Complete: MELITA — The Melita and Area Tourism Committee is excited to announce that "Sunny" is back home. Following a refurbishment, the nine-metre-high banana is scheduled to be re-installed today in its place as a popular roadside destination.

The statue was first envisioned more than 10 years ago by the Melita and Area Tourism Committee to promote tourism in Melita and create an iconic monument for the town. It was originally installed in August 2010, becoming a roadside attraction and the perfect spot to enjoy a banana split.

Following damage from a nearby fire in 2012, the statue was temporarily removed while it underwent extensive repairs by Calgary-based custom fabricator Heavy Industries. Although the structural integrity remained intact after the fire, the shape of the banana needed to be recreated due to heat damage. The entire sculpture has also received a fresh paint finish.

Employees from Heavy Industries will be arriving with the banana to install it back in place. Made of EPS foam surrounding a steel structure, the statue is coated with a polyurea hardcoat to withstand Manitoba’s extreme weather and painted "banana yellow."

The banana is depicted holding a blue jay in its hand to represent Melita’s status as an Important Bird Area, or IBA, meaning it is a key site for bird watching and conservation. The banana also sports a large belt and buckle, a fashionable reminder that Melita is the "banana belt" — Manitoba’s hot spot.

Since 2001, the Melita and Area Tourism Committee has been promoting tourism in Melita through various projects such as brochures, bird watching maps, Melita Banana Days (Aug. 9-11, 2013) and development initiatives. The committee has been serving to promote Melita as the Grasslands Bird Capital of Manitoba and a town with "a-peel."

http://www.brandonsun.com/local/melita-banana-statue-returns-189991221.html?thx=y

One Manitoba museum is on the hunt for a group of gargoyles, and they’re asking Winnipeggers for help finding them.

The Manitoba Museum recently acquired two gargoyles that used to adorn the Winnipeg Tribune building on Smith Street in the city's downtown.

But there used to be more and the museum wants them in their collection.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2013/02/06/mb-gargoyle-hunt-winnipeg.html

HUNTSVILLE - The Huntsville/Lake of Bays Chamber of Commerce will be moving forward with a cultural tourism strategy for this year, according to the group’s executive director Kelly Haywood.
The idea for a local-based cultural tourism strategy came from the chamber’s 2012 annual general meeting.
Since then, according to Haywood, the chamber has received $40,000 from the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport’s tourism development fund to create a cultural tourism development plan.

http://www.cottagecountrynow.ca/news/business/article/1576649--chamber-moving-forward-with-cultural-tourism-plan

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Cruise watchers looking back at the industry's past year say the Concordia disaster affected everything from prices to safety drills to first-time cruisers, but bookings appear to be picking up as the 2013 cruise booking season gets under way.

The first three months of each year are known as "wave season," a period when many cruisers book trips as they plan ahead for summer vacations. The Costa Concordia ran aground and capsized Jan. 13, 2012, killing 32 people just as last year's wave season began. Experts have blamed the captain for the disaster, saying he took the ship off course in a stunt. The wrecked ship is still lying on its side in waters off Tuscany, Italy.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/travel/concordia-disaster-hurt-cruise-industry-last-year-but-recovery-under-way-190036831.html

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Sixteen stories below Grand Central Terminal, an army of workers is blasting through bedrock to create a new commuter rail concourse with more floor space than New Orleans' Superdome, just one of three audacious projects going on beneath New York City's streets to expand what's already the nation's biggest mass transit system.

But even with blasting and machinery grinding through the rock day and night, most New Yorkers are blithely unaware of the construction or the eerie underworld that includes a massive, eight-story cavern, miles of tunnels and watery, gravel-filled pits.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/travel/deep-below-nyc-workers-expanding-nations-biggest-transit-hub-15b--in-new-tracks-tunnels-190155371.html

BOSTON - A major winter storm heading toward New England may not be one for the record books, but even some of the nation's snow-hardiest people should proceed with caution, according to at least one expert.

As much as 2 feet of snow could fall on a region that has seen mostly bare ground this winter, the National Weather Service said. That's exciting for resort operators who haven't had much snow this year.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/major-storm-heading-to-new-england-could-bring-up-to-2-feet-of-snow-ski-resorts-could-benefit-190157111.html

(A complete article published originally in the WFP, Feb.  '64)

OTTAWA (Staff) — A full-scale inquiry into the deal whereby the Canadian National Railways are turning over the management of the Hotel Vancouver to the Hilton Hotel Corporation of the United States is being sought by British Columbia Conservative Leader Davey Fulton and George Chatterton, Conservative MP for Victoria. The question was raised at the Progressive Conservative annual meeting here this week and there were rumors that the Hilton hotel people would be moving in to take over the management not only of the Vancouver hotel but be CNR hotels in Winnipeg and Edmonton and elsewhere. CNR officials here today denied that there was any proposal to have Hilton's take over the management of the Fort Garry in Winnipeg, Ottawa's Chateau Laurier or the Macdonald in Edmonton. They emphasized that the only hotel involved in the latest deal is the Hotel Vancouver. But Conservative delegates at the convention were warned by John R. Taylor of Vancouver Burrard that Hilton's now manage the Queen Elizabeth, the CNR hotel in Montreal. Hiltons are now moving into the Hotel Vancouver and it will only be a question of time before they will be moving into the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa and the Fort Garry in Winnipeg, he said. CNR spokesmen said here today that they denied, there was any move afoot to have Hilton's move into other cities but they acknowledged that the CNR hotel authorities consulted Hilton’s concerning operations of their other hotels.