Skip to main content

CBC Lockout Irony

CBC IRONY

John Webb, the Manitoba president of the Canadian Media Guild, wants to stay in touch with locked out CBCers. He sends out a daily update, but apparently people have been missing it. So he's telling everyone (http://cmgmanitoba.com/) to look for it on their computers ... under Junk Mail.

We couldn't make this up if we tried.
*****************************
MARY LOUISE PARKER AND MOSQUITOES

The biggest female role in Brad Pitt's new movie, The Assassination of Jesse James, has gone to Mary-Louise Parker, who is no stranger to Winnipeg. She's been cast as Zee James, the outlaw's wife.

The latest schedule calls for the film crew to come to Winnipeg Oct. 22 for a five day shoot. She filmed the made-for-TV movie Vinegar Hill in this city last year, and she has strong memories of the shoot. As reported in Variety: Mary-Louise Parker was in Winnipeg "in the middle of a field getting eaten by mosquitoes" when she found out via email that she had been nominated for her supporting role in "Angels in America." (Jul 15, 2004)

Jimm Simon, the owner of a house in Stonewall that was used in the shoot, remembers it well:

"The big day started at 4:30 a.m. when the exterminator arrived to begin fogging the entire yard with malathion so the "stars" wouldn't be bothered by bugs. (He had quite a nasty hacking cough) By 5 a.m. the yard looked like an old Star Trek set with about 5 feet of chemical toxin smog and a guy in the midst of it, bereft of all safety equipment spraying away with a diesel engine fogger that sounded like a small plane landing in the yard."

It looks like Mary-Louise Parker survived the exposure to nerve toxin and is thriving.

[Here's a bit of trivia for you. Who was the first person to play Jesse James in a film?Answer: His own son, Jesse James Jr. - in Jesse James Under the Black Flag (1921) and Jesse James as the Outlaw (1921).]
*************************************
METROPOLITAN THEATRE

There's talk of a big announcement coming regarding the Metropolitan Theatre.

Don't be surprised if it turns out to be the "world's first animation art museum". Winnipeg art dealer David Loch has been working on it for several years. He says such a museum could feature artwork by [Winnipeg-born animator] Charlie Thorson-- who drew Snow White for Walt Disney, and designed the prototype for Bugs Bunny (and even named this world-famous character) for Warner Brothers--films by Oscar-nominated Cordell Barker, and even momentoes of Homer Simpson who was made an honorary citizen of Winnipeg in 2002. (A closer connection is Ned Flanders' potsmoking Canadian counterpart who lives in Winnipeg, as seen in Midnight RX, the first new episode of 2005. )
******************************
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
Monday, August 15, 2005 The Black Rod

Canad Inns has run into some big financing problems, and why do we think this is related to the demise of the Crocus Investment Fund...Plans to build a four-star hotel in Grand Forks was first announced in the summer of 2003....not a single shovel of dirt has been moved. The money's dried up and the city is still waiting for the architects to file some plans.

The Mayor of Grand Forks says he's still confident that construction will begin this year. But he's a desparate man. The Canad Inns Hotel has been dangled in front of his citizens for two years now as a symbol of growth and regeneration. Sort of like the new Hydro Building in downtown Winnipeg.

Wed, Aug. 17, 2005 Grand Forks Herald
The permits Canad Inns needs for its Alerus Center hotel and water park complex are ready, according to Grand Forks administrative coordinator Rick Duquette. Essentially, all officials of the Manitoba-based company need to do now is pay for the permits and construction can begin.
*******************
Aug. 15, 2005 The Black Rod
You remember that this past December Canad Inns was blowing the horns over another big project---another hotel and water park right here, or rather, right beside, Winnipeg. The new entertainment complex would be part of the plans for a new stadium on land owned by the Red River Ex in Headingley.

Haven't heard much about that hotel, either, have you? It seems the feasibility study came back - saying it was feasible to study it some more.

Aug. 25, 2005 The Winnipeg Sun
The Winnipeg Blue Bombers could end up with a new stadium downtown -- but only if it's the right deal for the club and the city, says team president Lyle Bauer. "We've never been pigeon-holed into one spot," Bauer said yesterday. "It just has to be with the right business model and with revenue streams to support the capital that will be required."

*Ahem.*

Dec. 21, 2004, 8 months ago, Winnipeg Free Press
New Stadium Planned;
The football club, Canad Inns and the Red River Exhibition Association are launching a study on the feasibility of building a major sports and entertainment complex. It would be built on land owned by the Red River Ex, on the west side of the Perimeter Highway, near the Assiniboia Downs race track...
*************
The Black Rod has already reviewed the 3 major factors that have slowed momentum for the Red River Ex-backed project:

1) Canad Inns no longer has the option of turning to Sherman Kreiner and the Crocus Fund board for support.
2) The Track was denied a casino licence which we always said was the hidden factor that would help drive a crowd to the waterpark/hotel/stadium project and to the Ex's planned fairgrounds.
3) The Bomber's losing season has diminished enthusiam for a new stadium they still won't fill.
A consultant is expected to release a report on as many as a dozen site options in October.

