Latest news with #Ivanov
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How ‘The Penguin' transformed real NYC locations into Gotham's criminal underworld (see the exclusive concept art)
Who knew The Penguin owes a debt of gratitude to Popeye Doyle? As production designer Kalina Ivanov tells Gold Derby, Matt Reeves, the director of 2022's The Batman and an executive producer on The Penguin, informed her that the "inspiration" for his vision of Gotham City was The French Connection, William Friedkin's 1971 neo-noir crime thriller starring Gene Hackman as the unorthodox cop Doyle, which won five Oscars, including Best Picture. "That is something I held very dear in my heart," Ivanov says, "because I really wanted to make a new version of The French Connection." See exclusive sketches, concept art, and set photos from The Penguin in our gallery above. More from GoldDerby Janelle James on Ava's challenging year on 'Abbot Elementary': 'They kind of threw everything at me this season' 'Death Becomes Her' costume designer Paul Tazewell on creating show's spectacular outfits: 'Theater-making is about the impossible' (exclusive images) Jamie Lee Curtis eyes historic back-to-back Emmy win as Comedy Guest Actress race heats up Colin Farrell reprises his villainous role of Oswald "Oz" Cobb/the Penguin in the HBO limited series, after having a supporting role in The Batman. Following the events of that motion picture, The Penguin chronicles the character's rise to power in Gotham's criminal underworld, which was filmed in and around New York City. "It's rare to meet a producer and actor that will actually come and talk to you and have a real design meeting," Ivanov says about Farrell. "I showed him all the designs, and particularly his apartment, and he was instrumental in the design of the whole show." Courtesy of Kalina Ivanov/HBO Max While Lauren LeFranc was the showrunner, producer, and writer of the TV spin-off, Reeves was still "involved," Ivanov explains. "We had some creative meetings, and occasionally, we would send him materials, and he was very aware of everything we were doing. He was staying behind the scenes, but he was communicative with Lauren in the script area." LeFranc is "one of the nicest people on the planet," claims the Emmy-winning production designer for Grey Gardens (2009). "I got to know her through this experience, and I can say that she is perhaps the best showrunner I've ever had. That doesn't come lightly, because I've had some good ones, but she's very communicative and very thoughtful. I just loved working with her." Growing up in Bulgaria, Ivanov was a "theater kid" who wanted to be an actress, until she realized "that was a disaster," so she set her sights on designing. "I suspect that was because my uncle was an architect," she reveals. "I studied theater, and then we escaped from Bulgaria. I ended up at NYU as an undergraduate in a graduate program, if you can imagine that. But it was a very, very good education." Courtesy of Kalina Ivanov/HBO Max One of Ivanov's favorite locations in The Penguin is the Falcone mansion, which is on Long Island. "It's one of The Great Gatsby mansions, but it wasn't on the Sound, it was more in inland," she recalls. "The owners were incredibly generous with us. They made time for us to be able to film. They did not bat an eye when we offered to enhance the exterior with our fountain. As a matter of fact, they thought it was a good idea to have a fountain!" For the interior of the mansion, she "enhanced it quite substantially" after being influenced by an Italian villa on Lake Como. "What I liked about that villa was the darker colors, and so I thought it would be good to have a lot of black, a lot of gold, but sparingly, not overwhelmingly," she details. "The rest of it was done in Venetian plaster. We had a lot of textures, and the amazing pre-Renaissance murals were everywhere." The trolley depot set was built inside Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, which Ivanov states is the "biggest one in New York, and for 15 years nobody could shoot there." She continues on, "I loved the lobby that existed, and I wanted it to be a working man's cathedral. Going with Matt's theme of The French Connection being always under subways and arches, I went with that idea of arches for the trolley depot. The columns that we put in mimicked the detail from the lobby, so the relationship between the location and the set was perfect." Courtesy of Kalina Ivanov/HBO Max She divulges, "The trolley cars were modern, so we retrofitted them and made them look like they've been there since 1957, because that's when we discovered the last trolley left the station. They were brought in, and the tunnel was built around the cars, in a sense." The Penguin's "journey" was important to Ivanov and LeFranc. As the artisan declares, "At the beginning, he lives on the third story of the abandoned hotel, and at the end he will graduate to the penthouse, to give him an arc of progression. The apartment at the beginning was a jeweler's repair shop, and I had done a little bit of research about that. And so the Penguin lived in a room that used to be the vault, basically." Ivanov designed the entire