Public Good Award

The Public Good Award goes to former Mayor Glenn Murray, for shepherding through Winnipeg's attractive bridges.  This was a unique contribution that amazes us every time we see these bridges, because very, very few things in Winnipeg are attractive. I would put these bridges in the category of eliciting Kantian enthusiasm.

Provencher Bridge.

Local Beer

Half Pints brewing company, at 550 Roseberry Street (visitors welcome), makes delicious beer. My favorite used to be the St. James pale.

Frontier Town

Administering a vast export agriculture territory and a great dam-studded hydro energy production territory, as well as a colonial Canadian gateway outpost to aboriginal land and communities, Winnipeg, Manitoba is a frontier town.

Instead of wallowing and pickling in a clueless, pathetic, assimilationist, LA commercial culture-envious, hard-bitten, hard-living 18-year-old's/Chamber of Commerce "culture" and "aesthetic," Winnipeg's denizens need to recognize and valorize the interesting, unique things and people they've got in their natural history, their history, their politics, their unique populace mix, and their socioeconomic location.

They need to wrap their utilitarian reflexes around a pillar of romanticism or two: Winnipeggers need to play up confluence-of-cultures frontier romanticism in their cultural life.

St. Boniface's Fort Gibraltar is a babystep disney version of what I'm talking about. I mean valorizing the aboriginal and metis and specific immigrant cultures in institutionalized public life, and incorporating a consciousness of Winnipeg as a frontier town now as well as in the past. I mean reinterpreting, redeploying and diffusing the heroic, grand or humane elements from the Fort Gilbraltar schtick.

The town's aesthetics need to reflect such a frontier romanticism, as well as play up the beauties of the unique environment. People need to collectively situate themselves, to be here now, and to remind themselves what's cool (unique) about it.

Wolseley

Wolseley could easily be the most pleasant residential neighborhood in Winnipeg. But it has one central, astonishing drawback: It may be the only neighborhood of its kind in North America and Europe--maybe the world--that does not have a neighborhood gathering institution, by which I mean a family-friendly neighborhood pub, with a small music venue and a verdant, wooden fence-enclosed, backyard beer garden.

Compared to what little the other Winnipeg residential neighborhoods have to offer, Westminister Ave. is a pretty nice stretch in the summer. Is there a bakery in Wolseley? Check. Half-assed coffee shop/used book store? Check. Precious horticultural shoppe? Check.  Overly-expensive Euro comfort shoe boutique? Check. Crumbling poverty grocery store? Check. Effing hippie massage and psychotherapy parlors? Check. Anything else? Not really.

Wolseley is imprisoned by not one but two (2) gaping car-thrufare, commercial-wasteland barriers (Portage Ave. and Sherbrook/Maryland streets). Now barriers are not all bad. They create incentives to build "intensive" quality institutions, as where oceans, rivers, mountains, and, in Europe, farmland have forced people to build quality cities. The only kind of barriers that you're going to get in this part of the world, however, are rivers, which are sort of nice (Though among rivers, prairie rivers are bottom of the barrel, consisting as they do of a clay sludge of industrial ag effluent--pesticides, herbicides, drug and fecal matter. At night they look pretty, though.), and long, tar-and-concrete automobile deserts, which are amongst the worst kind of barrier. So Wolseley's roadway barriers also pose high costs to quality of life. Yet potentially Wolseley could be the neighborhood to make every middle/working-class person who can't live there drool with envy.

Wolseley folks and Winnipeg lending institutions, this is what Wolseley desperately needs: Sam Bond's du Nord.

In the above photo, Sam Bond's from the inside. The cozy, convivial neighborhood pub, a former garage, has a warm wooden interior with high ceilings, large windows, local art on the wall (and sometimes hanging from the rafters), and a small stage at the end (that can also open to the back patio) for music and the occasional neighborhood cabaret fundraiser. It dishes up a small menu of healthy, local food, in burritos and on pizza, as well as serving local brews in preserves jars, and wine and spirits. Its intimate, fenced-in backyard patio, with trees strewn with lights, gardens, sitting ledges, and cafe tables and picnic tables, is a delight. The town's stringed instrument players convene there on Sunday afternoons. Children with their parents are welcome before nightfall. In fact, it is so convivial because it is perfect for people of all ages,  often simultaneously--because it is at heart a community pub. It is a neighborhood institution, a city institution that facilitates dynamic social interchange and builds social capital.