Popular posts from this blog

The unreported bombshell conspiracy evidence in the Trudeau/SNC-Lavelin scandal

Wow. No, double-wow. A game-changing bombshell lies buried in the supplementary evidence provided to the House of Commons Judiciary Committee by former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould. It has gone virtually unreported since she submitted the material almost a week ago. As far as we can find, only one journalist-- Andrew Coyne, columnist for the National Post--- has even mentioned it and even then he badly missed what it meant, burying it in paragraph 10 of a 14 paragraph story. The gist of the greatest political scandal in modern Canadian history is well-known by now. It's bigger than Adscam, the revelation 15 years ago that prominent members of the Liberal Party of Canada and the party itself funneled tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks into their own pockets from federal spending in Quebec sponsoring ads promoting Canadian unity. That was just venal politicians and a crooked political party helping themselves to public money. The Trudeau-Snc-Lavalin scandal is
Read more

Crips and Bloodz true cultural anchors of Winnipeg's aboriginal gangs

(Bebo tribute page to Aaron Nabess on the right, his handgun-toting friend on the left) At least six murder victims in Winnipeg in the past year are linked to a network of thuglife, gangster rap-styled, mainly aboriginal street gangs calling themselves Crips and Bloods after the major black gangs of L.A. The Black Rod has been monitoring these gangs for several months ever since discovering memorial tributes to victim Josh Prince on numerous pages on Bebo.com, a social networking website like Myspace and Facebook. Josh Prince , a student of Kildonan East Collegiate, was stabbed to death the night of May 26 allegedly while breaking up a fight. His family said at the time he had once been associated with an unidentified gang, but had since broken away. But the devotion to Prince on sites like Watt Street Bloodz and Kingk Notorious Bloodz (King-K-BLOODZ4Life) shows that at the time of his death he was still accepted as one of their own. Our searches of Bebo have turned up another five ga
Read more

Manitoba Hydro is on its deathbed. There, we said it.

Manitoba Hydro is on its deathbed. Oh, you won't find anyone official to say it. Yet . Like relatives trying to appear cheery and optimistic around a loved one that's been diagnosed with terminal cancer, the people in power are in the first stage of grief -- denial. The prognosis for Hydro was delivered three weeks ago at hearings before the Public Utilities Board where the utility was seeking punishingly higher rates for customers in Manitoba. It took us this long to read through the hundred-plus pages of transcript, to decipher the coded language of the witnesses, to interpret what they were getting at, and, finally, to understand the terrible conclusion.  We couldn't believe it, just as, we're sure, you can't--- so we did it all again, to get a second opinion, so to speak.  Hydro conceded to the PUB that it undertook a massive expansion program--- involving three (it was once four) new dams and two new major powerlines (one in the United States)---whi
Read more

Nahanni Fontaine, the NDP's Christian-bashing, cop-smearing, other star candidate

As the vultures of the press circle over the wounded Liberal Party of Manitoba, one NDP star candidate must be laughing up her sleeve at how her extremist past has escaped the scrutiny of reporters and pundits. Parachuted into a safe NDP seat in Winnipeg's North End, she nonetheless feared a bruising campaign against a well-heeled Liberal opponent.  Ha ha.  Instead, the sleepy newspeeps have turned a blind eye to her years of vitriolic attacks on Christianity, white people, and police. * She's spent years  bashing Christianity  as the root cause of all the problems of native people in Canada. * She's called for  a boycott of white businesses . * And with her  Marxist research partner, she's  smeared city police as intransigent racists . Step up Nahanni Fontaine, running for election in St. John's riding as successor to the retiring Gord Macintosh. While her male counterpart in the NDP's galaxy of stars, Wab Kinew, has responded to the controversy over
Read more

Exposing the CBC/WFP double-team smear of a hero cop

Published since 2006 on territory ceded, released, surrendered and yielded up in 1871 to Her Majesty the Queen and successors forever. Exposing the CBC/FP double-team smear of a hero cop Some of the shoddiest journalism in recent times appeared this long August weekend when the CBC and Winnipeg Free Press doubled teamed on a blatant smear of a veteran city police officer. In the latest example of narrative journalism these media outlets spun stories with total disregard for facts that contradicted the central message of the reports which, simplified, is: police are bad and the system is covering up. Let's start with the story on the taxpayer funded CBC by Sarah Petz that can be summed up in the lead. "A February incident where an off-duty Winnipeg officer allegedly knocked a suspect unconscious wasn't reported to the province's police watchdog, and one criminologist says it shows how flawed oversight of law enforcement can be." There you have it. A policeman, not
Read more

Winnipeg needs a new police chief - ASAP

When did the magic die? A week ago the Winnipeg police department delivered the bad news---crime in the city is out of control. The picture painted by the numbers (for 2018) was appalling. Robberies up ten percent in  a single year.  (And that was the good news.) Property crimes were up almost 20 percent.  Total crime was 33 percent higher than the five year average. The measure of violent crime in Winnipeg had soared to a rating of 161.  Only four years earlier it stood at 116. That's a 38 percent deterioration in safety. How did it happen? How, when in 2015 the police and Winnipeg's police board announced they had discovered the magic solution to crime? "Smart Policing" they called it.    A team of crime analysts would pore through data to spot crime hot-spots and as soon as they identified a trend (car thefts, muggings, liquor store robberies) they could call in police resources to descend on the problem and nip it. The police
Read more