The Black Rod

In  August, 2011, six people sat down to a home-cooked meal at the residence of Red River College President Stephanie Forsyth. You paid for the food.  But you weren't invited. That's because you're a troll and Forsyth and her guests are the New Aristocrats.   You are expected to cover the cost of their socializing.  And like it.  And STFU. Forsyth, during her Golf Shoe phone blitz on Friday, declared that people should be grateful to her for hosting a dinner party at home.  After all, she sniffed, she could have gone to a restaurant.   See, she actually saved you money . This is the mind-set of the New Aristocracy.  The idea that the public shouldn't cover the cost of a restaurant get-together either didn't even rate a thought.   To people of her ilk the fact that her evenings out are paid for by the hoi polloi is a given and not up for debate. We repeat ourselves: Stephanie Forsyth has an office. Her guest at ...

After two days of being incommunicado, Red River College President Stephanie Forsyth surfaced Friday in a blitz of phone interviews with Winnipeg television, radio and newspaper reporters. She launched a charm offensive to bury the taint of Bev Oda (she of the $16 orange juice) that hangs over her after the Canadian Taxpayers Association revealed that Forsyth had claimed $78,000 in expenses in her first 16 months on the job. That's an average of just under $5000 a month on top of her $261,000 salary. Forsyth's message? She's entitled to her entitlements and everything she claimed was a proper expense, even the super-special high-end $205 golf shoes. But because you poopy-heads made such a big deal of it, she was going to repay the money for the golf shoes. Satisfied? Richard Lennon, chairman of the Red River College Board of Governors, joined Forsyth's atonement parade to say the college would launch a whitewash by the end of the mon...

You can tell in a second why the Idle No More movement isn't attracting any support (despite what the mainstream media is telling you.) The music sucks. Our condolences to the reporters who are forced to stick around listening to the ear-bleeding screeching over mind-numbing drumming that passes as the soundtrack to the mob scenes which alienate the public more with each passing day. We shall overcome our urge to puke when we hear it. An estimated 500 Idle supporters showed up at the Legislature Monday night to perform for the television cameras. That's the same number that showed up a month ago. No growth means nobody cares. The Idle crowd even dredged up Buffy St. Marie from somewhere to give their show some star appeal, except that the reaction to her presence was more "Is she still alive?" than "Wow." A smaller crowd the same day had a bigger impact up north. About 30 people threw up a blockade of what the Winnipeg...

Even as month-old information is passed off as "news" by the Winnipeg Free Press, the biggest crime story in Winnipeg languishes untouched by the city's "professional" journalists. Crime reporters have been trying to put the latest outbreak of shootings and home invasions into context. CTV on Friday blamed it on a clash between two street gangs---MOB and Indian Posse. Trying to advance the story in Saturday's paper, FP reporter Mike McIntyre breathlessly wrote that "police and justice sources tell the Free Press the M.O.B. is no longer a united front and has broken into two factions..." http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/mob-breakup-is-bad-news---edited-166628926.html Uh, yeah. That's what the Winnipeg Sun reported ONE MONTH AGO after the details were revealed in open court. http://www.winnipegsun.com/2012/07/17/street-gang-splinters-into-two "A mysterious rift among members of a notorious Winnipe...

The news that Winnipeg police are planning to spend a million dollars on a search of the local garbage dump for the body of a missing part-time prostitute reminded us that we weren't finished with our first installment of our Online Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women. http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-black-rod-online-inquiry-into.html Two weeks ago, police announced an arrest in the stabbing death of our first subject, Cherie Lynn Richard, and the case dropped off the radar of the mainstream media in town. That's when we accidentally stumbled across the bombshell news that crystallized the lessons of her death. Deep, deep, deep within the story of the arrest carried in the July 27-29 issue of the free daily Winnipeg Metro was this stunning sentence: "Police allege Richard was stabbed after a verbal altercation took place over drugs." If true, it was a citywide scoop, something reporte...

Hear that? That's the silence on the airwaves where the popular radio station KICK-FM used to broadcast. 92.9 KICK-FM, (more formally known as CKIC-FM), operating under the aegis of Red River College, pulled the plug on itself at 4 p.m. Wednesday rather than submit to the further scrutiny of the CRTC in a licence renewal process.  That silence is the bitter legacy of Winnipeg Free Press editor Margo Goodhand, whose interference in the running of KICK-FM led directly to the demise of the station which had been on the air almost 10 years. It was only a couple of weeks ago when Margo Goodhand made the surprise announcement that she was resigning as of the end of July. She was, she said, leaving her sweet post for parts unknown after five years at the helm. However she managed to stay around just long enough to see the irreparable damage that she caused to the radio station, to the reputation of the college, and, worst of all, to the integrity ...

Millionaire moocher Gail Asper is in a panic. And when Gail Asper is in a panic, Winnipeg Free Press co-owner Bob Silver is in a panic. And when Bob Silver is in a panic, everybody at the Winnipeg Free Press is in a panic. No, it's not because someone has sicced the new police cadets on Winnipeg's biggest panhandler. As we've learned only in the past 9 days, Gail Asper's pet project, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, has run out of money. Really, now. Who saw that coming? By March 31, 2012, the fiscal year end, the unfinished museum will have received the last government money its going to get. No more dinero from the feds. And the coin from the province and the city was spent long, long ago. Gail Asper and the Friends of the CMHR will try to cash in some of the private IOU's they're holding, but they've admitted that that won't bring in enough money to finish construction, never mind the millions needed for exhibits. They'...