Jane's Walk - Point Douglas

A few photos from today's Jane's Walk with Rob Galston.

The start ..

Great attendance on a gorgeous day!

Vulcan Iron Works

Barber House

Windows...

... these windows belong to the Indigenous Cultural Education Center

Yellow house!

This year is the first year that I've done this Jane's walk thing. I'm glad I did .. they're a great way to learn about some areas of the city that you might not normally spend time in, see some new things, and hear some interesting stories while getting in a nice leisurely walk.

Jane's Walk - The West End

Just a few pictures from today's Jane's Walk of the West End with host Christian Cassidy.

Our host ..

The West End Cultural Centre.
It was a good turnout ... about 50 people.

West End Commons
a.k.a. St. Matthew's Anglican Church

This is a building of many purposes:

church, community resource centre, and soon affordable housing

Inside the new Winnipeg IKEA

I heard there was a media night for the new IKEA here in Winnipeg, so I put on my trench coat, stuck a card that says "PRESS" in the band of my fedora, and snuck in for a preview.

I was amazed by what I found: a DJ, free champagne, appetizers from MISE Bistro, a killer gift bag filled to the top with awesome stuff, 15% off everything in the store... I could certainly get used to being a member of the media. If a young person ever comes to me and asks for advice, I'm going to tell them to go into journalism. Best job ever!

I should start by saying that I like IKEA. The office I am currently sitting in features two IKEA book shelves, an IKEA desk, an IKEA wall-mounted cabinet, an IKEA garbage can, and probably a couple of other miscellaneous items from the Swedish megastore. Not all of our rooms are like this mind you, but we do enjoy shopping there.

You would think, therefore, that I would be enthusiastic about IKEA coming to town. Well I am, but only moderately so. We have probably already bought all of the home furnishings that we ever would buy from there, at least for a while.

If I go to IKEA now, it's mostly for small things: little boxes for organizing, tea lights, lunch .... I have never actually had the famous IKEA meatballs. I thought tonight might be the perfect night to try them out. I just have to find the meatball station hidden somewhere in Canada's second largest IKEA.

The bamboo IKEA USB stick that they gave us says that the store is 395,671 square feet. That is a mere 3,000 square feet smaller that the Ottawa store, although both will be eclipsed next year by the expanded Montreal store at an astounding 500,000 sq ft.

The size of the Winnipeg store is a little bit misleading. The warehouse portion is larger than most other stores because, as one IKEA employee put it, our store is an "island" with no other distribution centres around. I expect this means that catalog orders to Regina will come from here now instead of Calgary.

With the larger warehouse, the actual shopping area probably isn't that much larger than most other IKEAs. If you been in one elsewhere, you know what to expect including tidy little "inspirational room settings" that showcase the products, and a 1.3 km labyrinth-style layout that will take you past lots of clean lines, geometric shapes, and bright colours.

What's different about our IKEA? Mostly improvements in the building itself: geothermal heating, skylights, a rainwater collection system and other similar things. They did not paint the building green in case you were wondering. There will be bicycle parking too, for you hardcore bike nuts.

The insanity starts for real on Wednesday, November 28. And just because it wouldn't be crazy enough as it is, IKEA is giving the first 1000 people free "mystery boxes" with a $75 gift card and a chance to win up to $5000 of IKEA stuff. Good luck peeps. I'm glad I got to go to this shindig, because I'm staying the heck away from there at least until the madness subsides ... which will probably be sometime next spring.

... but I will be back because I still haven't had any meatballs!!  Would you believe I completely missed the meatball station? I don't know how that happened.

The Great Outdoors: Gunn Lake

I've almost forgotten how to create a blog post, it's been so long. Just to get Blogger loosened up and moving again, I'll share my weekend hiking experience.

I've hiked before, but never overnight. Never having to carry all my provisions on my back. Last weekend me and two friends decided to give it a try, and picked the Baldy Lake / Gunn Lake trail in Riding Mountain National Park as our testing ground.

