Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 10, 2022, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A3 FLYER IN TODAY’S PAPER WINNIPEG SUBSCRIBERS ONLY 741 Sterling Lyon Parkway Winnipeg, MB R3P 2S9 75 Falcon Ridge Drive Winnipeg, MB R3Y 2C2 S E N I O R L I V I N G O F T U X E D O 75 Falcon Ridge Drive Winnipeg, MB R3Y 2C2 www.brightwaterseniorliving.com 431-778-6105 S E N I O R L I V I N G Celebrate Living Well THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2022 FOR MANITOBA. FOR 150 YEARS. FOREVER WITH YOUR SUPPORT. SERVING WINNIPEG AND THE WEST SINCE 1872 The ® INSIDE SECTOR PUT IN PARK Soaring gas prices sideline food delivery, ride-hailing drivers / B6 WELCOME TO THIRD ACT Winnipeg writer Deborah Schnitzer explores worth and wisdom of older women in new column / D1 PLOT THICKENS Judge rules on cemetery plot fight between families / B1 WEATHER ISOLATED FLURRIES. HIGH -12 — LOW -18 RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Karen Robb, an educational assistant at Fort Richmond Collegiate, is shocked as she takes an unexpected call from her birth father, Gary Milani, Wednesday, after he arrived in Krakow, Poland, with the help of her students. Robb and Grade 12 students Divya Sharma (from left), Adil Hayat and Inga Kseniia Tkaschuk, were getting their photo taken by the Free Press when Milani called. ONLY five patients will get spinal surgery out of province in the next few weeks as part of a highly touted plan by the government to deliver tens of thousands of delayed surger- ies to sick Manitobans. Sanford Health Fargo vice-pres- ident of operations Brittany Sachdeva said a “select number” of Manitobans who need specialized spinal care will be treated at the facility, which is nearly 400 kilome- tres south of Winnipeg. The Manitoba government finalized an agreement with Sanford Health to treat patients with degenerative disc disease and spinal stenosis at its centre in Fargo through a pilot program last month. The province’s surgical and diag- nostic recovery task force had said a few hundred patients could be eligible to receive their operation at Sanford. “We expect to care for approxi- mately five patients over the next several weeks,” Sachdeva said in an emailed statement to the Free Press. Sachdeva was not made available for an interview. The deal with Sanford was one of four pillars of the province’s plan to cut the backlog. It was announced by the task force in its first update to Manitobans in mid-January. Since then, few de- tails about the pilot program have been made public. Recently, the Tory government has refused to answer journalists’ questions about its agreement with Sanford, citing restrictions on government communications in place as a result of the Fort Whyte byelection. Late last week, the province’s diagnostic and surgical recovery task force quietly posted an update on its progress toward reducing the pandemic backlog, which Doctors Manitoba estimates to include more than 52,000 delayed surgeries and 109,000 delayed diagnostic tests. The update said spinal surgery had already begun at Sanford Health with the intention to expand the pilot program. No details were provided. A spokesman for Health Minis- ter Audrey Gordon’s office would not reveal how many patients had travelled out of province, the total number of patients Sanford had agreed to accept, or the duration or cost of the pilot program when asked by the Free Press this week. “As explained previously, the agreement provides for a pilot phase where a small number of patients will receive care,” the spokesman said in a statement. “This process will enable both orga- nizations to get the patient referrals and transitions in place so that this can be a safe and effective care experience.” Handful of Manitobans head to N.D. for spinal surgery DANIELLE DA SILVA W ORLD geography students at a Winnipeg high school put their mapping skills to good use by transforming a classroom into a com- mand centre to help a man escape the war-torn capital of Ukraine. Karen Robb, an educational assistant at Fort Richmond Collegiate, recently discovered her birth father, Gary Mi- lani, has been living in eastern Europe for more than 20 years. “The first actual time I heard his voice in my whole life, I had to compete with the sound of bombs and machine guns outside of his window,” Robb recalled, during a phone call Wednesday. The educational assistant said the two have been in touch over the last two years, but