About James O'Connor:

James O’Connor is the Brandon Sun’s managing editor. He writes a column of his personal views on various issues and events.

• Pollsters slipping

  Pollsters have been left with some egg on their pie-charts lately. Some recent elections have shown how the once-trusted science of polling can not only be slightly off, it can be all out wrong.

  View Full Column | 05/24/2013 1:00 AM | 0

• Log on at your own risk

  A woman’s remains were found in a sketchy rooming house in Winnipeg’s Point Douglas neighbourhood. Myrna Letandre was last seen out for a stroll in downtown Winnipeg in 2006. Sources told the Free Press Letandre’s murder case is linked to a B.C. homicide of a woman, former Winnipegger Jennifer McPherson.

  View Full Column | 05/17/2013 11:32 PM | 0

• Access or bypass?

  As I was driving back from Winnipeg recently, I noticed some new signage around the finally completed Highway 110. The roadway, unofficially known as Brandon’s eastern access route, has been officially open for several months.

  View Full Column | 05/11/2013 1:00 AM | 0

• Drilling down in Meadows Ward

  What a difference a year has made in the life of Kerry Auriat. The man who successfully used a local Internet bulletin board to organize and promote a successful anti-tax petition one year ago has gone from a private citizen simply doing the right thing — “We’re just a bunch of average folks with a forum to make our voices heard,” he wrote on eBrandon — to a potential candidate for city council.

  View Full Column | 05/3/2013 1:00 AM | 1

• NDP tax while Tories are simply taxing

  ME: “You’re willing to break an election promise? You don’t mind being called a liar by the Opposition?” GREG: “Nobody likes to be called names. But what’s important when you’re in a leadership role is to make sure we forge a strong future for the province.”

  View Full Column | 04/20/2013 1:00 AM | 1

• Brandon's on concert map

  “There’s no doubt, if we experience some sellouts and stuff like that, it then attracts more promoters and it obviously generates additional revenue for the facility. So it’s a win-win for everybody.” — Keystone Centre general manager Neil Thomson, April 2012

  View Full Column | 04/13/2013 1:00 AM | 0

• Changes coming at the Sun

  A few weeks ago, I started a project to examine what we do and how we do things here at the Brandon Sun. For a news organization now in its 132nd year serving Brandon and Westman, we have evolved as the industry has changed. We’re in a unique situation in Westman — a very good one indeed — in terms of being the leading news source and the chief vehicle that advertisers turn to drive sales.

  View Full Column | 04/6/2013 1:00 AM | 0

• So in the end, it was all hot air

  Something’s frozen over somewhere — I’ve agreed with Kerry Auriat. In my absence last week — I was in southern Ontario visiting my mother — guest columnist Auriat wrote an excellent column on a topic that’s been as divisive as any other over the years in Brandon — casinos.

  View Full Column | 03/30/2013 1:00 AM | 0

• O for Connors

  I was going to let others speak about Stompin’ Tom Connors. After all, following his passing into the great doughnut shop in the sky on March 6 at the age of 77, there was plenty said and even more written.

  View Full Column | 03/15/2013 1:00 AM | 0

• Change can be good & bad

  The headline on a letter to the editor in yesterday’s Sun read: “A Little More Arts Coverage Would Be Nice.” The author, Marie Graham of Brandon, was politely pointing out that the coverage of the local arts scene isn’t what is could be. I agree. And I disagree.

  View Full Column | 03/8/2013 11:16 PM | 0

• Dinners and deadbeats

  “The father of my paperboy refused to let him deliver today’s Brandon Sun because of the front-page article.” — An online quote following last Tuesday’s A1 story on the sentencing of a soldier for a sex crime.

  View Full Column | 03/2/2013 1:00 AM | 1

• Bewitched or bedeviled?

  It was no secret among the community of commercial photographers in Winnipeg in the early 2000s that Richard Dow was a creep. As a Winnipeg city cop, he ran a sideline photo studio business out of his house where he specialized in “glamour” pictures of young women.

