One of our most interesting weeks with a wide variety of local, national, international and sports topics as we skated into February.
Monday: A party in the 1500 block of Ross Avenue turned into a riot over the weekend with 5 charged for injuries sustained to a pair of residents who wanted to clear the house of troublemakers. The usual note to media was made that no matter how hard MSM tries to lump the address in with the North End, Ross Avenue is in this case, in Weston. Not that the North End was out of the news, as a failed drive-by robbery - presumably the cold kept the muggers inside their vehicle on Leila - resulted in shots being fired when the intended victims refused to walk up to the car and hand over their wallets.
The Winnipeg Free Press continued their biased campaign for taxicab deregulation with a letter to the editor supporting their editorial stance. It would better have served the public discourse, however, had the letter writer been identified not as some impartial shlub who couldn't get through on the phone lines to the cab companies on a busy Friday night, but as the very same Sandy Hopkins who is the former chair of the Winnipeg Airport Authority, owners of the proposed shuttle service we have covered recently.
While we were at it, the decaying reputation of the broadsheet took another hit of their own doing, when a Free Press story about the native leadership walking away from talks to devolve responsibilities from the federal department was strangely recycled as fresh news, with a barely rewritten lead and 2 quotes from AMC chief Ron Evans inserted into Aldo Santin's story, days after it had already run the first time. No one has ever seen such a practice where readers pay for the same story twice.
Along with noting the retirement of Ken Dryden's jersey by the Montreal Canadiens, we spent a great time exploring the many quotes from another Hall of Fame goalie, Lorne "Gump" Worsley, who passed away at age 77. The most famous of which was probably when he was with the sad-sack New York Rangers in the 1950's. Asked by a writer which NHL team gave him the most trouble, the squat punster immediately replied "the Rangers".
Tuesday: The family of Matthew Dumas announced they were filing a lawsuit against city police for his shooting death last year, when he failed to drop a screwdriver while advancing on police. We reviewed at length the facts including our own investigation at the scene two years ago into the circumstances of the chase and confrontation.
The MSM has a convenient memory loss when it comes to Matthew Dumas and try to portray him as the poster boy for their pet causes such as "police brutality" towards innocent native people.
For one thing, they never include his fighting off two cops who tried to take him into custody in a backlane after he ran away rather than being questioned about a robbery in East Kildonan. Dumas was in breach of probation at that moment, being in a possession of the screwdriver for starters.
Many outlets also left out the fact Dumas did not react to instructions to stop advancing towards police after being pepper-sprayed. Listeners were asked a question - if you ran away from cops, fought two of them off and ran around Dufferin Avenue in circles, didn't drop to the ground after being cornered and sprayed, and kept coming towards a cop with a screwdriver in your hand, would you not expect to be shot?
The other issue of the day, was the attempt by various interests to suppress the Conservative ads showing footage of the Liberal leadrship debates last year, where Stephane Dion was slammed by Michael Ignatieff for failign to act on implementing the Kyoto accords when he was minister. Claims that copyright laws were broken, when the footage was of a debate broadcast over public airwaves, were not only ridiculous but if true, offered proof positive that the laws needed to be changed. Can you imagine a situation where aspiring prime ministers make pathetic comments on tape about their performance in cabinet and political parties were prohibited from showing the public what was said unedited?
Wednesday: Kelly Dehn was in court covering a decision for CKY and could not be on-air for his weekly crime and cops review, but we had plenty to fill with. Emails asked us to again explain the Dumas case from beginning to end, starting with the botched robbery in East kildonan which the police were investigationg when they wanted to question a group of young men on dufferin, Dumas being one of them.
It was a strange case to be sure, as the robbers broke into the wrong house on Martin Avenue and upon realizing their mistake, called for a taxi to make a getaway to the Lord Selkirk projects where police picked up the investigation. Dumas bolted from the group, fought off an officer in the lane behind Dufferin just west of Salter Street, tried to hide in a backyard, and was noticed by a resident because of their dog barking at the intrusion into the yard. Dumas tried to play coy with the resident when the officer scrambled towards him and led him away by the arm towards the back lane. When another officer joined them a fight ensued and Dumas took off, running around houses in circles until the police lost sight of him.