communication inten- sified when Russian forces invaded Ukraine last month. Robb initially struggled to convince the 73-year-old Canadian it was unsafe for him to stay in Kyiv throughout the war, she said, adding when he was finally willing to leave, the difficulty of the task quickly became clear. “I was trying to think out of the box, what I could do, how I could help from where I was,” she said. “It dawned on me that students in the geography class (at Fort Richmond), who are a bunch of whiz kids with tech devices, might be able to help.” When Robb approached teacher Regan Moses early last week, the social studies educator — who has a Stand With Ukraine sign hanging in her classroom — was keen to support her colleague and task teenagers with a problem-solving lesson. “It was a heartbreaking story, but we knew we had to do something,” said Adil Hayat, a Grade 12 student. Adil and his peers used photos of the 73-year-old man’s location, which he had sent to Robb, as a starting point for their project March 1. They determined Milani was at a city hostel using Google Maps and satellite imagery online, and proceeded to plot an unobstructed 16.2-kilometre route for him to take to the Kyiv train station while avoiding a massive Russian mili- tary convoy. (The students originally mapped out directions so Milani could first walk to pick up his daughter at her grand- mother’s house before finding them a route to the train station together. They had to pivot in response to changing family plans.) “We were all on our phones, doing research… By the end of the class, we were able to successfully tell him where he needed to go (over the phone) so he had a map in mind, so he knew what roads were closed and what roads were open,” Adil said. Grade 12 student Inga Kseniia Tkaschuk, who immigrated to Canada from Ukraine in 2017 due to economic reasons and ongoing conflict in the region, translated Ukrainian articles where necessary. The class relied on social media and news reports to learn a specific bridge had been bombed and violence was less prevalent during the day in compari- son to night. Equipped with this knowledge, Milani left for the train station the following morning at 7 a.m. in Kyiv (11 p.m. CST on March 1). However, police turned him away at a check- point because there was violence and debris on the roads. Students plot man’s escape from Kyiv MAGGIE MACINTOSH Winnipeg educational assistant turns to geography ‘whiz kids’ to get birth father out of war zone MARIUPOL, Ukraine — A Russian airstrike devastated a maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol Wednesday amid growing warnings from the West that Moscow’s invasion is about to take a more brutal and indiscriminate turn. Ukrainian officials said the attack wounded at least 17 people. The ground shook more than a mile away when the Mariupol complex was hit by a series of blasts that blew out windows and ripped away much of the front of one building. Police and soldiers rushed to the scene to evac- uate victims, carrying out a heavily pregnant and bleeding woman on a stretcher as light snow drifted down on burning and mangled cars and trees shattered by the blast. Another woman wailed as she clutched her child. In the courtyard, a blast crater extended at least two storeys deep. “Today Russia committed a huge crime,” said Volodymir Nikulin, a top regional police official, standing in the ruins. “It is a war crime without any justification.” In Zhytomyr, a city of 260,000 to the west of Kyiv, bombs fell on two hospi- tals, one of them a children’s hospital, Mayor Serhii Sukhomlyn said on Face- book. He said the number of casualties was still being determined. His report could not be independently confirmed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Mariupol strike was “beyond an atrocity” and it trapped children and others under the rubble. “A children’s hospital. A maternity hospital. How did they threaten the Russian Federation?” Zelenskyy asked in his nightly video address, switching to Russian to express his horror at the airstrike. “What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?” ‘Beyond an atrocity’: Hospital bombing traps children, moms EVGENIY MALOLETKA LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER VIDEO OF PHONE CALL WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ● ESCAPE, CONTINUED ON A2 ● BOMBING, CONTINUED ON A2 ● SURGERY, CONTINUED ON A2 T es P A_03_Mar-10-22_FP_01.indd 3 2022-03-09 10:51 PM ;