Congratulations to Red River College grad Lisanne Pajot (Creative Communications, 2003), whose debut film Indie Game: The Movie tied for 5th place on PBS’ list of the Top 10 documentaries of 2012.

Directed and produced by Pajot and partner James Swirksy (shown at left), the film chronicles the world of independent video game developers, and has drawn rave reviews from critics across North America since it bowed at the Sundance Film Festival last January.

In addition to its recent ranking on the PBS/POV list, the doc also picked up the World Cinema Documentary Best Editing Prize at Sundance. It’s since been toured throughout Canada and the U.S., and was optioned by HBO and producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).

Click here for more information, or to stream or download the film.

When I was asked to attend Red River College’s 2012 Alumni Dinner — and act as a student ambassador on behalf of the Creative Communications program — three thoughts danced around in my head.

First, I was thankful because it meant I had a legitimate reason to go shopping and find a pretty dress. Second, I figured based on the ticket price alone, I was bound to receive a complimentary fancy dinner. And third, I thought the event was a valuable networking opportunity to chat with professionals in my desired industry.

When I entered The Fairmont Winnipeg on Nov. 16, the evening of the gala, I remember being taken aback by the sheer number of guests waiting patiently to check their table number. Thinking back now, I don’t know why I was so surprised – after all, our College will be turning 75 years old next year.

Aside from the well-dressed crowd, delicious meal, beautiful venue and exquisite décor — the 2012 Alumni Dinner proved to be much more.

The Dinner was a celebration and appreciation of the many grads that contribute to the success and growth of our college. When I looked across the dozens of tables that seated approximately 500 guests, I felt moved knowing each and every one of those guests had a special connection with my College.

During the evening, such speakers as Wayne Morsky, master of ceremonies and 2011 Distinguished Alumni recipient, and Stephanie Forsyth, President & CEO of RRC, commented on how the College has evolved over the years. As a current student fortunate enough to go to school everyday in Winnipeg’s Exchange District, it was humbling to hear stories about our history.

Those stories brought me back to a week prior, when a very generous host and his beautiful wife invited 16 current RRC students — myself included — to join them for dinner. Read More →

There are three slices of butterfish lying across each other on the plate, their edges stained purple by beet juice. A small golden hill of julienned apple and beet rises nearby. The dish is framed by asparagus stalks, cucumber, a taro crisp anchored in brilliant orange roe and a pool of wasabi mayonnaise.

It looks like a modern sculpture. With its combination of Scandinavian fish curing and Japanese sensibilities, it’s a meeting of two cultures.

And it’s the dish that just won RRC alum Chef Östen Rice (Culinary Arts, 2001) the Winnipeg Gold Medal Plate, earning him a spot at the Canadian Culinary Championships in Kelowna next year.

“That dish was very personal for me, it goes back to my heritage,” Rice says, on a break from meal rushes at Wasabi Sabi. “My mom is from Sweden. She cooked the way her mother taught her, the way her grandmother taught her and so on. I came across some old recipe books and they inspired me for this dish.”

“I realized a while ago that Japanese and Scandinavian food can work well together. The cultures have the same clean aesthetic and presentation style to them – and lots of emotion swirling around them.”

Rice’s distinctive style – his Scandinasian flair – and his recent award are both accomplishments with years of experience behind them. The 31-year-old Winnipegger, born and raised in Fort Rouge, knew from an early age that he wanted to be a chef.

“As far back as I can I remember, I was always interested in food. My mom cooked food from scratch and I was always hanging around. I think there are pictures of me as a toddler trying to help.” Read More →

Congratulations to RRC alum Östen Rice (Culinary Arts, 2001), of Wasabi Sabi restaurant, on his recent win at the Gold Medal Plates competition in Winnipeg.

Rice was awarded top honours at the event, which took place Oct. 26 at the Winnipeg Convention Centre. As it does every year, the event celebrates the best in local cuisine, pitting the city’s premiere chefs against each other in a bid for a spot at the Canadian Culinary Championships.

Rice’s gold medal-worthy entry was a thrilling mix of sweet and sour, comprised of beet-cured butterfish, marinated sea asparagus, taro crisp and tobiko roe, and a slaw of julienned Fuki apple, golden beet and shiso leaf.

