Indigenous off-Broadway musical’s tour starts in Virden

A fully-Indigenous cast rendition of the musical “Grease” kicked off a tour in Virden this fall and will be travelling through the maritimes and on to the West Coast.

“Bear Grease,” an Indigenous spin on the famous “Grease” musical, started its tour in Virden on Sept. 21 after its Broadway debut. The cast was set to continue to Halifax in early October, producer Henry Cloud Andrade told the Sun.

The tour just so happened to work out that Virden Aud Theatre made the most sense for a starting point, Andrade said. The team continued to Winnipeg for a set of shows, before going off to the East Coast.

It’s been a wild ride since conceiving the project in 2019, he said, and the show’s recent traction with audiences has been amazing to see.

Firefighters bond over mental health

A recent twist of fate has shown how firefighters are bonded in Manitoba against mental health challenges.

Andrew Cherkas, a firefighter out of Portage La Prairie, set out to walk across Manitoba in September to raise money for a mental health program. After 292 kilometres, however, just over halfway, he fell to injury and was forced to stop.

Ten firefighters across south Manitoba lended their legs to finish the remainder of his journey. The turn of events became a prime example of the solidarity he was walking for, he said. |

Build a strong reading habit with the local library

Fall is settling in and with just a few more weeks until winter shows up, it’s a great time to re-build a strong reading habit for the whole family, with an assist from the local library and all it has to offer.

Curling up under a blanket with a good book and a hot drink while the cold creeps around your door is a fine way to fend off the chilly weather. But before you get too comfy, you’ll want to get a few good books on deck. September is “Library Card Sign-up Month” and October is Reading Month. Alex Rogowsky, manager of programming and community services, at the Brandon Public Library, shared a few pointers on getting the most you can out of that card to get you through the fall and winter.

Under the umbrella of the Western Manitoba Regional Library (WMRL), Brandon has two branches, one downtown at Unit 1, 710 Rosser Ave., and in the Shoppers Mall at Unit 50A 1570-18th Street. Other branch locations throughout the region can be found at the WMRL website: wmrl.ca.

To sign up for a card, you will need to visit in person and bring a piece of identification. This could be a driver’s licence, a Manitoba health card, or anything that has your name and mailing address on it.

Danger deepens bond between K9 and handler

“Break!” says Const. Adam Philpott, commanding his bulletproof-vest clad Belgian Malinois dog to sprint in a field outside of Brandon. The officer of Brandon Police Service shouts again, and his dog stops halfway, fixated ahead on a ball.

When the K9 unit dog Zeus is commanded to retrieve the toy and bring it back, he jumps up and pushes his paws on Philpott’s chest. It looks typical of a man and man’s best friend. But most dogs don’t wear bulletproof vests, and most dog owners don’t have on their mind the reason why that vest is needed.

The relationship between a K9 handler and their animal is just different from normal dogs, Philpott said in a recent interview. There are many reasons, but shared trauma is one of them, and the necessity to work closely together in dangerous and stressful situations.

“He’s my partner,” Philpott said. “I trust him 1,000 percent to do his job, and he trusts me.”

Behold, the mighty oak

Given their place in folklore and literature, it’s no wonder that I’m a fan of oak trees. Oaks have graced the works of Shakespeare and the tales of Robinhood, were sacred to the Druids of the British Isles as well as ancient gods including Zeus and Thor.

Yet, born and raised on the farm in Basswood, we didn’t have much opportunity to interact with them. Oaks were “southern trees,” something you read about in a Mark Twain story, or in Merry Olde England.

Which demonstrates my ignorance, of course. As the vast majority of readers will know, oaks are a common tree in southwestern Manitoba, found south and east of a rough line drawn from Miniota to Neepawa, and then north to Dauphin. And this doesn’t include the oaks that grow further north of this line in the Assiniboine and Little Saskatchewan River valleys.

Bur oaks, the native oak in Manitoba, are a tough tree of the prairies and plains of the American mid-west. They are well adapted to the grasslands as their thick corky bark protects them from heat and drought. The bark also shields them from damage from all but the hottest fires.

Eviction comes in Boissevain trailer court land deal

BOISSEVAIN — Residents are vacating a Boissevain trailer park this week to clear the way for an expansion of a manufacturing business.

Four households in the Buckingham East Trailer Court have reached their eviction dates after more than a year of talk and warning. The Municipality of Boissevain-Morton is helping residents move, as it intends to sell the land to Western Archrib for an industrial expansion.

Resident Cheryl Nelson told the Sun that she and her husband are moving to Brandon as a result of the eviction. The couple was looking at more than $10,000 in costs to move, so they decided to spend that to get to Brandon, where they planned on moving eventually.

Nelson and her husband said they would have stayed in Boissevain had there been more support through the move, but they felt they weren’t shown enough respect during the process. Nelson said a downside for the community is that her husband, a working nurse, something rare in small communities, will be leaving Boissevain because of the eviction.

A Swainson’s hawk stretches its wings before taking off from a sign post along Veterans Way just outside Brandon recently. (Matt Goerzen/The Brandon Sun)

Rural Roundup — Sept. 25, 2025

DAUPHIN

A pilot program aimed at cleansing Dauphin properties of unsightly graffiti has not had the uptake city administration was hoping for.

