Internationally edu-

cated doctors are joining the system and staying in Manitoba. Students are entering health care training programs with the confidence that jobs will be waiting for them when they graduate.

I know the challenges are not behind us. The damage done by years of neglect cannot be fixed overnight, and health care systems across Canada are facing strain. But I also know that Manitoba is on the right path – a path defined by investment, by partnership, and by an unwavering commitment to public health care.

To every health care worker in Manitoba: thank you. Thank you for showing up every day, for caring for patients under pressure, for mentoring the next generation, and for believing in this system even when it was stretched thin. Your dedication is the foundation we are building on.

To every Manitoban: know that your government is on your side. We are making the investments that matter, ensuring that care is there when you need it, and protecting the public health care system from those who would dismantle it.

Because health care is not a privilege – it is a right. And together, we are ensuring that right is protected for generations to come.

The Hon. Uzoma Asagwara is the Minister of Health, Seniors and Longterm Care and Deputy Premier.

Hon. Uzoma Asagwara