True, there are no mosquitos in Oregon to speak of and summer in Oregon is pretty much heaven on Earth. True, many, many people live in Eugene because they love and want to contribute to the gorgeous environment and the DIY culture, not principally for utilitarian survival or family-attachment reasons. But such differences cannot stop us in Winnipeg from likewise putting together some stronger quality of life here!

Later: I will discuss the other amenities Wolseley needs to complete itself, such as a browse-friendly hardware/gardening/DIY/craftworks store. They also might try to claim Sherbrook & Maryland near the hospital; that gaping maw separates them from one of the city's super-scarce branch libraries! And they need a Wolseley Zozobra festival. Am I pigeon-holing them, as I urge them to reach their potential? I only ask that people work with their strengths.

Food Security: Where to Buy Produce & Groceries

Inshallah, Manitobans will erect greenhouses in all neighborhoods, hook them up to renewable energy sources (geothermal, solar, wind, below-market hydro), and secure healthy, delicious, local food year-round. Until then, here's to a healthier summer lifestyle!

Farmers Market
The season is approximately June through October.

• Le Marche, St. Norbert Farmers' Market , Wednesdays (1-7 pm) and Saturdays (8am-3pm), 3514 Pembina Hwy.
• Osborne Village Market, 4-8 pm, Thursdays at Osborne & River.
• Fort Whyte Alive, 12-6 pm, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
• Urban Market at the Riverview Community Centre, 90 Ashland Ave.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs)

• South Osborne Urban Community Cooperative
• Harvest Moon in Clearwater
• Nature's Farm in Steinbeck
• Fort Whyte Farms CSA
• Hwy 59 road trip

Grocery

Groceries are not the greatest in Winnipeg. I hear it's much, much worse in northern Manitoba, though. Ladies and gentlemen, we are far, far away from a real growing season.

• Vita Health, for example in Osborne Village, sells some products (eg. kefir, Thayer's witch hazel face lotion, elk smokies) that are difficult to find elsewhere in this town.
• Vic's (A-1038 Pembina Highway, 475-833), sells expensive, fresh produce, meats, cheeses, as well as crackers and Indian packeted dishes.
• In summer only, Crampton's Farm Produce Market (1765 Waverley at Bishop Grandin, 204-269-3355) sells high quality local produce, affordable baked goods, and meat.
• Mondragon Cafe (91 Albert St. in the Exchange) has a tiny grocery section, Sacco & Vanzetti's, from which they sell produce, and some canned, boxed and refrigerated foods.
• Organza at Confusion Corner and Organic Planet Worker Co-op grocery (877 Westminister Avenue in Wolseley; phone 204-772-8771) both have delis that sell juice and coffee. Organza sells simple, nontoxic, bulk household cleaning products, such as baking soda, and a small amount of bulk ingredients. Along with the Vita Health chain (local to Manitoba), both stores sell expensive organic home & body-care products. These small groceries also sell a nominal amount of very expensive, low-quality organic produce. For example, one (1) petite head of organic purple cabbage and one (1) chocolate bar together cost me over $10 (2010) at Organic Planet (I have no idea how this business model can possibly survive, unless there are thousands of masochistic experimenters like myself; but the stores look lonely).
• This is not to say that there aren't standard supermarkets in Winnipeg. There are plenty of tiresome, fluorescent-lit supermarkets to stagger through in Winnipeg; unfortunately, food is only somewhat-less horrifyingly expensive here than the small specialty groceries, relative to grocery stores in agricultural regions that can competitively grow produce (eg. Oregon). Winnipeg's supermarkets sell plenty of standardized mass food from far away that English people like (Who knew that Tetley black teas could take up an entire supermarket aisle?), as well as things made out of canola (You will never see such gigantic, useless margarine sections in a grocery store any place else on Earth, gracias a dios). On the upside, the supermarkets sell fair trade coffee. Its fair trade culture is a point in Winnipeg's favor.

Winnipeg Localvore Resources and Organizations

• 100 Mile Manitoba
• Fair Trade Manitoba
• Food Matters Manitoba / Manitoba Food Security Network
• Ethical Food Market
• MAFRI's Buy Manitoba
• Bison meat in MB (MAFRI)

U-pick Produce

MAFRI's U-pick vegetable availability chart

• Prairie Fruit Growers Association U-pick search engine.
• Call Marg's Strawberry Patch & Organics Plus farm (702 Dawson Rd., Lorette, MB; phone 204-878-4353) for a U-pick appointment. Pick strawberries, and/or buy vegetables, rhubarb and honey.
• MAFRI's (Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives) on-line U-Pick search engine.

