Street cred

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This article was published 01/06/2017 (2721 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For decades, it’s been a part of the city that has served as home for immigrants from around the world — and for indigenous people from across the province looking to make a life for themselves in the city.

To folks in suburban Winnipeg, the North End is often written off as an unsafe crime-ridden district. But those who live and work here extol the community’s resilience, diversity and neighbourliness.

Kim Siwak, a reading clinician with the Winnipeg School Division, left a permanent job in suburban Winnipeg to work in the gritty neighbourhood.

“You’ve got the strongest, most resilient people in this community,” she says enthusiastically. “And they’re consistently helping each other out. They’re just the greatest people on earth.

“It’s not like walking in a big city where nobody knows anyone. They look out for each other even if they don’t know each other.”

During the next 10 days, the constituency of Point Douglas, which includes some of Winnipeg’s most impoverished areas, will become the focus of political attention in the run-up to a June 13 byelection. The seat came open when popular NDP MLA Kevin Chief resigned earlier this year to take a job in the private sector.

The stakes are high for the provincial New Democrats, who lost government 13 months ago after nearly 17 years in power. No other party has held the constituency since its creation in 1969. A loss here would be a critical blow for the once-powerful political machine that grew stale in office and suffered a leadership revolt. The NDP now holds only 12 of the legislature’s 57 seats after booting one of its members, Mohinder Saran, out of caucus over sexual harassment allegations.

Royce Koop, a University of Manitoba political scientist, said although the NDP has lost its “star candidate” in Chief, the Point Douglas contest is still the party’s to lose.

“This is as NDP (a constituency) as it gets,” he says. “If they lose that seat, holy cow. That would be pretty rough for the party, definitely.”

The byelection also represents a big opportunity for the Liberals, who finished a distant second in Point Douglas in last year’s election. Winning a fourth seat would give the Grits party status in the legislature, affording them more perks and a bigger budget to hire additional staff.

While the ruling Progressive Conservatives have little at stake with their 40-seat majority, they’ve hardly ignored the contest. The PCs were the only major party to hold a nomination contest — the Liberal and NDP candidates were acclaimed.

 

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While her party has seen better times, the NDP’s Bernadette Smith, a 43-year-old educator and Order of Manitoba recipient for community activism, is still the odds-on favourite to win the Point Douglas seat.

In an interview at her campaign office on Selkirk Avenue, she speaks concisely and matter-of-factly about her background.

“Single-parent mom on welfare, was a kid in care at one point in my life. Dropped out of school, had a son when I was 17. Was in an abusive relationship, left that relationship when I was 23. Went back to school. Became a youth-care worker. I worked at Marymound with girls for about 12 years. And while I was working there, I was going to school to get an education degree at the same time.”

While she lives north of the constituency now, Smith has called streets throughout the North End her home over the years: Manitoba, Magnus, McKenzie, Boyd and McGregor. “People who have been there for 40 years remember me as a little girl,” she says of her recent door-knocking experience.

Smith taught school for several years in Seven Oaks School Division and is now an assistant director of a program that mentors high school students who need academic and financial support. She is perhaps better known across the city for her activism, co-founding the Manitoba Coalition of Families of Missing and Murdered Women (her sister Claudette Osborne has been missing from Point Douglas for nine years) and the Drag the Red initiative.

Smith says the North End gets a bad rap; there is crime in every area.

“This is a very diverse neighbourhood, made up of some very resilient and strong community people who care about their community,” the Métis candidate says. “When someone doesn’t have (something), someone else steps up to help them have what they need.”

The Bear Clan patrol, created in the aftermath of Tina Fontaine’s slaying, is an example of the community pulling together, she says. The group has not only worked to make the North End and Point Douglas safer, it has also been called upon for assistance in other parts of the city and province. The Bear Clan helped search for missing 17-year-old Cooper Nemeth last year in Valley Gardens, and later held a smudging ceremony in the teen’s honour after his body was found.

“Even people who are homeless are going out and helping. They’re going out and walking with the Bear Clan,” Smith says, referring to residents. “They want a safer community.”

She says she’s running because she knows the community and cares about it. She says she has faced many of the challenges that weigh on many of the people she’s seeking to represent: the need for safe housing and affordable day care. She says she also knows from experience that education is the best way out of poverty.

 

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Progressive Conservative candidate Jodi Moskal is an electrician and small business owner who has smashed glass ceilings in the business community.

The co-owner of Moskal Electric, founded in 1998, she is as comfortable wiring a house as she is in a corporate boardroom.

A former chair of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, Moskal, 50, was just the second woman to sit on the board of the Winnipeg Construction Association and the first to head its electrical contractors division.

“I think my resumé speaks for itself,” she says. “I climb ladders, I go in crawl spaces. I apprentice apprentices. I advocate for women in the trades. I can be at a microphone in front of 1,000 people, and change out of my high heels and into my steel toes and go right back to work.”

While Moskal lives in Charleswood, she says she has volunteered in Point Douglas for two decades, mainly as a guest speaker in schools. It began when she was up on a ladder installing wiring at a school when a quick-thinking teacher invited her in to a classroom to talk to students.

She’s quick to reel off all the constituency’s positive elements.

“It’s walkable,” she says. “There’s tons of community spirit. The history is unbelievable. The parks are beautiful. There’s coffee shops, there’s patios, there’s retail. It’s close to downtown and The Forks…”

Nevertheless, the No. 1 issue in the constituency is safety, she says.

“Crime soared under the NDP,” she says.

If she wins, Moskal says she’ll push for more crime prevention programs and women’s shelters, as well as the creation of social enterprises (not-for-profit businesses that help train workers).

 

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Liberal John Cacayuran, 38, has North End bona fides; he was raised at Aberdeen Street and Redwood Avenue.

The eldest son of immigrant parents who were among the first Filipinos to settle in Winnipeg, Cacayuran has been canvassing the constituency for five months and speaks confidently about his chances, even though the Liberals won only one of the constituency’s 40 polls in 2016.

He says the NDP is vulnerable because it failed to improve conditions in the area while in power, broke a promise not to raise the PST and made policy decisions that left Manitoba Hydro with a mountain of debt.

“I have that drive and passion to make things happen,” says Cacayuran, who is on leave from his position as an assistant to Kildonan-St. Paul MP MaryAnn Mihychuk.

Before working for Mihychuk, Cacayuran, who now lives in West Kildonan, was an investigator for the provincial gaming commission. He has a criminal justice degree from the University of Winnipeg.

Seated outdoors on a chair outside his cramped campaign office on Selkirk Avenue, he says he learned a lot about getting things done from Mihychuk.

“She allowed me to see first-hand what good politicians can do and how projects move forward,” he says.

Shoppers interviewed outside Neechi Commons on Main Street are mostly positive about the area.

“I have never come across anything bad since I’ve lived here,” says Karma Dyck, 35, who has worked at Mount Carmel Clinic for a dozen years.

James Bullard, who grew up in the Lord Selkirk housing development in the 1970s and now lives just off Waterfront Drive, says there are more services for people now.

“We had a very tight community when I was growing up. We had families that all knew each other… who grew up together. Everybody watched out for each other. It was a little rougher back then.”

Meanwhile, Siwak, who lives in the West End, said she would “absolutely” move to the area if she found a house with a big enough yard for her large dogs.

“People need to look beyond the stereotype and realize that neighbourhoods and communities change over time,” the reading clinician says.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca