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CBC
2 days ago
- Climate
- CBC
Smoke chokes out activities in Winnipeg, prompts warnings from health organizations
Smoke from wildfires ravaging northern Manitoba has impacted thousands of people in Winnipeg as poor air quality has forced the cancellation of numerous activities and performances. Some 10,000 students, staff, elders and knowledge keepers were supposed to be at a powwow Thursday afternoon but the Winnipeg School Division's largest annual event — a day honouring Indigenous cultures, languages, teachings, and student achievement — was postponed in what superintendent Matt Henderson said was a "tough decision." "It's always a magical day in the division and everybody looks forward to it," he said, but the division "realized that it wouldn't be safe for not only the dancers, but for kids and elders to be out there for significant amounts of time." Shakespeare in the Ruins cancelled its Thursday opening of Macbeth — an outdoor performance at the Trappist Monastery Heritage Provincial Park in St. Norbert — for the same reason. "The health and safety of our artists, crew and audiences will always come first — even when the witches protest!" the theatre company posted on social media. "The show will go on … just not tonight." Air quality warnings and a grey haze have hovered over the Winnipeg region for much of the week, prompting school divisions to cancel outdoor recess and field trips. "At recess, kids like to run around, and that means their cardiovascular systems are going to be working harder than they normally would. And so we ask schools to just have indoor recess," Henderson said. "We have excellent ventilation in the Winnipeg School Division, particularly since COVID. So we're putting those systems to the test." School staff are being asked to keep a close eye on kids who might have respiratory issues, he added. "This is the reality that we're faced with. This is new territory," Henderson said. "It's only the beginning of June and we're already experiencing this." The 10-point air quality health index has soared to the "high risk" to "very high risk" (eight to 10+) range this week. The rating is impacted by wind direction and can change quickly. On Wednesday, for example, the index was a three (low risk) at 9 a.m., but 10+ by 10 a.m. That day, students in the Louis Riel School Division were supposed to attend Valour FC and Goldeyes games, but those plans were promptly scrapped. And on Friday, the Manitoba High School Athletic Association cancelled the provincial track and field provincial championships. The index was again 10+ in the morning. The event, scheduled for June 5-7, brings together 1,500 of the province's best high school athletes at the University of Manitoba. Henderson hopes the weekend's events can proceed. "The smoke is supposed to clear for tomorrow, so we don't necessarily anticipate any cancellations. It's really an hour-by-hour decision sometimes," he said Friday. Plans are also underway to hold a smaller version of the powwow indoors at the University of Winnipeg sometime in the next couple of weeks, which will be just for the grads, rather than all students in the division, said Henderson. "We wanted to make sure that we honoured our grads, particularly our Indigenous grads, and send them off in a good way." Smoke expected to clear According to Environment Canada, which issued an air quality warning for nearly the entire province on Friday morning, the smoke should move out of the Red River Valley and Interlake region later in the day and drop the air quality index to a three. Poor conditions, however, will continue in the north, closer to the fires. Wildfire smoke is dangerous because it contains fine particulate matter that can penetrate deep into the lungs and cause inflammation and irritation, according to Health Canada. "There's no known safe level of exposure for some of these pollutants. This means that smoke can impact your health even at very low levels," the agency says. The air quality Manitoba is seeing is dangerous for even the healthiest person, the Manitoba Lung Association says. "You don't necessarily know what's in that smoke that's travelling, whether it's trees burning, standing structures — you just don't know what kind of chemicals or particulate matter [it contains]," said spokesperson Adam Anderson. The Canadian Ophthalmological Society is urging people to also take care of their eyes, which can be affected by smoke even if a person is far from an actual blaze. Those near the front lines could get airborne particles in their eyes that need to be flushed out with sterile solution, or may need to see an eye professional to get the object removed without damaging the cornea, said society spokesperson David Plemel, an eye surgeon in London, Ont., and an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Western University. Even people hundreds or thousands of kilometres away can experience irritation from allergens and the smoke, he said. People who experience red, irritated or burning eyes should consider staying indoors and using air purifiers, said Plemel.