abandoned hotel "through visual effects," and planned to create the sets for it, but "our budget was not able to support that." Instead, the team found a real art deco building in downtown NYC with a floor that was under renovation, which she saw as a "completely blank slate." She remembers, "That worked well for us, because I was able to bring the columns, the floor, and the frescoes, which this time were the hounds of Zeus. We were able to create everything, from the chandeliers to every single piece of detail. In a way, it was a stage. But it was on the 30th floor of a real building." Courtesy of Kalina Ivanov/HBO Max Monroe's jazz club is one of Ivanov's favorite sets from The Penguin, as budget issues caused her to improvise on the fly. "We ended up with a location that had Hieronymus Bosch murals that were absolutely not appropriate for our movie," she recalls. "So, as I was wondering how I could handle that, a light bulb went off in my head, and I said, 'OK, we cover the murals.' And so we built in the columns, the booths themselves, the intricate work behind them, and the blue curtain, which hid the murals, and then we put our own paintings in front of that." The designer also "built this chandelier, and we put it up from the beginning, and then we dropped it in the end, and the scene is so good with the dropped chandelier." Ivanov adds, "It was so hard to come up with a solution, and yet I was able to find a solution and make and use the set that I had already planned on building." All episodes of The Penguin are streaming now on Max. The limited series is eligible at the 2025 Emmys, and Ivanov says a nomination "would mean the world to me." SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Launch Gallery: 'The Penguin' exclusive sketches, concept art, and set photos from production designer Kalina Ivanov Best of GoldDerby 'Étoile' creators on writing a show for 'genius' Luke Kirby How 'The Handmaid's Tale' series finale sets up 'The Testaments' TV Visual Effects supervisor roundtable: 'Black Mirror,' 'The Boys,' 'The Wheel of Time' Click here to read the full article.
Otago Daily Times
24-05-2025
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Woman duped out of millions by lover has to repay investigators
A woman took US$10 million ($16.9m) from a bank account she shared with her father and gave most of it to her lover to invest on her behalf, only for him to flee to Italy with it. Russian woman Inna Shibalova had fallen in love with a married man, Andrey Ivanov, and believed he would invest the money on her behalf so she could provide for her mother and sister. Shibalova also believed Ivanov would leave his wife to be with her. Ivanov travelled to Italy, under the guise of his imminent divorce from his wife, and assured Shibalova that he'd invested the money. But instead, he had taken the money and disappeared. When Shibalova, who was living in Melbourne at the time, realised she had been deceived, she engaged Australian private investigations firm MPOL Group Pty (MPOL) to recover the money. MPOL contracted a Switzerland-based investigations firm to help and, after hundreds of hours of work and almost a decade later, the money was returned to the Shibalova family. Now, Shibalova has been ordered to pay the Switzerland firm Business Control Schweiz (BCS) about €2.6m ($5.1m) in commission for its work tracking down her former lover and finding the money he'd taken. The case is being heard in New Zealand after BCS tracked Shibalova to Northland, where she now resides, and applied to the High Court at Whangārei to sue her for her breach of contract and a claim of its commission. Speaking to NZME, Shibalova said she was 27 when Ivanov, whom she described as a "professional confidence trickster", took the money in 2005. "I fell in love and trusted him with my family money," she said. The money she took was from a Hong Kong bank account she and her father, who was a Russian lawyer and businessman, operated and were both signatories for. It had come from the sale of shares in a Russian port company of which Shibalova was a majority shareholder, though her father was the beneficial owner. Shibalova accessed the money to provide for herself, her sister and her mother, as she did not trust her father to provide for them. While Shibalova told her father she'd taken the $10m to give to the Red Cross, she actually transferred $9.6m of it to Ivanov's account on the promise he would invest the money on her behalf and then leave his wife. After realising she had been duped, Shibalova hired MPOL to find the money and agreed to pay investigation fees, expenses and disbursements, plus 35% commission on any returned money. During MPOL's investigation, the firm engaged the services of BCS. But Shibalova maintains she hired MPOL, not BCS, and no one had told her the contract had been assigned to the latter. "No one ever told me about this assignment until December 2020," she told NZME, with that date being when BCS filed its claim with the High Court. "The claim, proceedings and outcome has caused me and my family a great deal of distress and anguish and continue to do so." Frozen funds and criminal proceedings According to the High Court