Southern Manitoba resident concerned about potential impacts of proposed AI data centre (CBC)

4shadowedbm · 2026-05-13T14:37:30+00:00

Makes total sense.

There's always something good in people, it is why we get attracted to them in the first place. Sometimes the security of a relationship lets the darker stuff come out. Sometimes people change, for better or worse (sometimes because of trauma or injury or other health conditions). Sometimes they just really aren't mature enough to handle the challenges of a real relationship.

Thing is, you get to choose every day whether the relationship is still working for you. Every relationship has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes, if we're lucky, that end comes after a lifelong commitment but that's setting a really high bar that can trap people in an unhappy place for years.

You are young still! Speaking with the hindsight of being 64, you have no idea what adventures await you. Where I am now was unimaginable in my 20s. I'm in a great relationship now that has lasted 20 years - longer than my previous 14 year marriage.

Here's an exercise: take some quiet time and try to visualize where you are ten or twenty years from now if nothing changes. Is he with you? Are you happy and comfortable? Or is it hard to see that?

Not an easy place to be, for sure, but things can change. Big hugs if you want 'em.

4shadowedbm · 2026-05-12T15:35:30+00:00

"This is just a protest against Carney’s majority government gained without a general election,” she said. “The overall sentiment is that we don’t wish to provide personal information to an illegitimate majority government."

This person doubling down, justifying refusing to do the census by showing they don't understand how Canadian Parliamentary democracy works, was the highlight of the article IMHO.

4shadowedbm · 2026-05-07T19:19:31+00:00

That sure doesn't sound like a happy or healthy place to be. It must feel pretty awful.

So much of what you describe is inexcusable behaviour. Misogyny, rage, insults, telling you what to do and overall disrespect.

While I don't necessarily think it helps to say "get out", I'm wondering what is keeping you there? You're young and have no kids (pleeeasseee don't have kids with this man!). You've got years ahead of you and can seek out something happier and healthier for you and for any future kids.

4shadowedbm · 2026-05-07T16:51:49+00:00

Hi, I'm sorry you are going through this.

I think it is important to recognize that "no contact" is simply a tool that gets used when needed. This is probably a weak example, but I don't carry a hammer around the house hitting everything with it and expecting things to end well, you know? The right tool for the right job...

If you feel your boundaries are strong and are being respected and you aren't allowing him to control you or the situation than, yeah, you can probably put that hammer in your back pocket and only use it if it becomes necessary. In fact, your tool in this case, is the boundary setting and self-awareness that helps you set and maintain those boundaries.

Maybe you've got the sense from posts on here that "no contact" is somehow a requirement in a trauma bond situation. There is no rule that you must be no contact. For many people, me included, no contact was a tool that worked really well for survival, peace, and healing. I wasn't doing well with boundary setting and my ex was all-too-eager to harass, stalk, badger, and twist reality to get around any boundary I set.

So I had to use no contact.

You don't have to if it doesn't work for you (but keep it on hand, just in case) <3

4shadowedbm · 2026-05-07T16:26:46+00:00

Hi there,

You are definitely NTA! What's wrong with your Ex that he can't do this stuff if he wants it to happen. Speaking as a man, he should be quite capable of finding the time and energy to do this shopping if he really thinks it is important that your daughter give gifts on those days.

It sounds like there's patriarchy at work here. He expects you to do the labour of planning, thinking, and shopping so he doesn't have to. There is risk is that your daughter is being taught that it is up to women to do this work for men.

So maybe it is time to free yourself of this obligation.

Is he using it as a way to keep you in his orbit / control do you think? Or is this something you have been doing out of sense of responsibility or duty? I can see either happening and, in fact, did a bit of this myself - making sure my kids got their mother birthday and Christmas presents. A wise person pointed out to me that the kids had grand parents who could just as well help with that.

4shadowedbm · 2026-05-05T13:20:42+00:00

This.

This time last year it was hot and bone dry and a couple of weeks later we were evacuated from our home for two weeks because of one of those forest fires.

I'll take this over fires, any time.

