WINNIPEG — Less than a month after a Pride billboard in the Pembina Valley was vandalized, spray paint meant to obscure the sign has become part of a message that’s being shared even further.

“You can’t spray the gay away,” reads the slogan Pembina Valley Pride has reclaimed from the vandalism.

It’s now the centrepiece of a merchandise fundraiser featuring an image of the defaced billboard across a range of items like T-shirts, sweaters and tote bags.

The campaign has drawn an outpouring of support, reaching about 80,000 people online and attracting orders from across Canada and the United States.

WINNIPEG — Business owners in the East Beaches area of Lake Winnipeg hauled out generators Wednesday after a planned Manitoba Hydro outage left thousands of residents and cottagers without power.

Lise Bourassa, who runs several stores in Grand Beach, had to rent generators to accommodate the eight-hour blackout, which affected the area from Beaconia to Victoria Beach as well as Sagkeeng First Nation, while Hydro crews fixed a pole that was damaged by fire in May.

Despite the spare power source, she was only able to open one of her stores during the outage and said it came at a bad time.

“I understand the importance of what Manitoba Hydro is doing, the problem all the businesses in this area are having is that our season is very short and to be shut down for a full day has a fairly big impact, plus the added cost of getting generators,” she wrote in a message to the Winnipeg Free Press. “We also had less than one week to make arrangements, find electricians and generators to be able to keep all the food safe.”