Riding Mountain is a great place to try out back-country camping, for a few of reasons:

1. The trails are very clear and well marked. It is impossible to lose the trail. Perhaps after a few decades of federal funding cuts the trails may get to be more ragged, but as it is, if you lose your way in Riding Mountain then you shouldn't be allowed outside of your house without a tether or GPS chip embedded in your skull.

2. There is lots of wildlife. (For some people this may be a con rather than a pro ..)

3. Firewood. The campsites and well stocked with dry chopped firewood. This is a HUGE bonus.

The trail we picked was very easy to hike. Mostly flat and grassy with only a few muddy spots or steep areas where you have to watch your footing. The 16.5 km hike each way is supposed to take 4-5 hours depending on who you talk to, but we did it in slightly less. Still, it's a long walk with 25 lbs on your back.

It rained for about 4 hours Saturday afternoon/evening, making for a nice green (and wet) campsite:

The rain sucked, but when the clouds broke you could walk down to the lake to catch a nice sunset

The final 1.9 km Gunn Lake portion of the trail is the most interesting, with some hills and a nice view of a swampy valley ...

... but it was the longer Baldy Lake / Central part where we saw most of the wild life, including two bears, a moose, a deer, rabbits, this weaselly thing ...

... and these salamandery things ...

Isn't he just precious? I googled Manitoba salamanders, and figure this guy is an eastern tiger salamander, or some sub-species thereof.

You can get an idea from the weasel picture of what the trails are like. See what I mean? Even the most incompetent hiker can't lose their way here, unless maybe they do bat spins and forget what direction they're headed in.

Unfortunately it was too cloudy to witness the Perseids meteor shower, if we could even stay up that late after driving for 3.5 hours and hiking 16.5 k, but the sunset and the wildlife gave us enough highlights to make us not regret the pain we were in afterwards.

If you do this trail, I highly recommend stopping in at the Olha General Store for an ice cream bar on the way home.

Olha Manitoba. Population: three old people sitting in a general store. It is a very well-kept little hamlet, actually.

Would I do this trail again? Probably not. I would look for something maybe a little shorter but more scenic and technically challenging, but it was a nice trip. That pre-chopped firewood at the campsite sure makes back-country camping a lot less painful.

Millenium Library Park opening

I took a little stroll today to check out the grand opening of the Millennium Library Park. I didn't stick around to listen to the Mayor and the Premier and Minister Vic Toews speak, because I don't really care what they have to say, but I grabbed a cup of coffee and had a look around.

It really is quite a nice space, at least all clean and new like it is, however it's very surprising that the water features are already overgrown with weeds...

I mean ... how does that happen? Good grief. This pesticide ban has to be reversed!

The turn out for the event was pretty good. If a crowd like this could assemble every day, it would be quite the people-watching place. Unfortunately on the average day I would expect to see a somewhat sparser and less well-dressed crowd than this one.

That's the thing about public spaces ... unless you have a high density of tourists or employed people in the area, these open public spaces can backfire by creating unsafe dead zones. But this is not a new public space .. it is a redesign of an existing and less safe public space, so I'm all for it. The redesign of Central Park worked very well, and hopefully this one will too.

The talk of the opening was the half-million dollar "emptyful" artwork. Love it or hate it or think it's a waste of money, the art work/sculpture/fountain thingy has one thing going for it: mist. On a hot day like today, the "fog" that the thing produces is really quite refreshing. Although the vast majority of it drifts well over your head and dissipates into the air, cooling nothing but a few insects and perhaps the ever-present Higgs boson particle, if you walk directly in front of it you do get a refreshing spritz.

Aside from the cost of the fountain, the park put a pretty big dent in our wallets. Just how big is uncertain, as officials have been reluctant to talk, however we can get an idea ... The park was origianly budgeted at $2.1 million, with another 1.7 added later for a new budget of $3.8 million. (Source) This figure is repeated on Christian Cassidy's July 2010 blog post here, but the link directly above goes to an updated web page that shows $7.4 million! Maybe that 100% budget overrun is why the officials didn't want to talk about it. The finally tally .... we'll probably find out sometime.

What would be great is if there were direct access to this park from the Human Bean café inside the library, so you could buy your coffee and walk out onto it like a giant patio. Minor quibble though. It still may be a pleasant place to park your butt or look around on a coffee break.

