Manitoba Links Weekly: It's a Bit Easier Being Green Than it Used to Be, I Hope a Weekly Provencher Facepalm Doesn't Have to Be a Thing, COOKIES, and Here's Brian Pallister Wishing All You Infidel Atheists Out There a Merry Christmas (ManLinkWeek S02E06)

I, uh... appreciate the... effort? I appreciate that you tried. You, uh, hey, you have a good one too.

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly!

This week on Winnipeg Internet Pundits was one-third-repeat and two-thirds-new, because it snowed on Wednesday and roads are impassable when y'all keep driving into each other. (I passed four -- four! -- accidents on my way to the University, including one that snarled Pembina southbound for the better part of forever. Manitoba has the nation's lowest rate of winter-tire use, just coincidentally.)

But! In the back two-thirds of said show we covered the fascinatingly close Brandon-Souris byelection and its wildly, historically inaccurate polling -- TWENTY-NINE POINTS LOL -- as well as the very, very exciting University of Winnipeg apartment-tower announcement. Hey, someone's gotta build them, and it's not like the U of W doesn't already have plenty of valuable experience building things around there.

Speaking of radio -- segue! -- remember the CKUW 95.9 mystery show that Scott Price and I had collaborated on earlier this month? We spent an hour on the airwaves gushing over some of our favourite bass performances, and I am pleased to report that the audio of that show is now mirrored here for your listening and downloading pleasure. (Also, I couldn't resist: to honour the death of Winamp, I've listed the ID3 genre as "Primus".)

This concludes our weekly radio preamble; commence the ManLinkWeek! Let's start with a quiet but noteworthy provincial exit:

[ Green Party of Manitoba: Manitoba Greens receive Leader's resignation ]
[ Winnipeg Free Press: Beddome steps down as Green Party of Manitoba leader ]
[ CBC Manitoba: James Beddome resigns as Manitoba Green Party leader ]
The Green Party of Manitoba will become the third party in two years to appoint new leadership, with James Beddome having now announced his intentions to step down and establish his legal career. Beddome's five-year run as leader saw the party roughly double its field of candidates and its subsequent overall vote total in the 2011 election, momentum the party will doubtlessly hope to continue with its eventual choice of successor.

So congratulations to James Beddome on the completion of his law degree, and all the best to him in his future endeavours; he was truly a politician of a different age. By which I mean, he looked a lot like the Tenth Doctor, and we're already up to the Twelfth Doctor now.

(before anyone spoils that joke, c'mon man don't, I saw the same Moffat blurb you did but don't be that guy to everyone else)

Also on the provincial newsbeat, here it is, your weekly Provencher facepalm:

[ Thea's Diner Facebook Page: While I was recruiting employees for my restaurant(...) ]
[ Winnipeg Free Press: Diner owner fleeing Morris ]
[ Global Winnipeg: Morris restaurant closing due to alleged racism ]
[ The Globe and Mail: Manitoba town in spotlight again over charges of discrimination ]
[ Town of Morris: Dear Canada, ]



This sparked a bit of a flurry of activity around Morris' Wikipedia entry, but nothing they couldn't handle; they are, after all, not unaccustomed to this attention.

Morris residents (Morrisettes?) facing community discrimination for their ethnicity or their sexuality can't hope for altogether much in support from their elected representatives; newly-elected MP Ted Falk is not known for his sensitivity, and it's increasingly starting to seem like Morris might never have an MLA again. (291 days vacant as of today, and counting.) That leaves the Mayor of Morris to try and handle it all himself; he finds himself writing a lot of letters and doing a lot of interviews, these days. I hope it's working! I hope that's working for him.

Man, Morris, you're discouraging. I wish I had something more tangible and measurable to pitch here than "please stop being awful to other human beings", but for now let's go with that as the vision statement and we can hash out a mission statement from there.

Well! In the interest of not being a total downer, let's move from adults being awful to children being adorable.

[ North End MC: Interlake School Division Rainbow Awesomeness ]
Ha ha, d'aww. So cute, so promising! Good luck, li'l future leaders; listen to your friend Michael and you'll turn out all right, I think.

One more Interlake link? What the heck, one more Interlake link.

[ The Interlake Spectator: Take a drive out to the cookie walk in Winnipeg Beach ]
AWW YISS, COOKIES

Meanwhile, back in Winnipeg:

[ 50 with a 50: Day 42 Polly about to catch her bus on Portage Avenue. ]
"This picture deserves some back story. It’s just so...WINNIPEG."

Free Press editor/producer/photographer/multimedia wizard/so on and so forth Melissa Tait tasked herself with taking fifty photos over fifty days with a 50mm lens; taking them these particular fifty days has offered plenty of fun with shots, but this post in particular warrants and then delivers a lifetime's worth of supplementary character notes.

[ Bell Tower Community Café: Making good things together ]
[ Bell Tower Community Café Blog: Putting the community in a community café ]
Not to be confused with the North End (Meet Me at the) Bell Tower (happy second anniversary!), the Bell Tower Community Café is a newly-established partnership of various West End and Wolseley organizations to provide food bank services, community engagement and live music in biweekly café-style events at Westminster Church. It's a creative combination, and a neat use of the space, and I'm always encouraged when people find ways to be kind to each other.

Yeah, I'm aware, I'm being a bit sappier than usual this week. Spirit of the holidays, in'nt. (It'll pass, trust me; next week's fixing to be a fair bit pricklier.)

To close out this week's grab bag:

[ Reed Solomon's Matrix: Classical Gasbag ]
It came! It's here! It flew completely under my radar!

Christian-modern-rock station IGNITE 107.1 FM was never exactly a ratings juggernaut (he says, generously), so last year Golden West applied for and received CRTC permission to flip its format and run a commercial classical-music(!) station in its place. Hooray for musical diversity!

The switch has most certainly already happened -- I've tuned in just now out of curiosity and, yep, there it is -- but it must've only happened very, very recently. It has no website or webstream, I don't detect any social media presence, and if there was advertising I'd missed it; in fact, just as I typed that it played a promo blurb describing itself in the future tense, and as best I can tell it's billing itself simply as "CLASSIC FM 107.1" right now.

Ooh, the blurb just mentioned jazz as well! That could be either really great or really terrible. (Well, I suppose it could be really great and really terrible; 'jazz' has a whole lot of room in it.) I don't know about you, but I'm finding myself rather disproportionately stoked about this. So far so good, from what I'm hearing of it! Give it a listen, see if you dig it.

Thank you once again for reading ManLinkWeek! If you'd wondered why there seemed to be a lot less Winnipeg than usual in this week's edition, that's because next week may very well end up ALL Winnipeg. Preliminary-budget fallout! South Pembina transformations! Scott Fielding pitching increasingly wide accountability sweeps! (My guess for next week's proposal: sentient giant-robot auditors.) And more! So get ready, everyone; December's fixing to be quite the month.