Manitoba Links Weekly: Greg the Type of Premier, Let's Go Save Some Legions, The Big Little Book of Winnipeg Jokes, and Arcade Fire are Positive Winnipeg is in Saskatchewan (ManLinkWeek S02E04)

I suppose it's up for debate whether or not this is better than Winnipeg being in Ontario, but the gaffe is that little extra bit more galling coming from other Canadians. I'd ask "what do they teach in Montreal schools these days?", but the answer is probably just Habs trivia and how to accept mob bribes. [h/t to Stereogum and, uh, pretty well everyone on Twitter that day ]

Hello and welcome to Manitoba Links Weekly! How're you doing, you look lovely.

This week on Winnipeg Internet Pundits we tackled the provincial throne speech, what it meant (or rather, probably didn't mean) for rapid transit, and the possibility of abolishing the Executive Policy Committee model. The show went well, and I think you'll dig it, so give it a whirl if you'd missed it.

Onward, to ManLinkWeek! Let's lead off with some fine throne-speech content released later in the week:

Awesome Old Cars, Human-Dinosaur Coexistence, and I Guess Our Premier Only Owns the One Casual Outfit: Here's the Gimli Islendingadagurinn 2013 Parade (56K Modems, Prepare to Die)

And here we are again! It took a little longer than I'd hoped to pull everything together -- always something to be done, y'know how it is -- but a week is a not altogether terrible turnaround, as I'm sure you'd agree if you could see my metaphorical digital cutting room floor of photograph choices.

There was, as always, a whole lot of different stuff packed into the parade; this gallery runs an initial twenty-one megabytes and increases by volume depending on how many images you care to enlarge, so if you have an older internet connection you may wish to towel it down intermittently to keep it from catching fire.

For comparative purposes, should you feel the impulse, the image gallery of last year's parade can be found here.

Onward, then! Much like last year, the Parade escaped with far better weather than the rest of the festival got, and the audience size reflected this appropriately:







Hark! In the distance there you should be able to make out a pace car, which leads the runners and formally kicks off the parade.

Yes, It Was Adorable: Here are Photos of the 2013 Ponemah, MB Canada Day Parade and Celebrations (Warning: Image-Heavy)

Hello, everyone!

I'd hoped to have these pictures up for you a bit sooner -- like, closer to Canada Day, say -- but I've spent all July thus far waylaid by a rather gruesome summer cold, the kind that prevents a man from sleeping or functioning or doing much else save wishing for the sweet embrace of death. However! There've already been a few stray Google searches sniffin' around for them, and I'd hate to disappoint anybody, so please find enclosed a collection of photos from the 2013 Ponemah, Manitoba Canada Day Parade. (You can view the 2012 parade here, for comparative purposes.)

Awesome Old Cars, Family Reunions on Flatbeds, and Jesus Christ That's a Sentient Lifejacket: Here's Everything that Appeared in the Gimli Islendingadagurinn 2012 Parade (56k Modems Beware, Seriously)

Yes, this is the third parade I've been to in five weeks, and yes, I know that sounds really silly. They just keep happening near me, man, it'd be rude not to drop by and see 'em. And I certainly couldn't pass up the annual Islendingadagurinn parade, described as "the largest parade in rural Manitoba"; the Gimli parade hits that sweet spot of being big enough to pull in support from all over the area, but not so big that companies feel obligated to send something and hang Christmas lights on a company truck.

There was a lot of stuff -- a lot of stuff -- in the parade, so fair warning: even having cut back a bit on the maximum image dimensions this time around, there are still about twenty-six (!) megabytes of pictures in here. And not a heck of a lot of duplicates, either; as much as it pained me to cut the alternate angles of interesting old automobiles, you'll see in a second that it had to be done. So if you'd like to see a larger version of a picture, or you want to see one of the parade entries from another angle, feel free to let me know; the chances are very good that I can dig one up.

Ah, but enough preamble. Let me be your eyes and... well, eyes, I guess, as we detail yesterday's holiday event.

A Big Weekend, in Pictures: Fireworks and a Parade in Oak Lake, the 28th Annual Brandon Folk Festival, a Moody Manitoba Morning, and Other Westman Shenanigans (56k Modems Beware)

Fair warning: there are about twenty megabytes' worth of pictures in this post. I realize that for most of us modern-day downloadin' folks that's barely a blip, like maybe three or four decently-encoded MP3s, but still. Fair warning!