Yurts, Spruce Woods & Cacti

Camping is one of the many things that white people like. You may not know this, but even some white people don't like camping. For people who don't like camping but still want to "camp", God gave us yurts.

Actually, according to Wikipedia, Turkic nomads gave us yurts. For those who are unfamiliar with this ingenious invention, it is a round soft-walled structure that provides actual shelter from the elements, and is able to contain actual furniture like beds and tables.

The variety that you'll find in Manitoba campgrounds more like a rustic hotel room that's missing its bathroom. It has electricity, a locking door, a heater for those cool nights, track lighting and a covered porch with a stainless steel counter. There is no air conditioning however. You will have to make do with the plug-in fan that is provided with the yurt.

A few people have asked me about these things, so this post is for you. The cost is higher than a normal camp site, but it's perfect for small families .. or people who don't like camping.

*****

Did you know that Manitoba has cacti? I have photographic proof. Here's a little pincushion cactus in full bloom that I found while hiking at the Spruce Woods spirit sands.

Some more pics:

Winnipeg Roof Tops

Due to a lack of time, this week's blog post has been substituted with a photo of downtown exchange-area roof tops.

Close-up: "The Agitations"

A quick Google search shows that The Agitations are a Winnipeg band: http://www.myspace.com/theagitations  The may want to review their advertising strategy.

Montreal protests: a photo blog

Before I went to Montreal I joked to a friend about getting caught in the middle of a protest. You know those French people like to protest, and they've been doing a lot of that lately. The target of the anger: the government's plan to raise tuition fees from by far the lowest in the country to a little bit higher but still by far the lowest in the country.

Anyhow, flash forward to Friday as the wife and I were taking a stroll through Old Montreal on our way the Montreal Science Museum. Do de do de do ... (that's the sound of us strolling along.)

It appeared to be an ordinary day. People milling about. Young adults chatting on a street corner, one of them wearing ski goggles. Hmm, that's kind of weird. Oh well. This is Montreal ... anything goes!

Do de do de do ... Oh! Look at the pretty building. I think I'll take a picture of it:


Did I notice the guy with his face covered? No. But then again, this is Montreal .. anything goes.


However it was impossible not to notice all the cops closing off streets. Every block, more cop cars. A helicopter hovering over head. Yup, something is definitely brewing here, but wha .... oh:


Ah ... I think we'd better keep walking dear. Dodedodedodedodedo.

What I didn't know was that the pretty building pictured above contained the Premier, and became the focal point of this only minutes later: Montreal student protest turns violent

Later that afternoon we passed back that way and everything was more or less back to normal, except for the dozens of police cars and trucks lining the streets, some of which had smashed windows.


We had successfully avoided the riot, but the movement itself goes on, and you can see signs of it everywhere. People with red swatches pinned to their jackets, red balloons tied to lamp posts, statues with red tape over their mouths ...

You see, a protest is just a protest, but when you add a COLOUR to rally around it becomes a revolution. Every good revolution has a colour.

Unfortunately for the students, every good revolution also needs something else: popular support, and this the students don't appear to have. I was told by people on TV whom I'm sure are reliable that the majority of Quebecers support the tuition increase, to their credit, and are getting annoyed by the blocked streets and mayhem and such. Yet the protests have been going on for almost four months, and don't show any sign of abating. The semester is a write-off for the striking students anyhow.

I can't even begin to guess at the cost to the Quebec taxpayers of all the destruction, but more especially the mountains of police overtime that go into containing these protests. I don't know how many cops were out last Friday, but I think it was all of them.

In a way it might have been fun to get right in the middle of the mayhem and get the genuine riot experience. I even thought about starting a Riot Tourism business. Search out hot spots around the world where chaos is about to erupt, and take customers there to experience an adrenaline rush that only getting hit by pepper spray or rubber bullets can provide. I'm sure there's a market for that.