decision released this month, the investigators located the missing money in a Sicilian bank account in 2007 and then travelled to Sicily. Italian police told investigators it was the largest electronic transfer ever made to a Sicilian account. They were suspicious the money was from the proceeds of crime and the private investigators were arrested. Eventually, however, they accepted the funds were legitimately obtained by Shibalova's family and had been stolen from her, and the investigators were released. But the money, about €7m, remained frozen by order of an Italian court. Meanwhile, in 2008, the private investigators discovered Ivanov was living in London with his wife. They advised Italian authorities and criminal and civil proceedings commenced against him. In 2012, Ivanov was imprisoned and an order was made for restitution of the stolen funds to Shibalova. The Italian Court insisted the funds could only be returned to her and not to her father. Her father filed an appeal, which related to half of the frozen funds. Soon after, the other half was released to Shibalova's Sicilian lawyer, whom she had made power of attorney. However, the High Court heard that Shibalova had entered into a side agreement with her father, unbeknown to the investigators, for him to help her as a witness in the Italian court proceedings, and, in exchange, any money recovered would be transferred directly to him. The agreement stated that the money must be transferred, either by Shibalova or her lawyer, to an account nominated by her father. It also forbade Shibalova from making payments to the investigators. A letter detailing the agreement was produced to the High Court as evidence, but BCS did not accept the authenticity of the letter, nor the agreement, and suggested they may have been fabricated. In 2015, the remainder of the money was released. The investigators continued to request payment for their services, but Shibalova's Sicilian lawyer untruthfully told them the money was still being held in a government-controlled fund in Italy. Shibalova claims she has paid about A$450,000 ($490,000) to MPOL in fees and disbursements, but never paid the 35% commission fee on the money returned. Meanwhile, MPOL went into liquidation in 2013. Its director Mark Grover was charged with improperly taking money from one of his companies and was bankrupted in 2015. BCS continued chasing the owed commission fee and tracked down Shibalova's father, who agreed to pay it but never did. The firm went on to file the civil claim against Shibalova in the High Court at Whangārei in 2020. Failing to uphold the agreement At a week-long hearing in October last year, Shibalova represented herself and argued against paying the commission. She claimed she was only required to pay it if MPOL recovered the funds from Ivanov and pointed out the Italian courts had frozen the money and released it to them. She also argued there was no valid assignment of the contract to BCS and that the funds had been paid back to her father, not to her. Further, Shibalova submitted that BCS' claim was outside the limitation period for bringing litigation. However, Justice Michele Wilkinson-Smith disagreed with Shibalova's defence, finding she'd agreed with MPOL freely and the firm had upheld its end of the bargain and she was now failing to uphold hers. "She contends that she had little choice as there was no other apparent way to secure the return of the stolen money, but that situation was not created by MPOL," Justice Wilkinson-Smith said in the decision. "It resulted from Ms Shibalova's dishonest actions in taking the US$10m in the first place and transferring it to Mr Ivanov." Justice Wilkinson-Smith said Shibalova failed to tell the investigators when the money had been released and "deliberately misled" them when they continued to ask. "I consider that Ms Shibalova was deliberately fraudulent in her dealings with MPOL and BCS and sought to fraudulently conceal the repayment of the money to avoid any liability to pay the commission," Justice Wilkinson-Smith found. She ruled that failing to pay the commission was a breach of contract and that MPOL did have the right to assign the contract to BCS and that, ultimately, BCS was owed the commission fee. Justice Wilkinson-Smith ordered Shibalova to pay BCS €2,678,215, which converts to about $5.1m. She also ordered Shibalova to pay 5% interest per year from April 2015. "Ms Shibalova may not have been the beneficial owner of the money, but she chose to enter into a contract to pay a fee of 35% of the money 'collected' on her behalf and returned to her," the decision said. "It was 'collected' on her behalf and returned to her. What she chose to do with the money did not extinguish her obligations under the contract. Her competing obligations to her father did not extinguish her contractual obligations." BCS chief executive Pascal Oswald told NZME its team of investigators at the firm had done extensive work on Shibalova's case. "Business Control (Schweiz) AG is committed to vigorously defending the interests of our clients, especially in complex international fraud recovery matters," Oswald said. "Successfully navigating such cases – particularly in sensitive regions like Southern Italy – requires persistence, discretion, and deep local understanding. "At the same time, we stand firm when it comes to asserting our own rightful claims. Integrity and determination guide our work, whether we act on behalf of clients or in our own interest." Shibalova told NZME she was considering her appeal options. - Jeremy Wilkinson, Open Justice reporter