As he made his way onto the street, he walked right between 3 officers looking for him and did not follow their orders to hit the ground. In the ensuing standoff he was shot by an officer who although repeatedly accused of a racist motive, is himself Metis - another fact often left out by some Winnipeg media more concerned with pandering to special-interest groups than in telling the truth. After all, it only took the Free Press a year to report in the fight in the backlane and CBC refused to do so even when their reporters knew the facts that Dumas fought police and escaped from custody.
Don Hurst, ADM of Manitoba Labour and Immigration, joind us to explain changes to the Workplace Safety and Health Act and gave some practical examples of how the legislation was expected to protect workers from ergonomic and other injuries.
Listeners were also informed that 2 Fort Rouge haunts were suddenly closed - the Osborne Freehouse on Stradbrook claimed that their liquor licence allowing the sale of alcohol without a food purchase somehow led to their demise (uh-huh), and Level One, the Corydon Avenue restaurant and bar owned by former cop Ken Houston, was shuttered almost immediately after Houston was charged with weapons and drug offences after being apprehended with a Hell's Angel gang member in his truck.
Thursday: Adrienne Batra of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation made her first appearance in 2007 on our show and she had lots to say about school property taxes which is a growing issue that more people are asking questions about. She also weighed in with her opposition for any government funding towards a new stadium if the Blue Bombers became privately owned.
Almost everyone who grew up in Winnipeg is familiar with channel 8, the Grand Forks ABC outlet that has been a cable mainstay or 36 years. A story on WDAZ-TV caught out attention because not one journalist in Manitoba has tackled the subject of local blogs and their impact on political and public affairs.
Jessica Dugan explained why she developed the two-parter and gave some insight into the cyber community in North Dakota, which we said is hardly the first thing one thinks about when it comes to our prairie neighbour. Significantly Jessica noted that WDAZ readily admits to picking up story ideas and leads from their web counterparts and has a harmonious relationship with "Grand Forks Guy", "Conservative Yahoo" and others.
Lastly in touching on a story we found about a consumer crisis for Mexican families- they cannot afford the staple food of corn for tortillas because global demand for corn to manufacture ethanol is hiking the price beyind their reach- we told the story about our own role in the Manitoba ethanol movement.
In late 1989 the Filmon government held a press conference to trumpet a $1 Million investment in a fledgling ethanol plant in Minnedosa (12 jobs created, etc etc).
An intrepid MTN reporter waited out the usual vacuous press-release driven pro-forma questions of the Premier by the zombies in the legislative press gallery and finally lobbed an innocent query:
If the government was so supportive of "environmentally-friendly fuels", why wasn't it being used in the fleet of 2900 provincial vehicles?
Premier Gary Filmon squirmed, said something about it was coincidentally just being added to the agenda for discussions, turned away, smirked and finally cracked a smile at being "gotcha-ed" by the question.
Nowadays it is official government policy, so we take some pride in having been first to push the idea along.
Friday: Kelly Dehn made a belated appearance for his weekly crime review, staruing with the court case he had been covering wherein a Winnipeg woman Sandra Horeczy, won her case against police for having confined her and her young son for hours without counsel when a search warrant - based on a bad tip- was executed at her North End home. The delay was exacerbated when a police gun accidentally discharged into a wall resulting in that part of the house turning into a separate investigation scene.
Ron East of Canada Sheli had a lot to say when we interviewed him aboiut middle eastern and international affairs.
The PA threat against Canada has been completely unreported locally as has the idea Israel join NATO and stand with Canada and her allies against threats to our democracies by rogue states and terrorist groups. France's president Jacques Chirac had to backtrack from comments in an official interview when his remark that it didn't matter if Iran nuked Israel came out.
Chirac pleaded he didn't know he was being quoted (uh-huh); it came out incorrectly (suuure); and in the official transcript released by the palace, his comments were edited and declarations he never said at the time were inserted after the fact, to sooth any possible anger from terror-harbouring countries. A real world leader.
The Blue Bombers ran an ad in the National Post and Globe and Mail looking for expressions of interest in stadium redevelopment, and we caught onto the fact that ad was specific to the current Polo Park location, meaning the Red River Ex site option in Headingly was officially DOA.
So much for the feasibility study.