Food Security & Gardening

Winnipeg gardening resources

During the summer, Sage Garden Herbs nursery (3410 St. Mary's Rd.) hosts affordable classes on indoor & outdoor gardening. They sell Eco Tea fertilizer and Eco-lawn grass seed. It's a pleasant, small, organic nursery to visit. They don't sell trees.

Urban Eatin' Gardeners' Co-op (phone 204-770-2204) can provide gardening assistance or full gardening service--planning, constructing, gardening.

Red Wriggler Haven (204-275-0253) provides vermicomposting (indoor worm composting) expertise. The proprietors, Marilyn & Bruce, suggest that for cold climates, vermicomposting is the most appropriate approach to household waste reduction. In April, they offer a class at Sage Garden Herbs as well.

MAFRI's vegetable availability chart.

For information on how to complement your garden with plants that involve Manitoba nature (including benefical insects) see the book Naturescape Manitoba (available at McNally Robinson) by the Manitoba Naturalist Society.

See also the city's Living Prairie Museum, 2795 Ness Ave., free, open 10am - 5 pm in the summer.

Hwy 59 Food Road Trip

Dish, the magazine they give away at the MLCC liquor mart, delivered a Highway 59 food-based road trip itinerary in its spring 2010 edition.

Dish is actually a more alluring magazine than most of this region's "lifestyle" magazines, and here I'm counting the insular, dull GLove, and those horrible, Ontario-based, one-trick-pony home decor magazines--Decor mantra of each and every month?: "Slap a coat of white paint on it, especially if it's wood." Time for a new editor. (However, there was in summer 2009 a fascinating edition of the Manitoba Historical Society's Manitoba History magazine, on the Winnipeg General Strike.)

The downside to Dish is that it has a cutesy but absolutely infuriating, retrograde archiving method on its website. So, assuming you don't have an hour or two to spend on disinterring a fuzzy, eyeball-seizure-inducing, one-page article, I'll spare you the hassle and just transcribe (ow! my eyeball!) the Hwy 59 itinerary here:

Foodie Road Trip

Southern Manitoba Hwy 59

Prairie Farms

1)    Fruit: Two white BC fruit trucks are parked off Hwy 59: near Spring Hill and in the parking lot of the Fifty-Niner Motel close to Birds Hill Park.

2)    Vegetables: Windmill Potatoes & Vegetables, near the Hwy 4 turnoff. Windmill is operated by Cliff & Liz Waytiuk, selling organic vegetables from a store adjacent to their home, 29048 Road 79N. 204-482-5302.

3)    Vegetables: Chorney’s Vegetables & Fruit, corner of Hwy 59 and Road 80, near the Hwy 4 turnoff. Doug Chorney offers vegetables, berries, painted Easter eggs, perogies, and garden flower bouquets. 204-482-8538.

4)    Honey: The Honey House, operated by Bob & Lorraine Check out of their house at the junction of 508. 204-482-5198.

5)    U-pick Raspberries: Devil’s Creek Herb and Berry Farm, 12 km north of Selkirk. Besides U-pick raspberries, Robert & Wendy Shearer sell vegetables and raspberry leaf herbal tea. 204-766-2669.

Boreal Forest

6)    Berries and shrooms: Wooded areas produce wild blueberries (often on top of granite hills), strawberries, Saskatoon berries and raspberries. Gathering adventures are fun and delicious. (I need to spend the upcoming years locating chantrelle and morel stashes. But when I do, I’ll never write about it, of course.)

7)    Pie: Idle Thyme Restaurant, at Traverse Bay Corner, corner of Hwy 59 and Hwy 11. See also: the Plum Creek Gift Shop.

8)    Smoked pickerel: Near Traverse Bay Road, local fishermen put out signs and sell smoked walleye.

9)    Coffee & take-out picnic sandwiches: Saffie’s Store in Albert Beach.

10) Vegetables: Greg’s Organic Produce, truck parked between Albert and Victoria Beaches.

11) Bakery: Enfield’s Bakery, on Birch Avenue in Victoria Beach. The bakery is a short walk from the community parking lot.