Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 6, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba II II The RW tax holiday is at SALISBURY HOUSE on Thursdays! No PST NoGST APPLIES AT ALL SALISBURY HOUSE FAMILY RESTAURANT LOCATIONS VALID FROM DECEMBER 19 2024 THROUGH FEBRUARY 13 2025 -THURSDAYS ONLY THURSDAY FEBRUARY 6, 2025 ● ASSOCIATE EDITOR, NEWS: STACEY THIDRICKSON 204-697-7292 ● CITY.DESK@FREEPRESS.MB.CA ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM SECTION B CONNECT WITH WINNIPEG’S NO. 1 NEWS SOURCE ▼ CITY ● BUSINESS SHELDON PINX OBITUARY Lawyer ‘a very skilled adversary’ CRIMINAL defence lawyer Sheldon Pinx was a courtroom titan. “He was the most remarkable and exceptional cross examiner I’ve ever seen,” said Robert Tapper, who was a partner with Pinx at the former Wolch Pinx Tapper Scurfield law firm. “There are lawyers, good lawyers and exceptional lawyers — and he was in another world above that.” Pinx died on Tuesday at age 77 after a few years of ill health. He’s remembered as an expert at cross-examining witnesses and his strong defence of a man later found to have been wrongfully accused of homi- cide. David Asper was a criminal lawyer in the 1990s who was working on get- ting David Milgaard out of prison when Pinx and a team of lawyers in the law firm were in a nearby boardroom map- ping out their legal strategy to defend Kyle Unger. Unger had been charged, along with Timothy Houlahan, with the 1990 slay- ing of 16-year-old Brigitte Grenier at an outdoor music concert near Roseisle. Asper said both men were found guilty, but only one of them, Unger, had testified in his defence, and Pinx was the only lawyer later criticized by the Court of Appeal. Unger, whose case was prosecuted by Crown attorney George Dangerfield, was eventually found to be wrongly convicted and was paid compensation by the province. “Sheldon got to his closing arguments and he said the loudest witness in the courtroom was the silence of Tim Hou- lahan,” Asper said. “The Court of Appeal rapped his knuckles for saying that, but I won’t let Sheldon go without saying he was right. I will wag my finger at the Court of Ap- peal and everybody for that. (Sheldon) was really unhappy he was singled out for that, but he was right.” Asper said he teaches students one piece of advice Pinx gave him when he first started practising criminal law and knew there would be times when ethical choices had to be made. “He said you have to stop the world in that moment and make good choices. Don’t try to be smart, stop and think.” KEVIN ROLLASON PHIL HOSSACK / FREE PRESS FILES Criminal defence lawyer Sheldon Pinx died Tuesday at 77. ● PINX, CONTINUED ON B2 Lemay Forest graves safe: developer T HE developer of the proposed assisted-living facility on the Lemay Forest property promised it wouldn’t be constructed near land that is suspected of having unmarked graves from a 20th century Catholic orphanage. John Wintrup says he and the land- owner have consulted with the provin- cial government and Indigenous organ- izations since 2023 about the possibility of unmarked graves on the northwest corner of the 23-acre site in St. Norbert. “The very first time I stepped on the land … I saw some stones and a bit of a fence and you can see some depressions on the ground that look like graves,” Wintrup said Wednesday. “We’re not building on graves. We’re not destroy- ing that area.” Winnipeg city council rejected Toch- al Development Group’s plan to build the 2,500-unit assisted-living facility, but the developer intends to appeal the decision to the Municipal Board in Feb- ruary. Burial records shared by the St. Boniface Historical Society show 726 infants, including some Métis children, were buried in the cemetery at the for- mer site of the Asile Ritchot Catholic orphanage from 1907 to 1912. However, a preliminary analysis of orphanage admission registers re- ported 3,383 deaths associated with the institution, the historical society said. Wintrup suggested there could be up- wards of 5,000 graves at the site, based on a 2020 site assessment and subse- quent research. “We disclosed that right away,” he said. NICOLE BUFFIE UNIVERSITY OF WINNIPEG ARCHIVES Records show 726 infants were buried in the cemetery at the site of the Asile Ritchot orphanage. ● LEMAY, CONTINUED ON B2 AT the Elmwood Community Re- source Centre, men learn how to be better men. The centre’s gender-based violence program, which focuses on newcom- ers, offers counselling and education on gender inequity — what it looks like, how it is perpetuated and how it can be harmful. The program has received $220,000 from the provincial and federal gov- ernment to expand that work, the province announced Wednesday. The work has become more cru- cial over time, Elmwood Community Resource Centre executive director Nina Condo said. “It’s changing those patterns, the societal norms, that has allowed this to happen,” she said Wednesday. “Now, newcomer men and young boys are having spaces to look at their culture, look at their upbringing, and changing what they thought was nor- mal and being part of the