Food critic James Chatto, one of the judges at the event, described it thusly: “(Rice’s) dish had a personal narrative, inspired by the gravlax his Scandinavian grandmother used to cure, but given a Japanese twist to reflect the style of his restaurant.”

Rice shared the podium with fellow chefs Michael Schafer (Sydney’s at The Forks, bronze) and Jamie Snow (Amici at Niakwa). Also in attendance at the event were Senior Judge Jeff Gill, Culinary Instructor at RRC, fellow judge and RRC alum (and winner of last year’s gold medal) Michael Dacquisto, and RRC alum Adam Donnelly, who competed on behalf of his Segovia Tapas Bar and Restaurant.

Having won at the Winnipeg event, Rice now moves on to the Canadian Culinary Championships, which take place Feb. 8 and 9 in Kelowna, B.C.

Shown above: RRC alum Östen Rice (centre) along with Amici’s Jamie Snow (left) and Sydney’s at the Forks’ Michael Schafer (right), on the winner’s podium of this year’s Gold Medal Plates culinary competition.

Luke Kandia’s work as president and CEO of Seerx Technologies involves a lot of trouble shooting; when you’re building a client’s network infrastructure or recovering data from a fried laptop, it helps to have a mind geared toward problem solving.

So it’s fitting the 51 year old’s own search to find his calling was problematic.

“As a kid, you don’t really know what you want to do,” Kandia says. “When it came time to leave St. John’s High School, I went to the job fair and a university had a display up about Forestry and I thought, ‘Hey, I like the outdoors.’”

Kandia registered and headed east, only to find the course work heavy on measuring tree growth and light on communing with nature. After dropping out, he headed to Toronto for testing to enter fighter pilot training – a challenge that appealed to the adventurous young man.

Unlike the other entrants, he’d never flown a plane.

“All the other guys, they had been cadets, they had their private pilot’s license. When I got into the simulator, I bombed. They offered me a job in the army,” Kandia laughs.

Chastened, Kandia returned to Winnipeg to join a different force: the Winnipeg Police Service. As a cadet, Kandia peered inside the force’s operations, admiring the fast-paced, intense lives led by the officers around him. But the longer he served, the more the glamour wore off. A high-profile corruption case involving prominent officers soured his view of the force’s lifestyle. His plans to start a family faced off against his fears of meeting a known criminal while out shopping with his children.

“There was the glamour and the rush, but you’ve got to live with the rest of the stuff day to day,” Kandia says. “A lot of people on the station duty gave me the impression I could do better for myself outside.” Read More →

Red River College grad Tannis Rentz (Animal Health Technology, 2002) has been providing aid to people’s pets for more than 10 years now — ever since she began volunteering at the Transcona Veterinary Hospital as a teen.

But in April 2013, Rentz and fellow AHT grad Mary Robinson (2011) will travel a little further afield to help the tens of thousands of sick or malnourished dogs crowding the streets of Kathmandu, Nepal.

Rentz and Robinson are headed to Nepal’s KAT Centre, a not-for-profit treatment centre for sick and injured street dogs. As Rentz explains, there are currently more than 20,000 dogs living on the streets of Kathmandu — many of them infected with rabies and other communicable diseases that pose a threat to their human counterparts.

“And of course they’re constantly reproducing, because none of them are spayed or neutered,” says Rentz, who over the last 10 years has worked her way from a clinical position at the Winnipeg Animal Emergency Clinic to an administrative role with the Petsecure arm of the Western Financial Insurance Company.

“Initially, the government there thought it would be a good idea to terminate these dogs by throwing poisoned meat into the streets. But then they’d dispose of the poisoned bodies by throwing them into their water supply, which just made things even worse.”

While in Kathmandu, Rentz and Robinson will assist KAT Centre staff in treating captured dogs for their existing medical conditions (malnourishment, skin diseases, lesions, etc.), then rehabilitating them to the point they can be safely spayed or neutered. Read More →

Congratulations to Red River College alumna Jamie Isfeld (Digital Media Design, 2007), on being named Broadcaster of Tomorrow by the Broadcasters Association of Manitoba.

Isfeld, who currently works as a web producer for CTV Winnipeg, picked up the award during a reception that followed the Association’s annual fall meeting last weekend.