CBC
22-05-2025
- General
- CBC
Increasing school enrolment across Manitoba creates strain for some divisions, opportunity for others
Social Sharing Manitoba's largest school division leaned on extra teachers hired at the last minute and turned parts of libraries into new classrooms to keep up with the influx of new students it saw this school year — a jump its superintendent says was largely driven by newcomers, including refugees fleeing global conflict. That bump resulted in an extra 829 students across the Winnipeg School Division, compared to the previous school year. It's the largest increase in any division in the province's latest enrolment report, which is based on numbers from September 2024. "We don't often anticipate 800 more students coming into our schools year after year," superintendent Matt Henderson said in an interview. "There are many folks who are having to leave their own home countries or northern areas of Canada and come to Winnipeg — and that's through global conflict, that's because of climate change, that's because of a number of reasons," he said. "As a city, we need to be prepared for that. We need to be able to welcome folks and be nimble." Henderson said the schools feeling that the most include those in the Elmwood area, where some have been a "landing spot" for people coming from Ukraine, and schools near the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba, a central area that has seen an influx of people from countries in parts of Asia and Africa. The strain on schools has been propelled by a need to both have enough teachers and classrooms to keep class sizes down, and to ensure newcomer students who need help with language or trauma have the support they need, he said. While enrolment increased in most of Manitoba's school divisions this year, the stories behind those numbers varied — from immigration and new developments pushing up population size, to special programming potentially enticing new students to make the switch from other schools. In the adjoining Louis Riel School Division, schools have also seen a jump in students driven by new and ongoing developments and infills in the division's southeast Winnipeg catchment area — growth that is especially apparent across the division's French immersion schools, superintendent Christian Michalik said in an interview. The division had the third-highest increase by numbers across the province, with 412 more students over the previous school year, the province's report said. Michalik described the bump as "the equivalent of many an elementary school," and said it highlights the division's need for more space. An example of the strain the division faces is its newest school, in Winnipeg's Sage Creek neighbourhood, which has been under consistent pressure since it opened in 2017 and continues to struggle with overcrowding. By the time another school in the area opens this September — after being requested in 2013 — it's expected to be at capacity, too, Michalik said. "We've done a lot of what we can do with the schools that we have, with the buildings we have, to find solutions to the growing enrolment and the overcrowding, but we're running out of those solutions," he said. That's previously included repurposing English schools as French immersion ones, and this September will see students in grades 7 and 8 at St. Vital's École Varennes — which Michalik said was built in the 1950s as flood relief — moved to another nearby school with more room. Challenges,opportunities in rural Manitoba While they don't have the same numbers as schools in the more densely populated Winnipeg, rural Manitoba divisions were among those with the highest enrolment increases by percentage — including Morden's Western School Division, which superintendent Stephen Ross said is "bursting at the seams," due largely to high immigration rates in southern Manitoba. It saw an increase of 113 students from the previous year, which represented a 5.1 per cent jump for the smaller division, bringing both challenge and opportunity. On one side of that equation, there's the need to have enough space and attract enough teachers to offer "the kinds of programming that kids deserve in this province," Ross said in an interview. Some students are still learning in portable classrooms, and a new school that opened this year is already expected to be near capacity by next fall. But the increase in students has also meant more jobs that need to be filled to keep up with the demand — and the increase in skilled labour in the area, with immigrants coming from countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil and Norway, has brought new people ready to fill those roles. "Right now, our facility supervisor is from the Ukraine, my secretary-treasurer is from the Philippines, our transportation guy is from Wales and our human resources person is from Kazakhstan," Ross said. "I think Morden is a great example of sort of, you know, what the Canadian dream is for people coming to the country." Welcome boost for 2-school district, independent schools It's been a different story entirely in Pinawa's Whiteshell School District, which, with its two schools, saw Manitoba's biggest enrolment increase by percentage at 13.8 per cent (or 27 students) this year, as of the province's latest report. The eastern Manitoba district previously noticed it was losing students who chose schools in the province's francophone school division or those with offerings like vocational classes. But superintendent Kent Schiltroth said a recent push to reverse that trend may be slowly paying off. That's included promoting some of the areas where the district differs from other divisions, like offering both half-day junior kindergarten and full-day kindergarten, and expanding its outdoor education offerings. "That became a big thing for our board, is to say, 'We've got this really unique environment in Whiteshell…. Nature's right at our back doorstep. And so let's lean into that really hard,'" Schiltroth said, adding the district is trying to both attract students from bordering communities and focus more on bringing in international students through exchange programs. "Every time that new people come into town, they've got new experiences, new backgrounds, new philosophies, and it's just kind of the way that the town's been built — very accepting of new ideas," he said. "And we've kind of embraced those. And so for a small school, we're able to tap into a lot of those resources that people come with." And it wasn't just Manitoba's public schools that saw an uptick in enrolment: independent schools across the province also jumped by 5.5 per cent, or 1,038 students. It's a welcome trend that Andrew Micklefield, executive director for the Manitoba Federation of Independent Schools, said has been ongoing for some time. As for why families choose independent schools, "there are as many reasons as there are families and as there are schools," Micklefield said, though most often they're driven by the range of faith-based options in the province's independent schools.