To date, a total of 15 of the 120 free graffiti removal kits available have been claimed. Deputy city manager Lisa Gaudet said the idea was to make cleanup easier and more affordable.

We were hoping to get better uptake on it because the bylaw enforcement officer did an inventory of all the graffiti tags in Dauphin and there were quite a few,” Gaudet said, adding some of the tags are very old.

Souris Scarecrow Days goes ’80s

Scarecrow Days is returning to Souris this weekend with a new theme of the ’80s.

The event, from Sept. 26 to 28, will decorate the town of Souris with scarecrows in the theme of the bright, neon colours of the good ol’ days. A host of events will also take place for the weekend in town, such as zucchini races, a car show and yard sales.

The event is held to grow public fabric and promote the town, said an organizer, Loretta Turner.

“Just bringing the community together, bringing newcomers in, keeping our local residents here and just celebrating what we all think here, that Souris is a great community and a fun community,” she told the Sun this month.

McDavid’s contract the talk of the NHL

September is baseball and football season, but in Canada hockey is a 12-month-a-year deal, so no one should be surprised that one of the hottest sports story today — other than Blue Jays’ mania — is about Connor McDavid and ‘will he or won’t he’ sign a contract extension with the Edmonton Oilers.

Without an extension, the world’s best player will play the 2025-26 season on the final year of an eight-year, $100 million contract he signed in 2017. But other than stating the obvious cliche that he wants to make sure his next contract is best for him and his family — it will be, no matter how much money is involved — his contract situation will have huge implications around the National Hockey League.

While he’ll have plenty of money for the fanciest of cars, the most elaborate home, the most spectacular off-season travel adventures and nothing but the best in jewels and clothing for his wife Lauren, what McDavid wants more than anything is to win a Stanley Cup. Since he’s been an Oiler since entering the NHL in 2015, he’d love to do it with Edmonton.

But is it possible? Even though the league’s salary cap is rising to $95.5 million this year, $104 million next year and $113.5 million the year after, paying McDavid the maximum 20 per cent of the Oilers’ total salary could make it difficult for general manager Stan Bowman to surround McDavid with enough quality players to win the Cup.

Q&A with new Spruce Woods MLA

Newly elected Spruce Woods MLA Colleen Robbins is set to step foot in the provincial Legislature on Oct. 1. She was voted in as the newest member of the assembly in an Aug. 26 byelection. Brandon Sun reporter Alex Lambert spoke with her on Sept. 9 about the new job. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Alex Lambert — Thank you for making time today. I’ll start with the Chinese canola tariffs. China put a 75.8 per cent tariff on canola last month. What do you think Manitoba should do about that?

Colleen Robbins — Well, I think Manitoba should be out looking for either new markets or a way of helping the farmers with the tariff loss, but they need to do something quickly. I’m only on my second day as an actual MLA, and so I’m going to sit down with MLA Jeff Bereza, our agriculture critic, and some farmers. But in the meantime, I just think that something needs to be done, and I honestly believe that we need to be looking at other markets to sell. We shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket because this is the situation we get.

AL — You represent a mainly rural riding that has a lot of farmers. As someone who represents these farmers, what will you do specifically to help the pressures that they’re facing?

Grain harvest

Uncut wheat rises in front of a combine operated by 18-year-old Samuel Gurr on Tuesday morning on an acreage northeast of Brandon. (Matt Goerzen/The Brandon Sun)

Jays can thank big bats for success

The top five reasons the Toronto Blue Jays are going to give Canadian sports fans an October playoff thrill: George Springer, Bo Bichette, Daulton Varsho, Addison Barger and Alejandro Kirk.

Notice that the five names mentioned above do not include a pitcher, because the Jays have led the American League East for a good chunk of the season in spite of poor to average pitching. It has been decent at the front end (starters) and dismal at the back (relief corps). Only four American League teams have given up more runs than the Jays, but only one, the Yankees, has scored more.

The Blue Jays are a team that can never be counted out. A great example was Sept. 3 in Cincinnati, where the Reds jumped on starter Shane Bieber for five runs in the second inning and a 5-0 lead. No problem. The Jays put their awesome offence into overdrive, pounded out five home runs and 18 hits en route to a 13-9 victory.

Springer and Bichette have been the catalysts for the Jays. Bichette, in his seven years with the Blue Jays, had a rough season in 2024, batting .225 and playing in only 81 games due to injuries. This year, he leads the major leagues in hits, is batting comfortably over .300 and is en route to eclipsing his career-high RBI total (102 in 2021). Springer’s resurgence has been as good, or better.

How to properly pack that backpack

If your kids are dragging their feet on their way to school, it might not be natural kid-type reluctance — it might be a too-heavy backpack. And it’s more common than you might think.

Dr. Kaileigh Bresky, from LivChiro (livchiro.ca), has 11 years as a practising chiropractor with additional training in paediatrics and care for pregnant women. She shared information from her own expertise, and some numbers and pointers from an infographic prepared by one of her colleagues.

Research on the subject has shown that overloaded backpacks can lead students to adapt to the weight by altering their posture with the potential to do real harm to their spine and shoulders. Anywhere from 30 to 70 per cent of school-aged children will complain of back pain, with 20 to 30 per cent of children suffering from recurrent or chronic back pain.

Bresky said there are signs to watch.