Thinking about expanding your farm business? MAFRI is offering an experiential agritourism tour on March 21^st, from 9:30 – 4:00 in Brandon. Click below for details.

http://www.travelmanitoba.com/images_tr/pdf/experiential_agritourism_study_tour.pdf

Complete: The Assiniboine River portion of the skating trail has closed for the year.

Paul Jordan, chief operating officers for The Forks, confirmed the news this morning, adding the Red River trail will remain open for the time being.

"We’re getting all our stuff off (the Assiniboine) and shutting it down," he said.

When the Red River trail and Forks port will close, however, will be entirely weather-dependant, Jordan added.

"We’re hoping to get a good week out of the Red River."

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/Assiniboine-River-skating-trail-closes-for-season-193058001.html

CHURCHILL -- Recently, some of the world's top polar bear researchers, led by Andrew Derocher, released a paper titled Rapid Ecosystem Change and Polar Bear Conservation. It discusses options for drastic measures to save polar bears in a changing climate, including relocating them to zoos, feeding them and even culling them.

I did notice one glaring omission from the various options "on the table." It is a fairly simple solution to help the bears, one that many northerners would support -- stop chasing them with helicopters.

For many years, Churchill has quietly disapproved of the amount of handling and drugging that our bears receive. Polar bears have been studied in this area since 1966, including an annual, long-term monitoring project that has run from 1979 to 2013.

For 35 years, polar bears have been chased and tranquilized by helicopter, weighed, tattooed, tagged, etc. By far, the western Hudson Bay polar bears are the most researched bears on the planet; far more than any bears in Nunavut. The generally accepted number is that 80 per cent of this population has been handled and tagged.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/give-the-polar-bears-a-break-193216341.html

Carman Blizzard Fest officials are happy to report this year’s festival was a resounding success.

The festival, Feb. 8 & 9, added events like dog sled races this year and the weather co-operated in more ways than one.

Blizzard Fest organizing committee chair Paul Clark said the number of attendees this year was one of the biggest signs of growth and success.

“This year for the festival we roughly doubled the number of people who came out, the weather was great, you can’t predict that, and it was cold enough for all the events,” Clark said.

He described this year as being the opposite of last year’s festival in terms of event popularity.

http://www.pembinatoday.ca/2013/02/22/organizers-already-looking-to-next-year-for-blizzard-fest

News of the Gimli Glider going up for auction has the Gimli Art Club’s president abuzz thinking about what can be done to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the plane’s landing.

Barb Gluck spearheaded the painting of the Gimli Glider that can be found on the harbour sea wall, painted back in 2008 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Glider’s landing.

It remains the only monument in the community to the extraordinary event, but Gluck is hoping that the plane going up for sale might lead to some opportunities for Gimli to do a better job of remembering the most famous event to occur there in the past three decades...   ...“When the Glider was being retired in January 2008, there were many who felt it should have been brought back to Gimli,” he says.

“One suggestion was to convert it into a museum. The argument against this decision was similar to most projects of this type – who is going to pay for the maintenance?”

http://www.interlaketoday.ca/2013/02/22/mural-only-monument-to-gimli-glider-landing

CALGARY - The Conference Board of Canada has added its voice to the choir calling on Alberta to implement a provincial sales tax to offset its revenue shortfall.

The Alberta government's bottom line continues to bleed red ink due to falling oil and gas revenue.

Premier Alison Redford has coined the term "bitumen bubble" to refer to the difference between the benchmark prices for oil in North America and the lower price Alberta receives for its land-locked oilsands bitumen.

In the first nine months of the 2012-13 fiscal year, resource revenue in Alberta was $2.4 billion lower than expected and the previously financially flush province is now forecasting a deficit of between $3.5 billion and $4 billion.

The Alberta government is promising what it calls tough but thoughtful decisions to turn the province's financial fortunes around but Redford has made it clear a provincial sales tax is not on the table.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/conference-board-says-pst-right-policy-choice-to-remedy-albertas-revenue-woes-193214841.html

NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR, ATLANTIC CANADA – With a booming economy and tourism numbers rising, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador has announced some major infrastructure projects. Nowhere is the growth more visible than in the capital, St. John’s, where hotel development is expected to expand with 700 new hotel rooms to be added.  In addition, a ten-year $167 million capital improvement program for the St. John’s International Airport is underway, and the St. John’s Convention Centre will double in size by 2016.

Newfoundland and Labrador has seen steady increases in tourism throughout the province and St. John's is expected to continue this growth. A handsome city which has expanded from its colorful waterfront, St. John's is the oldest city in North America with Victorian architecture, heritage shops and a lively arts scene. Visitors can meander down quaint side streets lined with brightly-colored 19thcentury row houses or take in the views from Signal Hill which rises up over the harbour and is crowned by the 1897 Cabot Tower, built for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and commemorating the 400th anniversary of John Cabot's arrival in the new world. The city’s top cultural attraction, The Rooms, is a striking modern complex housing a museum, an art gallery with 7,000 works and historic archives.  Not far from downtown, visitors can see whales and icebergs drifting off the coast and thousands of seabirds nesting.

http://www.traveldailynews.com/news/article/53487/tourism-rising-in-st-john-rsquo-s

LUXOR, Egypt - A hot air balloon flying over Egypt's ancient city of Luxor caught fire and crashed into a sugar cane field on Tuesday, killing at least 18 foreign tourists, a security official said.

It was one of the worst accidents involving tourists in Egypt and likely to push the key tourism industry deeper into recession.

The casualties included French, British, Belgian, Hungarian, Japanese nationals and nine tourists from Hong Kong, Luxor Governor Ezzat Saad told reporters.

The Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa says the Canadian Embassy in Cairo has confirmed with local authorities that no Canadians have been affected by this accident.

Three survivors of the crash — two British tourists and one Egyptian — were taken to a local hospital. Egypt's civil aviation minister, Wael el-Maadawi, suspended hot air balloon flights and flew to Luxor to lead the investigation into the crash.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/world/at-least-19-foreign-tourists-die-in-egypt-as-hot-air-balloon-crashes-near-luxor-193201331.html

(A complete article published originally in the WFP, Feb.  '57)

The Manitoba Jockey club - which has organized horse racing meets in Winnipeg for the past 35 years - is expected to be dissolved next month, the Free Press has learned.

This move would kill any hopes racing fans may have had for the resumption of the sport in the near future.

The Winnipeg Jockey club would remain the only other organization holding a racing franchise.  But as the franchise covers only 14 days of racing and since the R. J. Speers corporation has considerable financial interests in both clubs, it’s believed the lone franchise would not be feasible to conduct further meets.

A stiff 10 per cent Manitoba government tax - reported to be the highest among all racing centres - is believed to be a major reason for the liquidation of the Jockey club, despite “fervent hopes” expressed by Miss Anna Speers, president of the Speers corporation, to “carry on.”

Miss Speers announced the purchase of suitable land last July for a track to replace Polo Park which is to be turned into a business site.  Further comment on the land site is expected at a board of governors meeting in March.

Jockey club shareholders are expected to receive notices of the liquidation meeting shortly, according to officials of the Speers corporation.

The late R. J. Speers reorganized the old Manitoba Jockey club after the First World War when meets where held at River and Whittier parks.  He later assisted a group attempting to build Polo Park and helped form the Winnipeg Jockey club.