The award honours “future stars” who have been employed in the broadcasting industry for between two to five years. In addition to her work with CTV Winnipeg, Isfeld also does freelance work in web development and new media designs, and maintains blogs on new media topics and her artwork.

Click here to see Isfeld’s website, and here for more information on RRC’s Digital Media Design program.

Congratulations to Red River College grad Paul Samyn (Creative Communications, 1988), who was recently named the new editor of the Winnipeg Free Press.

Samyn has been acting as interim editor since Margo Goodhand resigned from the position in late July. His first job for the Free Press was as a paper boy, but his journalism career began when he was hired as a reporter in 1988.

Since then, he’s covered provincial and federal elections, conflicts overseas, and the funerals of Princess Diana and former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. He also helped lead the paper’s political coverage as its Ottawa bureau chief for a decade before being named city editor in 2007.

“It’s an honour and a privilege for someone who used to deliver the Free Press … to now be leading our newsroom as we serve our readers in both print and on our website,” Samyn said in today’s Free Press announcement.

“I’m proud to be part of our 140-year-old tradition and excited about the job ahead, delivering the stories that our readers expect and deserve.”

Click here to read the full Free Press story, and here for more information about RRC’s Creative Communications program.

He’s built a local business into a national retailer, cultivated a passionate base of customers through a tireless focus on service, and devoted himself to revitalizing his community and helping dozens of young people pursue their own career dreams.

That’s why Red River College is proud to name entrepreneur and philanthropist Bob Tallman as the 2012 recipient of our Distinguished Alumni Award.

Bob Tallman joined the family business, Princess Auto Ltd, in the mid-seventies, shortly after graduating from RRC with a diploma in Business Administration.

“I was the first in my family to be attending a post-secondary school,” he says. ”Our life had been focused around the family business, and I wanted to know something about business in general before I began working there on a full time basis.”

The investment in education paid off, as Bob and his brother Larry grew the small Winnipeg-based firm into a nationwide retail operation through the late-seventies and the eighties. Bob Tallman became the sole owner and CEO of Princess Auto in 1989.

Today, he oversees a network of 34 retail stores with over 1,800 staff specializing in industrial, garage and surplus items. The company prides itself on its diverse product assortment, boasting its one of the few places in the world where you can purchase a gas powered air compressor and an HDMI cable in the same building.

But it’s Princess Auto’s commitment to providing exceptional customer service that has earned it a cult-like following among shoppers, which is something Bob says was inspired by his time at RRC.

“I learned through my experiences at Red River College that a business ultimately is about the people who work in the business, the roles they play and most importantly, how they interact as a team,” he says. “It is probably the greatest lesson I learned at RRC, and has driven much of my strategy in building Princess Auto.” Read More →

At Red River College, we pride ourselves on helping budding entrepreneurs turn their business ideas into realities. From simple start-ups to international success stories, our graduates have a knack for leaving their mark on the marketplace.

Just ask Sean Sylvestre, (Business Administration, 2003) a recent grad who’s currently combining the training he received at RRC with the optical insight he acquired while working at his parents’ dispensary in Garden City. As the brains behind Eyewear Evolution, a new company that employs  “virtual mirror” software to bridge the gap between traditional and online retailers, Sylvestre has come up with an innovative solution to an industry-wide challenge.

“What we’ve created is a virtual mirror so that we can actually showcase the product in 3D on (customers’) faces — on either a tablet, their mobile phone, or through their PC,” says Sylvestre, who also works as general manager at Joss Vision Care on Pembina Highway.

“Part of the issue when people come in to try on glasses is they take off their current glasses, put on the demo, look in the mirror and they can’t actually see what they look like — because there’s no prescription in the demo. We deal with that problem.”

The new software also has benefits for brick-and-mortar retailers, who can employ a virtual inventory that allows them to keep pace with online vendors. Since they no longer have to pre-pay for inventory, retailers can sell their product for less, and may be able to cut down on staffing and operational costs, as well.

It’s the type of creative, cutting-edge vision that’s typical of RRC grads, many of whom achieve success in everything from marketing to office management, finance to manufacturing. Whether they’re at the top of the chain of command, or just getting in on the ground floor, RRC alumni tend to be armed with the skills and determination to make a real impact on industry. Read More →