As you'll see shortly, there is a lot more in this post than I was actually expecting to see when I left town Thursday evening. Longtime readers will recall that my father lives out in Oak Lake, off the highway between Virden and Brandon, and Oak Lake is generally not an overly busy destination.

As an example, here's what the hustle and bustle of downtown looked like when we went out the next day:





Not your fancy Virden city-living, to be sure, and Oak Lake residents like it just fine that way. Let me (re)introduce you to a couple of them, not because they're crucial to the story, but because they're adorable:

Up-to-the-Minute Breaking News: Ponemah, MB Canada Day Parade Adorable (56k Modems Beware)

Happy Canada Day to one and all!

I'd hoped to have a new installment of the Slurpees & Murder Record Club for the occasion today, but it'll have to wait; the record in question is still in the city, and I am... not.

In the meantime, then, I hope that a substitution will suffice -- so please find below, for your consideration, a gallery of pictures from the cute little community Canada Day parade in Ponemah earlier today.

Manitoba Links Weekly: You Must Believe that You're the Champion (ManLinkWeek 5)

I keep meaning to do posts other than these, but in the meantime, let's have ourselves another ManLinkWeek:

[CBC.ca: Winnipeg breaks homicide record with 35th death]
Welp, there it is, then. That's the kind of year it's been, around here, that we'd break the city's previous annual record for homicides by the midpoint of November.

Winnipeg may or may not be officially recrowned as the Murder Capital of Canada next year, owing to the measurement methodology employed on the subject by Statistics Canada, but the balance and the difference between homicide rate and homicide count kind of muddle the whole point. Thunder Bay was considered the Murder Capital for 2010 with a omicide rate of 4.2 homicides per 100,000 people, comparative to Winnipeg's rate of 2.8 homicides per 100,000 people, but the total homicide count in Thunder Bay last year was five. The current Murder Capital of Canada had as many homicides last year as Winnipeg had in one fire this year. It's not been a good year, around here.

My point is this: we like to make a big deal of the comparative numbers each year and each time they're released, but we should probably worry less about how Winnipeg measures nationally and worry more that our city has now recorded more homicides this year than in any other year, in history, ever.

[The View from Seven: Fixing “Under-Educated Manitoba” could help ensure that Jets, Ikea are here to stay]
And we're stupid. So, I mean, things could be going better.

An insightful piece of research and analysis from Kevin McDougald on the benefits of working smarter rather than working harder, which is a continued challenge for a province that has "traditionally been better at producing high school dropouts than scientists".

The article places a particular emphasis on the value of the sciences, but really, I don't think it will come as any particular revelation to the reader that a Science degree makes you vastly more employable and wealthy than an Arts degree will. You can't just get any old degree! I myself have a Double Honours Bachelor's in History and Political Studies and a Master's of Library and Information Science, and this unique combination of education and experience -- credentials earned by over half a decade of hard work, with knowledge and skills forged by years of toil and sacrifice under tens of thousands of dollars of debt -- has brought me what I have today: part-time night work at the Pembina Hotel beer vendor. Just... just go into the sciences, kids, just trust me on this one.

As bad as things may be, of course, there's always a bright side:

"In the 2006 census, we ranked 10th among the 13 provinces and territories in terms of the percentage of 25 to 64 year olds with post-secondary credentials in any form, whether it be a college diploma, university degree or a trades designation.

"Only Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Nunavut ranked worse."

YEAHHHHH WE BEAT SASKATCHEWAN

HA HA HA HEY SASKABUSH WHAT UP

[The Masks We All Wear: Hackers Anonymous (SkullSpace)]
My doom-and-glooming aside, not all is lost on the regional brainpower front; newly-established local hackerspace SkullSpace Winnipeg celebrated its grand opening earlier this month, and this on-site report from CreComm student Justin Luschinski adds the helpful reminder that picking a lock in real life is far more complicated than Skyrim would have you believe.

There are people around town building fully-functional hovercrafts in their basements, and if you don't think that's awesome, I don't know what to tell you. (To borrow one of my favourite Tom Lehrer quotes: "it's people like that that remind you how little you've accomplished.")

[Sean Carney's Website: How about them Jets, Mr. Speaker?]
This Hansard excerpt isn't the first time that the provincial NDP have invoked our National Hockey League representation in the Legislature, but it is thus far the funniest. I also enjoy that the reaction of Speaker of the House Daryl Reid is basically just "yeah yeah, awright, you made your point, g'wan get out of here."

[Winnipeg Free Press: Santa gets stuck in Winnipeg parade]
What Staff Writer declined to note in this story about the Santa Claus Parade failing to get Santa to The Forks properly is that... I don't think they've ever managed to get Santa to The Forks properly.