  View Full Column | 02/23/2013 1:00 AM | 0

• Was it really the last picture show?

  So the Brandon Folk, Music and Art Society defied critics and met its deadline to submit a revised funding proposal to the federal government for its Strand Theatre project. Sure, the $1.2-million funding application was mailed on the afternoon of the deadline of Jan. 31 imposed by potential funders Renaissance Brandon, but it’s in the mail nonetheless.

  View Full Column | 02/16/2013 1:00 AM | 0

• WATERGATE: Get the lead out

  “I spent 25 years drinking tap water in a house in the 300-block of Second Street. Am I going to die of lead poisoning??” — A former resident of the Blue Zone who now lives in the Green Zone.

  View Full Column | 02/9/2013 1:00 AM | 0

• You take the high road …

  POP QUIZ: In the Brandon way of thinking, taking the high road could be more likened to: a) “The Road Not Taken,” a 1916 Robert Frost poem

  View Full Column | 02/1/2013 1:00 AM | 1

• It's craps on a casino

  The NDP showed it’s really gotten quite good at playing the game of politics this week. Not only did it — or a Crown agency, or political ally — leak a major announcement to a friendly Winnipeg media outlet Tuesday about a brilliant new gaming policy, it did so while Premier Greg Selinger was neatly tucked away at a reception in Brandon.

  View Full Column | 12/1/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• The Kat purrs on new album

  When I was an entertainment writer for a few years at the Winnipeg Sun in the ’90s, I never realized that one day a good part of that profession would virtually disappear. When I wasn’t doing phone interviews with touring acts for upcoming concerts, or writing my weekly column about the goings-on in the bar scene in Winnipeg — yes, I got paid to do that — a lot of my time was spent listening to new album releases for the weekly review section of the paper.

  View Full Column | 01/19/2013 1:00 AM | 0

• Interesting conflictions

  As the old saying goes, you can’t be “a little bit pregnant.” But in the carnival of confusion that our city council has devolved into during the past year, I guess it should really come as no shock that a councillor who admits a direct business tie with one of the Lieutenant Governor’s Winter Festival’s pavilions is allowed to bring forward a motion that greatly helps promote the event.

  View Full Column | 01/12/2013 1:00 AM | 1

• Transparency, please

  Homer: I saw weird stuff in that place last night. Weird, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, godless, evil stuff! And I want in. Carl: We don’t, uh, know what you’re talking about, Homer.

  View Full Column | 01/4/2013 1:00 AM | 0

• Making Brandon a better place

  I’m changing things up a bit this year when it comes to my powerful people list. For the past five years, I wrote how western Manitobans are like the Rodney Dangerfields of this province — no matter how hard we try, we get no respect. And I produced a list of the 30 “most powerful” people in Westman, with honourable mentions that stretched the list of names to 50.

  View Full Column | 12/28/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Santa Selinger's a very big spender

  Dear Santa Selinger, Sometimes you make writing this weekly column so easy and so much fun.

  View Full Column | 12/22/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Pal's new crib rocks the 'Peg

  “I was born a poor black child. I remember the days, sitting on the porch with my family, singing and dancing, down in Mississippi.” — Steve Martin as Navin R. Johnson.

  View Full Column | 12/15/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• When a tweet is a Sound Off at the Sun

  Last Tuesday, I gave the TV a rest and had a rare social evening out on a work night. At one point during the evening I played some VLTs, which were the new games — I believe they are the third generation of the machines first introduced in Manitoba bars and lounges in the ’90s.

  View Full Column | 12/8/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• Casting off a Sun staffer at The Dock

  I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay Watching the tide roll away

  View Full Column | 12/1/2012 1:00 AM | 0

• O'Connor's column returns Saturday

  I’m cutting my column writing hiatus short and will return Editor’s Notebook to its regular spot in Saturday’s paper starting this week, Dec. 1. I had intended to wait until the new year, but I have too much to say that I just can’t squeeze out in 140-character tweets.

  View Full Column | 11/30/2012 1:00 AM | 0

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