NHL’s hot topics waiting for answers

Fringe players in the National Hockey League will have special reason to enjoy the 2025-26 season, which gets under way this week, thanks to a nearly three-week break — book those Caribbean vacations, boys — smack dab in the middle of the 82-game regular season.

That’s because the league’s best players — McDavid, Matthews, Rantanen, Crosby et al — will be playing for their countries at the Olympic Games in Italy. The NHL schedule, which increases from 82 to 84 games per team next year, will be dark from Feb. 6 until play resumes on Feb. 25.

Picking the various countries’ Olympic teams will be one of the most discussed aspects of the 2025-26 NHL season, but there are other hot topics, too. Such as …

— Can the Florida Panthers pull a three-peat? After beating Edmonton in the Stanley Cup final in back-to-back years, the team re-signed almost all of its key players and even though star forward Sasha Barkov could miss most or all of the season, there’s no reason to believe coach Paul Maurice will not have another juggernaut on his hands;

Rivers unveils new mural

RIVERS — A new mural has been painted in Rivers to commemorate history in the community.

The Rivers Train Station Restoration Committee hosted a ribbon cutting on Sept. 24 to designate a new mural on the side of the Westoba Credit Union building. The mural depicts a bicycle, a globe, a factory, blossoms and ribbons.

Committee member Donna Morken told the Sun the mural is about a former bicycle factory that operated in the ’70s and early ’80s near Rivers. The factory was a partnership within Canada, but also across the Pacific Ocean.

“It’s an amazing historical event that nobody really thinks about,” Morken said. “This is a country from another side of the world that came to produce bicycles here.”

CSOs not coming to Carberry by end of year

The mayor of Carberry says a community safety officer will not be added to the community by the end of year, as previously hoped.

The plan to hire a community safety officer has been halted by some recent changes, including the loss of the town manager, Mayor Ray Muirhead told the Sun. The manager left for another job in Dauphin, and the town has had to prioritize and take a step back as it adjusts.

“We didn’t have the man or woman power to do all the stuff we need to do,” Muirhead said. “We, as a council, just said something has to be put on hold. And CSO, unfortunately, was it.”

The plan will pick up sometime nearer to 2027, Muirhead estimated. Other projects are expected to be completed by that time, freeing up staff to go through the long process of recruiting CSOs, he said.

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.”

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.

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.