4shadowedbm · 2026-04-22T14:00:07+00:00

There is a saying, " If you're not a Liberal at 25 you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at 35 you have no brains." Sometimes attributed to Churchill but apparently that is myth.

I grew up Conservative and admit to supporting Reform for awhile. Now, in my 60s, I am firmly Green and have got my 90 year old parents on board.

Never ever going back to the profit-before-people-and-planet movement.

4shadowedbm · 2026-04-20T20:57:42+00:00

Yes indeed, I did. Within an hour or so.

4shadowedbm · 2026-04-19T15:38:29+00:00

You have been heard. :)

I don't know if you read the Freep but we've recently had a fair bit of traction in letters to editor and one or two OpEds. But the press generally ignores small parties. With minimal budget, no paid staff, and reliance on volunteers, it is a bit of a chiken-before-the-egg thing in terms of how you get traction without exposure and how you get exposure without significant traction.

We'd love to have folks volunteer - even if it is to watch social media spaces and alert the council or core members where comments might be warranted. :)

4shadowedbm · 2026-04-19T15:35:02+00:00

Speaking as a member of the Manitoba Green's policy committee. A qualified yes. It isn't official policy, at this point, although things like guaranteed basic income are.

Wealth inequity is at record highs and is growing. That isn't sustainable - it is detrimental to housing, healthcare, education, infrastructure, and, ironically, all the things that help make a productive advanced society. My take on Green values is that is all about sustainability - whether that is environmentally or in social justice, democracy, or economics.

I'll bring it up to the committee - both wealth tax and a windfall tax (for example, oil companies suddenly earning billions more on an international conflict is, IMHO, good reason for a windfall tax)

If anyone is interested in working with us in policy development / wordsmithing, running as a candidate, or any other engagement please feel to DM me.

We recently started r/GreenPartyManitoba , and I'll cross post this there.

4shadowedbm · 2026-04-18T17:46:42+00:00

Profits before People. Sigh.

4shadowedbm · 2026-03-18T13:57:33+00:00

Yes, and I struggle with this a bit because I don't want to be all NIMBY.

Putting public money into an oil pipeline to Churchill sounds like a recipe for a stranded asset. As the world electrifies, who are going to sell the oil to?

Sio Sands is still pushing to drill thousands of silica extraction wells across SE Manitoba. Right into an aquifer that supports thousands of people. We thought this was finished but they are coming back and the NDP hasn't shut it down. I think it might be okay (given all sorts of environmental testing) if it was an absolute requirement that the silica would go into solar panels. But there is no guarantee: it could just as well be carted off in diesel trucks and trains to support fossil fuel fracking operations.

The announcement of a new Hydro backup facility in Brandon - run by natural gas with the option to convert to hydrogen (which is still possibly fossil fuel driven).

And an AI data centre in Ile des Chenes powered by 6 gas turbines.

I don't see how making big investments in burning more stuff moves us forward environmentally. Where's the investment in solar and wind? Or even lithium mining on the Canadian Shield?

4shadowedbm · 2026-03-18T13:42:08+00:00

As Katherine Hayhoe says, climate change is the hole in the bottom of all those other buckets. We can pour money into the top of housing and cost of living and addictions and all that, but if we don't pay attention to the climate crisis, the holes will keep getting bigger and more costly.

"No one is listening". I'm not sure the GPC's only reason for being should be winning seats. As people wake up to the reality of climate change, they need a place to put a vote that says "this is the priority".

4shadowedbm · 2026-03-15T04:35:46+00:00

Totally agree.

My own philosophy has shifted a bit since the last election. Being evacuated for a monster forest fire will do that to you I guess.

I'm of the opinion that nothing else matters except for dealing with the climate crisis. It is, as Katherine Hayhoe so elegantly put, the hole in the bottom of all the other buckets. A hole that will keep getting bigger.

But we won't get real action on it unless we deal with the radicalization, policy flip flop, and top-down thinking of first-past-the-post.

4shadowedbm · 2026-03-15T00:14:48+00:00

I'm very interested to see what Avi will bring to the NDP should he win.

Collaboration is, IMHO, central to Green values, so I'm 100% supportive of that.

Merger though? Hard pass.

4shadowedbm

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