NZ Herald
23-05-2025
- Business
- NZ Herald
Russian woman living in Northland ordered to pay $5.1m to investigators who tracked stolen funds
But instead, he had taken the money and disappeared. When Shibalova, who was living in Melbourne at the time, realised she had been deceived, she engaged Australian private investigations firm MPOL Group Pty (MPOL) to recover the money. MPOL contracted a Switzerland-based investigations firm to help and, after hundreds of hours of work and almost a decade later, the money was returned to the Shibalova family. Now, Shibalova has been ordered to pay the Switzerland firm Business Control Schweiz (BCS) about €2.6m ($5.1m) in commission for its work tracking down her former lover and finding the money he'd taken. The case is being heard in New Zealand after BCS tracked Shibalova to Northland, where she now resides, and applied to the High Court at Whangārei to sue her for her breach of contract and a claim of its commission. Speaking to NZME, Shibalova said she was 27 when Ivanov, whom she described as a 'professional confidence trickster', took the money in 2005. 'I fell in love and trusted him with my family money,' she said. The money she took was from a Hong Kong bank account she and her father, who was a Russian lawyer and businessman, operated and were both signatories for. It had come from the sale of shares in a Russian port company of which Shibalova was a majority shareholder, though her father was the beneficial owner. Shibalova accessed the money to provide for herself, her sister and her mother, as she did not trust her father to provide for them. While Shibalova told her father she'd taken the $10m to give to the Red Cross, she actually transferred $9.6m of it to Ivanov's account on the promise he would invest the money on her behalf and then leave his wife. After realising she had been duped, Shibalova hired MPOL to find the money and agreed to pay investigation fees, expenses and disbursements, plus 35% commission on any returned money. During MPOL's investigation, the firm engaged the services of BCS. But Shibalova maintains she hired MPOL, not BCS, and no one had told her the contract had been assigned to the latter. Advertise with NZME. 'No one ever told me about this assignment until December 2020,' she told NZME, with that date being when BCS filed its claim with the High Court. 'The claim, proceedings and outcome has caused me and my family a great deal of distress and anguish and continue to do so.' Frozen funds and criminal proceedings According to the High Court decision released this month, the investigators located the missing money in a Sicilian bank account in 2007 and then travelled to Sicily. Italian police told investigators it was the largest electronic transfer ever made to a Sicilian account. They were suspicious the money was from the proceeds of crime and the private investigators were arrested. Eventually, however, they accepted the funds were legitimately obtained by Shibalova's family and had been stolen from her, and the investigators were released. But the money, about €7m, remained frozen by order of an Italian court. Meanwhile, in 2008, the private investigators discovered Ivanov was living in London with his wife. They advised Italian authorities and criminal and civil proceedings commenced against him. In 2012, Ivanov was imprisoned and an order was made for restitution of the stolen funds to Shibalova. The Italian Court insisted the funds could only be returned to her and not to her father. Her father filed an appeal, which related to half of the frozen funds. Soon after, the other half was released to Shibalova's Sicilian lawyer, whom she had made power of attorney. However, the High Court heard that Shibalova had entered into a side agreement with her father, unbeknown to the investigators, for him to help her as a witness in the Italian court proceedings, and, in exchange, any money recovered would be transferred directly to him. The agreement stated that the money must be transferred, either by Shibalova or her lawyer, to an account nominated by her father. It also forbade Shibalova from making payments to the investigators. A letter detailing the agreement was produced to the High Court as evidence, but BCS did not accept the authenticity of the letter, nor the agreement, and suggested they may have been fabricated. In 2015, the remainder of the money was released. The investigators continued to request payment for their services, but Shibalova's Sicilian lawyer untruthfully told them the money was still being held in a government-controlled fund in Italy. Shibalova claims she has paid about A$450,000 ($490,000) to MPOL in fees and disbursements, but never paid the 35% commission fee on the money returned. Meanwhile, MPOL went into liquidation in 2013. Its director Mark