change.” They’ve helped 130 men in the pro- gram so far, and are expanding it into high schools and post-secondary gym locker rooms. “Hopefully, we’re planting the seed, but also we’re coming to a place where men themselves are telling us, ‘You know what? I did not know that I was behaving that way, I did not know that I had that bias in me, and uncon- sciously, I’ve been harming the per- son that I love,’” she said. The support comes through bilat- eral funding from the federal govern- ment’s 10-year National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, current- ly in its second year. Other funding announced Wednes- day included: $25,000 for The Pas Family Resource Centre’s Northern men and boys programming, $166,000 for the NorWest Men’s Relationship Program, $200,000 for Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata’s EmpowerMen Program and $200,000 for the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre men’s program. The $811,000 in funding focuses on prevention programming aimed at men and boys, Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said. “Male violence drives the majority of violence against women and girls and gender-diverse folks,” she said. “If we truly want to make a differ- ence, then men need to be at the fore- front of prevention measures.” Manitoba’s part of the national plan includes a federal contribution of $6.24 million and a $6.25 million prov- incial contribution to go toward 19 community initiatives over the year. Stats Canada data from 2021 found Manitoba behind only Saskatch- ewan and the territories for rates of gender-related homicide of women and girls. Manitoba also scored second-high- est in rates of police-reported family violence and intimate partner vio- lence in 2019, again surpassed only by Saskatchewan and the territories. With a federal election looming this year, Fontaine said she hoped any gov- ernment would understand the value of this funding and the provincial government would “continue to do the work that we need to do.” “Any government can come in and delete programs and delete budget line items,” she said. “I would hope that whoever is in government understands the critical importance of dealing with male vio- lence and intimate partner violence.” malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca MALAK ABAS Prevention of gender-based violence gets funding hike RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS Nina Condo, executive director of Elmwood Community Resource Centre, says the organization tries to change patterns and societal norms for newcomers. Firm considers geothermal system for St. Vital arena A WINNIPEG firm hopes to determine how a geothermal system could capture “waste” heat from a city-owned arena and use it to warm up nearby houses, a school and a personal care home. GEOptimize, a geothermal consult- ing firm, is seeking funding for a feas- ibility study at the St. Vital arena. “An ice arena takes a lot of heat from the ice in order to keep it frozen and that heat has to go somewhere. Almost all rinks out there are sending the heat outside to a cooling tower. If you go out past most arenas, you’ll see a big box sort of sticking out somewhere that is steaming away. That’s waste heat,” said Ed Lohrenz, the firm’s vice-president. Lohrenz estimates that each month St. Vital arena operates, it wastes around 150,000 kilowatt-hours of heat. Capturing that heat and redistributing it could heat about 65 to 70 houses for one year, he said. In a geothermal system, ground- source heat pumps circulate fluid through a loop of pipes buried under- ground. The fluid can absorb heat from the earth. “With the heat from the ice rink… we put more pipe in the ground (than we would in a house) and we circulate (it). Instead of wasting the heat to the outside air, we put that through a heat exchanger and store that heat in the ground… We take that heat and connect other buildings,” said Lohrenz. Ground-source heat pumps can re- duce electric heating bills by up to 60 per cent, says Efficiency Manitoba. “The big benefit is that we can… eliminate the use of natural gas be- cause we can take heat from the ground and use electricity (to transfer it),” said Lohrenz. “For every unit of energy that we buy from Manitoba Hydro, we get about four units of heat from it.” He said the switch from traditional natural gas heat to geothermal could be a good option to slash heating costs at dozens of additional city rinks as well. Geothermal technology has been around for decades. A rink in Miami, Man., installed it around the year 2000. However, the City of Winnipeg is still exploring the idea. The upfront cost to install such sys- tems can create a barrier to using them to replace traditional natural gas heat. It would cost about $35,000 to $40,000 to set up a geothermal system at a 1,400-square-foot bungalow on a small lot, without co-ordinating that change with other buildings, said Lohrenz. He said that cost would rise for big- ger buildings, such as arenas, though it’s difficult to pinpoint an exact price range. JOYANNE PURSAGA ● GEOTHERMAL, CONTINUED ON B2 ;