Northwest Winnipeg’s 2021 year in review

As 2021 comes to a close, we look back on a year of stories in northwest Winnipeg.

January: Skaters embrace outdoor rinks

As the ongoing pandemic and consequent public health orders continued to limit people’s options for recreation, people turned to outdoor activities. During a Winnipeg winter, that often means skating.

With the province having green-lighted the opening of outdoor rinks the month prior, in January skaters took to outdoor rinks in droves.

Mmm, mmm… tourtière

This is going to be a difficult holiday season for us for many reasons. And I think it will be hard for many others.

So here is something different. A recipe from our home to yours. Even if you’re spending the holiday alone you can try to make this and hopefully enjoy the traditional aromas and flavours of this splendid dish.

My husband is French-Canadian and when he was growing up in rural Manitoba one of his family’s traditions was to have tourtière and bouillon at réveillon (the Christmas feast) on Christmas Eve after they went to midnight mass.

When the kids got home from mass, each was allowed to open one gift from Père Noël. There would also be Japanese oranges and all kinds of nuts that you would have to crack open with a nutcracker.

Canstar Community News Weekly Video Update for Dec. 22, 2021

Canstar managing editor John Kendle chats with Cody Sellar, reporter for The Times, about stories in the Dec. 22 issue of the paper, as well as what's coming up on Dec. 29.

Sscope, residents on the brink of losing home

The window is closing for Sscope, and that means the doors of the non-profit organization may soon be closing, too.

The organization assists people living with mental illness by providing them work in one of their social enterprises and by offering safe and stable housing. Its name is an acronym for ‘Self-Starting Creative Opportunities for People in Employment.’

There are 46 people who live in dorm-style housing in the former Neechi Foods building at 865 Main St., and another 40 who use Sscope’s overnight shelter.

But after the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation denied the organization’s Rapid Housing Initiative funding request, Sscope has asked for $500,000 from each of the three levels of government to put a down payment on the building, which it has been leasing. If it does not receive the money by Jan. 6, the organization will have to move.

Indigenous-led non-profit closer to expansion

Ka Ni Kanichihk is one step closer to realizing their vision to expand their building at 455 McDermot Ave. The organization will receive a major capital grant of $200,000 from the Winnipeg Foundation to help make this happen.

Executive director Dodie Jordaan said the grant will take a bite out of the overall costs of the expansion, but it may help in a different way, as well.

“It’s incredibly important because one of the things we learned as we started fundraising is those who utilize our services and supports know us well. But we realized there’s a large portion of the giving community who doesn’t know Ka Ni Kanichihk and doesn’t know many Indigenous organizations,” she said.

Being put on the charitable map may help attract more donors in the future, but Jordaan said the organization must keep making the effort to let Winnipeg know the value of its services.

Student sport faces uncertain future

With the Christmas break at hand, Chad Falk, executive director at the Manitoba High Schools Athletic Association took a moment to assess the first few months of high school sports.

“It’s been an interesting fall and early winter,” he said. “We kind of started the school year in a very hesitant way, not really knowing what could be done. There were still quite a few restrictions in place that were preventing us from hosting provincials at that time.”

But high schools were able to go ahead with tournaments and exhibition play, allowing student athletes who’d been raring to play after COVID-19 cancelled most of last year’s sports to get back into the fray.

With easing of restrictions in October, the association started gearing up to get the first of the provincial tournaments in order. The volleyball championships wrapped up on Dec. 5.

Take a sip of a sandwich

Some like their vodka with a twist of lime, others like it tasting of french fries and Kewpie mayo. Of course, the latter is a relatively small group of people who’ve indulged in the wild new menu at distillery Patent 5’s cocktail bar.

From now into the new year, the bar has transformed itself into “the world’s strangest diner.” Menu items include chips and guacamole, pineapple pizza and pastrami on rye. Those wouldn’t be too strange (although, the pineapple pizza may spark its usual debate), except for the fact that none are actually food. They are cocktails, flush with house-made tequilas, vodkas, bourbons and gins.

The “chicken and waffles,” for example, is a Patent 5 barrel-aged gin, fat washed with duck fat, infused with waffles, and mixed with maple syrup, butter and Frank’s RedHot.

“A lot of our menus, they’re pretty adventurous,” said Callan Anderson, bartender and occasional maker of understatements.

West St. Paul residents chafed over access point

Some West St. Paul residents are up in arms about the province’s planned removal of two access points to their community from the north Perimeter Highway.

Those are the east and west access roads to Holmes Road, which leads into West St. Paul. The east access has already been closed and the west access will be removed by 2025. The project is a part of the province’s plan to turn the Perimeter Highways into an access-controlled freeway.

One reason the province cites for the changes is improved safety, but West St. Paul resident Mike Yosyk thinks that’s simply a tool the province is using to push through its agenda.

“That was probably one of the main things that we, as residents, raised. We said, ‘listen, if an emergency vehicle needs to get to our developments, or to the school for a kid, you just knocked out the most direct points of access, period,’” he said.

Building our capacity to develop EVs

Winnipeg’s taxi industry was well ahead of everyone else, in my opinion, when it came to transitioning from gas vehicles to electric vehicles. 

Well over 10 years ago taxi owners all over the world, and here in Winnipeg, were purchasing hybrids such as the Toyota Prius whereas the population as a whole was holding back, primarily due to the cost of hybrid vehicles. In Manitoba, we have seen both federal and provincial governments create programs to encourage consumers to purchase electric and hybrid vehicles. I suspect that will continue but it is consumer demand accompanied by a higher sense of environmental awareness that will ultimately make such vehicles more affordable.

Aside from fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is also facing the threat of man-made climate change. The amount of greenhouse gases generated worldwide is affecting our climate, creating destructive weather events such as the ‘atmospheric river’ that caused catastrophic flooding and infrastructure damage in British Columbia. Considering all this, the federal government has strived to cut pollution from all sectors of the economy — including the transportation sector, which is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. Almost half these emissions come from cars and light trucks.

One way to reduce the amount of transportation-related GHG emissions is to put more electric vehicles on the road. Since 2015, the federal government has invested a historic $1 billion to make EVs more affordable and accessible for Canadians. These investments are building a coast-to-coast network of fast chargers, installing chargers in local areas where Canadians live, work and play, and providing rebates of up to $5,000 to help more Canadians buy EVs.

A blessing in the North End

Many changes in our health-care system have affected this end of town. Serious ambulance cases are directed to Health Sciences Centre. Other catastrophes, such as falls, broken bones and more, head to Seven Oaks Urgent Care.

 I was recently sent there by my doctor. He felt secure that they would solve my sudden problem. While I was awaiting the many tests they do on-site, I absorbed the rhythm of  the place and watched the ebb and flow of nurses, aides and doctors. I sensed a close-knit family that consults with each other to discuss and make important decisions. Having  dedicated their lives to healing, they seem happy to be fulfilling that challenge.

However, as I lay in bed and listened to the group gathered around the desk area, the  talk wasn’t always serious. A lot of joking and teasing went on. The easy everyday camaraderie is pleasant.

It makes life feel normal, although patients are hooked up to beeping machines, waiting for test results. They wonder whether they will be sent home with pills, selected for a more sophisticated treatment in the hospital upstairs or scheduled shortly for elective surgery.