Grover was charged with improperly taking money from one of his companies and was bankrupted in 2015. BCS continued chasing the owed commission fee and tracked down Shibalova's father, who agreed to pay it but never did. The firm went on to file the civil claim against Shibalova in the High Court at Whangārei in 2020. Failing to uphold the agreement At a week-long hearing in October last year, Shibalova represented herself and argued against paying the commission. She claimed she was only required to pay it if MPOL recovered the funds from Ivanov and pointed out the Italian courts had frozen the money and released it to them. She also argued there was no valid assignment of the contract to BCS and that the funds had been paid back to her father, not to her. Further, Shibalova submitted that BCS' claim was outside the limitation period for bringing litigation. However, Justice Michele Wilkinson-Smith disagreed with Shibalova's defence, finding she'd agreed with MPOL freely and the firm had upheld its end of the bargain and she was now failing to uphold hers. 'She contends that she had little choice as there was no other apparent way to secure the return of the stolen money, but that situation was not created by MPOL,' Justice Wilkinson-Smith said in the decision. 'It resulted from Ms Shibalova's dishonest actions in taking the US$10m in the first place and transferring it to Mr Ivanov.' Justice Wilkinson-Smith said Shibalova failed to tell the investigators when the money had been released and 'deliberately misled' them when they continued to ask. 'I consider that Ms Shibalova was deliberately fraudulent in her dealings with MPOL and BCS and sought to fraudulently conceal the repayment of the money to avoid any liability to pay the commission,' Justice Wilkinson-Smith found. She ruled that failing to pay the commission was a breach of contract and that MPOL did have the right to assign the contract to BCS and that, ultimately, BCS was owed the commission fee. Justice Wilkinson-Smith ordered Shibalova to pay BCS €2,678,215, which converts to about $5.1m. She also ordered Shibalova to pay 5% interest per year from April 2015. 'Ms Shibalova may not have been the beneficial owner of the money, but she chose to enter into a contract to pay a fee of 35% of the money 'collected' on her behalf and returned to her,' the decision said. Advertise with NZME. 'It was 'collected' on her behalf and returned to her. What she chose to do with the money did not extinguish her obligations under the contract. Her competing obligations to her father did not extinguish her contractual obligations.' BCS chief executive Pascal Oswald told NZME its team of investigators at the firm had done extensive work on Shibalova's case. 'Business Control (Schweiz) AG is committed to vigorously defending the interests of our clients, especially in complex international fraud recovery matters,' Oswald said. 'Successfully navigating such cases – particularly in sensitive regions like Southern Italy – requires persistence, discretion, and deep local understanding. 'At the same time, we stand firm when it comes to asserting our own rightful claims. Integrity and determination guide our work, whether we act on behalf of clients or in our own interest.' Shibalova told NZME she was considering her appeal options.
Winnipeg Free Press
14-05-2025
- Sport
- Winnipeg Free Press
‘You feel at home': Playoff hockey helps newcomers feel more Canadian
TORONTO – Mykhailo Ivanov never thought he'd become a diehard hockey fan. The 42-year-old had immigrated to Winnipeg a little over two years ago to escape the war in Ukraine. He didn't know much about hockey, he said, but after he was given tickets to a Jets game he fell in love with the sport – and the community that comes with it. 'I like that kind of emotion and support from other fans, from the people nearby you,' he said in a phone interview. 'It's an important part of my life now.' 'It decreases or even erases those boundaries, those limits newcomers normally face.' As three Canadian teams fight their way through the NHL playoffs, fans across the country are cheering from the sidelines, including those who newly call Canada home. Some immigrants say that just as hockey is a part of Canadian identity, celebrating the sport during playoff season helps them become part of it, too. Christine Munsch said when she and her husband first moved to Toronto from France about 18 months ago, they tried watching football and basketball to help them adjust to Canadian life. But it was hockey that had them hooked, she said. 'We knew it was a big part of Canadian culture,' she said in a phone interview. 'I was really amazed by the quality of skating and this balance between well-done choreography and a sometimes violent game.' Munsch added that she was surprised by the hockey fans' sportsmanship. In Europe, rival soccer fans are strictly separated in the stands, she said, but at hockey games the fans all sit together in good spirits, even amid playoff tensions. There's friendship in the sport, she said. 