I know they couldn't pull it off in 2006, I'm told they couldn't pull it off in 2009, and I remember at least one other year having a mini-flurry of news stories after the fact about the lack of Santa in the Santa Claus parade by the time it got off Main. (Both of our major papers have since completely revamped their web architecture, so the hell if anyone knows where anything is any more.) But what can they do? The Santa at the end is the only Santa allowed in the parade, so he has to have a huge float to instill the necessary presence, but then they can never get it to fit under the bridge. Curse our antiquated civic infrastructure!

[Kijiji Winnipeg: Wanted: Winnipeg Sun - May 18, 1995]
Well, fortunately I carry two copies of that specific issue on my person at all times, so I'm sure I could--no, okay, seriously, what is this.

My favourite detail is the placement stressing that it has to be an "original", like all he can ever find on eBay are the reproductions and it just pisses him off every time. It's also fun to imagine the reasoning behind why it has to be that exact edition, including:

-- copy editor from 1995 still paranoid he left an 'r' off of 'embarrassment' on page six
-- cognitively unable to handle happiness for Jets' return; need depressing old headlines around to feel normal again
-- inherited complete collections of April and June 1995 Winnipeg Suns, and at that point you may as well just fill in the gaps
-- Black-o-rama Reggae Festival coverage especially well done that year
-- through elaborate series of wacky sitcom contrivances, accidentally spilled coffee on attractive neighbour's prized copy of May 18th, 1995 Winnipeg Sun while housesitting
-- contains fascinating article about this new information superhighway thing
-- wife was the Sun Girl for May 18th, 1995; intended divorce court strategy to "expose that bitch" about to backfire spectacularly
-- somebody wants that newspaper because that was the day they were born, and oh god i just realized how old i am jesus christ

[WITCHPOLICE: Time Travel: Various - Ska is Back in Town]
(cached version, if that link isn't working)
We'll close this out on a high note with this vintage little A1 Records compilation; it has a couple of fun tracks on it, but I am linking this almost solely for the free downloadable MP3 of Gregory Kraj's "Champion Reggae" because that song makes pretty well anything better.

"If you want to be a champion! You must believe that you're the champion!"

Next Tuesday, more ManLinkWeek!

Big Month So Far, or: Concerts and Queens and Parades, Oh My (Plus: Crowdsourcing a Clean Shave)

Whirlwinds of activity around here! (Including, if you've been following the weather, actual whirlwinds.)

Yes, the summer months always seem to be the busiest in this city, and if there's one thing I need right now it's to keep myself busy. I'm currently fighting a bout of a frustratingly lingering cough and cold combination -- just like almost everybody I know, almost as if there's some sort of connection -- so it's important to get some sunshine and exercise, do the ol' up-and-about routine, that sort of thing.

Besides drinking entire cases of fluids, and besides stubbornly dragging myself out of bed bright and early every morning specifically just to watch soccer, what have I been up to? Well, buckle yourself in for a fine photographic travelogue, because we'll start from day one out along the Lake. (There are a lot of photos in this post, so slower connections should consider themselves forewarned.)

The Winnipeg Santa Claus Parade, Saturday, November 14th, 2009

A retrospective! That's super-secret blogger code for "it was three or four days ago", but let's not dwell on semantics. These recaps usually tend to serve mainly as historical documents, anyway, as I am constantly reminded by the bizarrely high traffic on my Video Games Live review alone.

Yes, this past Saturday saw the centennial edition of the Winnipeg Santa Claus Parade -- technically the "Power Smart / JCI Winnipeg Santa Claus Parade", but no way am I typing that out any more than I need to. So, for the sake of reasonable brevity -- because I took a lot of pictures, narrowed it down to still a lot of pictures, and then took forever trying to write something for everything -- I'd like to give you folks a nice short-form summary of some high- and lowlights of the event.

The Santa Claus / Grey Cup Parade, Saturday, November 18th, 2006: A Retrospective

That's right -- A retrospective! A very cute way of dressing up how astoundingly late this piece is, if I do say so myself.

I blame my job, of course; I haven't had two days off in a row since the middle of September, and as late they've been calling me in for more shifts because everybody around me is quitting on account of they are far smarter and far more financially secure than I am. Another consideration in this post's delay is its sheer size; this is going to be massive (weighing in at nearly twenty kilobytes of text, and that's before HTML coding), so you'll probably want to grab a drink or something.

Regardless! My apologies for disappearing on you all; with any luck it won't happen again. On to the story.