CBC
02-04-2025
- General
- CBC
Winnipeg's Wolseley School to be renamed within the year, ending connection to colonial general
Five years after a petition circulated calling for the renaming of Wolseley School in Winnipeg, the province's largest school division is taking new name suggestions from the public. The aim is to have the new name in place within the year, possibly before summer, says Matt Henderson, chief superintendent and CEO of the Winnipeg School Division (WSD). "I have four board meetings left [before the school year is over] and so hopefully we'll be able to get that done, but we don't want to rush the process," he told CBC Manitoba Information Radio host Marcy Markusa. "My initial thought is sort of spring, but if the stars don't align we can push that to fall. If we have to kick it into next year, we can do that, too." Built on Clifton Street in 1921, the school — and the entire neighbourhood in which is exists — was named after Col. Garnet J. Wolseley, a British general who led colonial campaigns in the 19th century, including commanding the 1870 Red River Expedition to suppress Louis Riel and the Métis resistance in what was to become Manitoba. The WSD launched a public survey last week, outlining the guidelines and criteria for the renaming process, and invited the public to submit their ideas. The cut-off date is April 7. "We've had over 155 submissions so far, which is exciting," Henderson said. The renaming committee will cut down the list to three names, which will be presented at a community consultation for feedback. Those three will be narrowed to two and given to the WSD board of trustees for a final decision. "These decisions aren't made on the fly by the board or by anyone. There is a bit of a process within board policy," Henderson said, noting the process began a while back. The division has held community consultations, while teachers and students examined the school's name, the significance of Wolseley and other key figures at that time, and conducted a Métis learning series on the history of the area. Students were then asked to make reasoned ethical judgments, Henderson says: "We want people to think deeply about names and not take them for granted." A recent fundamental shift in WSD policy means schools can no longer be named after a person "for obvious reasons," Henderson said. "I know some schools in North America that are called Justice or that they're called Hope. Certainly, we see that there's a move to schools that are named in Anishinaabemowin." The WSD in 2022 renamed Cecil Rhodes School in the city's Weston area to Keewatin Prairie Community School. Keewatin means "the land of the northwest wind" in Cree and Ojibway. That was also prompted by a public petition. Rhodes, founder of the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford, was a British businessman, imperialist and politician. He advocated vigorous settler colonialism and touted views that white Europeans were "the first race in the world." His policies paved the way for apartheid in South Africa. The petition came out during a global wave of anti-racism rallies, the same week the Wolseley petition began. The latter also called for the renaming of Wolseley Avenue in that neighbourhood and Lord Wolseley School on Henderson Highway in the city's East Kildonan area. The wave eventually subsided and the focus on Wolseley slipped off the public radar until a couple of years ago when the parent advisory council at Wolseley School revived it, putting forward a request to the WSD to start a formal review process. "That's really where it needs to come — from [the] community, to be able to say, 'hey, we're not really comfortable [with] the name of a particular school for these reasons. Let's engage in a conversation,'" Henderson said. "So that's what happened. There was lots of consultation over the last few years, and now we're kind of at a critical point where we're asking for suggestions."
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Iowa basketball tickets scanned data displays fan disinterest
Following a rather disappointing 2024-25 regular season for Iowa basketball (16-15, 7-13 Big Ten), the ticket scanned data gathered from the program's 19 games played at Carver-Hawkeye Arena showcases a concerning trend regarding overall fan turnout. According to data obtained by The Gazette via an open records request, Fran McCaffery's program averaged just 5,045 tickets scanned in its 18 regular season games and one exhibition game inside Carver during the 2024-25 campaign. With Carver-Hawkeye Arena holding a capacity of 14,998, this scanned ticket average makes up only 33.6% of the total available seats. What makes this data even more alarming is that those figures are down 12.1 percent from 2023-24, when Iowa men's basketball averaged 5,742 tickets scanned per game, equating to 38.3 percent of the arena's capacity. The average for Iowa's 10 Big Ten home games was 5,710 tickets scanned, equating to 38.1 percent of Carver-Hawkeye Arena's capacity. The day of the week in this metric was a major factor as Iowa averaged 8,172 tickets scanned during its three Big Ten home games on Saturdays versus 4,655 on all other days during conference play. Only four games—Dec. 12 against Iowa State (10,696), Feb. 8 against Wisconsin (8,929), Jan. 11 against Indiana (7,905) and Feb. 22 against Washington (7,683)—had more than 7,000 tickets scanned. With this glaring metric, a key differentiator must be explained regarding the difference between listed attendance and tickets scanned. While Iowa's officially listed attendance was 9,161 fans per game, tickets scanned data measures how many fans actually entered the arena on a given night rather than how many tickets were sold. 'There's work to do certainly,' deputy athletics director Matt Henderson said regarding student engagement during the university's Presidential Committee on Athletics meeting in February. 'We're not afraid to admit that we got to do some work and roll up our sleeves and figure it out. Because you can see when they're there, what the environment's like.' While the on-court product was not as desirable for fans this season, Iowa hopes their incoming talent, mixed with the current roster talents, can reinvigorate fan interest next fall. Contact/Follow us @HawkeyesWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Iowa news, notes, and opinions. Follow Scout on X: @SpringgateNews This article originally appeared on Hawkeyes Wire: Iowa basketball tickets scanned data displays fan disinterest