'When people learned that we were hockey fans, they really paid more attention to us, and we got integrated a lot easier,' said Munsch, adding that she and her husband often watch playoff hockey games with friends and neighbours. Now, Munsch said they never miss a match and they closely follow all the teams. They really like the Edmonton Oilers, she said, but the Toronto Maple Leafs are their favourite. She even has her own little Carlton bear, the Leafs' mascot. 'Sometimes when I watch a game, I take him with me,' she said. Meanwhile, as the Jets make their own bid for the Stanley Cup, the atmosphere in Winnipeg feels 'like a permanent holiday,' Ivanov said, as fans cheer on the streets and Jets flags wave all over the city. Ivanov now has a collection of several Jets jerseys, and he also has friends from a fan club to talk all things hockey. They even make posters before playoff games that say, 'Go Jets go!' The sport has helped him become part of Winnipeg's community, he said, and it 'completely changed' his life. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. 'You feel more integrated into Canadian society, you feel at home. You don't feel like an immigrant,' said Ivanov. 'You feel more Canadian, more local. It helps a lot.' For Munsch, as soon as the Leafs clinched home advantage, she and her husband quickly bought tickets for the first round showdown against the Ottawa Senators. They sat in the upper level of Scotiabank Arena, she said, because 'that's where I was told the real fans are.' But Munsch isn't just a fan. On game days, when she tells people she has to rush home to catch the puck drop on TV, they tell her the same thing every time. 'They say, 'You're a real Canadian.'' This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2025.
Global News
14-05-2025
- Sport
- Global News
Newcomers feeling Canadian during playoff hockey
TORONTO – Mykhailo Ivanov never thought he'd become a diehard hockey fan. The 42-year-old had immigrated to Winnipeg a little over two years ago to escape the war in Ukraine. He didn't know much about hockey, he said, but after he was given tickets to a Jets game he fell in love with the sport – and the community that comes with it. 'I like that kind of emotion and support from other fans, from the people nearby you,' he said in a phone interview. 'It's an important part of my life now.' 'It decreases or even erases those boundaries, those limits newcomers normally face.' As three Canadian teams fight their way through the NHL playoffs, fans across the country are cheering from the sidelines, including those who newly call Canada home. Story continues below advertisement Some immigrants say that just as hockey is a part of Canadian identity, celebrating the sport during playoff season helps them become part of it, too. Christine Munsch said when she and her husband first moved to Toronto from France about 18 months ago, they tried watching football and basketball to help them adjust to Canadian life. But it was hockey that had them hooked, she said. 'We knew it was a big part of Canadian culture,' she said in a phone interview. 'I was really amazed by the quality of skating and this balance between well-done choreography and a sometimes violent game.' Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy Munsch added that she was surprised by the hockey fans' sportsmanship. In Europe, rival soccer fans are strictly separated in the stands, she said, but at hockey games the fans all sit together in good spirits, even amid playoff tensions. There's friendship in the sport, she said. Story continues below advertisement 'When people learned that we were hockey fans, they really paid more attention to us, and we got integrated a lot easier,' said Munsch, adding that she and her husband often watch playoff hockey games with friends and neighbours. Now, Munsch said they never miss a match and they closely follow all the teams. They really like the Edmonton Oilers, she said, but the Toronto Maple Leafs are their favourite. She even has her own little Carlton bear, the Leafs' mascot. 'Sometimes when I watch a game, I take him with me,' she said. Meanwhile, as the Jets make their own bid for the Stanley Cup, the atmosphere in Winnipeg feels 'like a permanent holiday,' Ivanov said, as fans cheer on the streets and Jets flags wave all over the city. Ivanov now has a collection of several Jets jerseys, and he also has friends from a fan club to talk all things hockey. They even make posters before playoff games that say, 'Go Jets go!' The sport has helped him become part of Winnipeg's community, he said, and it 'completely changed' his life. 'You feel more integrated into Canadian society, you feel at home. You don't feel like an immigrant,' said Ivanov. 'You feel more Canadian, more local. It helps a lot.' Story continues below advertisement For Munsch, as soon as the Leafs clinched home advantage, she and her husband quickly bought tickets for the first round showdown against the Ottawa Senators. They sat in the upper level of Scotiabank Arena, she said, because 'that's where I was told the real fans are.' But Munsch isn't just a fan. On game days, when she tells people she has to rush home to catch the puck drop on TV, they tell her the same thing every time. 'They say, 'You're a real Canadian.'' This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2025.