Seine: the forgotten river II

Two years ago I wrote Seine: the forgotten river -- a short photo tour of a winter bike ride down the under-appreciated Seine River, south of Bishop Grandin Blvd. This weekend I took a short bike ride up the river north of Fermor Ave., past the Windsor Park and St.Boniface golf courses and took a couple of photos along the way. (click to enlarge)

broken pump house near Windsor Park golf course

This winter has been almost perfect for bike riding on the river because of the lack of snow. People walk up and down the river all the time, packing down a trail that is very easy to ride on. In years with lots of snow the trail might not get packed down, and it will be much more like pedaling through sand. I said "almost" perfect because there are some areas along the river that are still not quite frozen over, including one area in particular where warmer water is diverted into the river from the east.

This guy has a wicked setup: a cozy patio with fire pit
sheltered by pine trees with a decent-sized
skating rink cleared on the river.

People often ask me if I have special tires on my bike. I do own studded tires, but I don't always use them and did not have them on this past weekend. They're not really necessary unless you expect to be riding over icy surfaces. There are several spots along the river where people have cleared skating rinks, but you can usually either ride around them or glide over them. The key to biking over ice is to ride in as straight a line as possible.


At one point along the river there is a cleared skating trail that must run for several hundred meters. Sure it's a little more modest than the river trail at the Forks, but it's quieter and it was also open earlier in the season.

Damn beavers

The trail takes a diversion up onto land just north of the St.Boniface Golf Course where a beaver dam, made partially from wooden pallets, makes the trail unsuitable for walking .. for people at least. I can tell from the foot prints that dogs can't resist the trickle of cool tasty water.

Anyhow, I hope this inspires one of you to think outside the Active Transportation Path and explore a river instead.. If the nice weather holds up I might add a part III in the series before the snow melts.

The Hacienda-ization of St. Mary's

Those who know me know that I am not a big fan of things that are fake. For example: the big plastic spoilers that douche bags bolt to the trunks of their Chevy Cavaliers, tofurkey, or Stephen Harper smiling. There are however certain exceptions to this rule, such as breasts, and ... uh ... there are others but I can't seem to think of them at the moment.

Anyhow, what I'm here to talk to you about today is faux-Mediterranean architecture. You may have noticed it popping up here and there, but especially if you communte up and down St.Mary's Road here in Winnipeg.

I can't tell you who started the trend, but I'll give credit to Piazza De Nardi for getting the ball rolling. Piazza De Nardi transformed the busy corner of Taylor Ave. and Waverley with a unique shopping experience that mimicked a little Italian market. With the recent expansion, it has become little more than a fancy-looking strip mall, but the success of the original design showed that frozen 'Peggers like to pretend they're strolling on the streets of Tuscany, even when they're wearing Sorels.

(source)

It was no surprise therefore that other establishments caught on to the idea. When Banville and Jones relocated to St. Mary's Rd. from Meadowood in 2005, they added a big splash of colour to the street with their Tuscan villa-esque store, one-upping Piazza De Nardi with a second floor terrace.


A couple of years later, and a little further up the street, Miller's Super Valu Meats had an opportunity to expand into the neighbouring building. They did not only that, but merged the two buildings and refaced them in a Mediterranean style with earth-toned stucco, little arches over the windows, and terra cotta roof tiles.

(Miller's, by the way, is a good place to buy more than just meat. They have a decent little grocery section with some specialty items you might not find at large grocery stores, and prices are generally pretty good.)

And just this year, even further up the street, Santa Lucia completed their overhaul of their Norwood location by turning it into a Mediterranean villa-style building with all of the same architectural cues, as well as a large roof top patio.


Three building on the same street in 6 years. It doesn't sound like a lot, but to me this represents a definite trend, and it got me thinking ... is this good? Do I like this faux-Mediterranean style of archtecture?

I have to say "yes", especially on a street that is so lacking in character as St.Mary's. Despite the attempts by the City at street scaping and turning parts of the street into a "villiage", there is no unity or personality that could possibly be harmed by this trend. Instead, these buildings add welcome life and colour to a drab palette of residential units, strip malls, and commercial buildings.

Faux architectural cues are nothing new. Some of our most beloved heritage buildings have fake columns and sconces and other such things. We should welcome any building designs that create a more interesting and more welcoming urban street scape. I therefore give these buildings my stamp of approval.

Ciao!