Winnipeg Tarot Co.

Last year was my first Winnipeg winter.  I actually love winter and was eager to take advantage of cross-country skiing within city limits. One Saturday morning in January I got geared up and hauled myself and my skis to Assiniboine Park via a city bus. It was a cold morning, probably below -20 degrees Celsius with the windchill factor.  I hadn’t been to the park since the summer when it was teeming with Winnipeggers enjoying the outdoors. I automatically assumed that Winnipeggers would also flock to the park in winter, having experienced many long winters before. As it turns out, I was wrong and there were very few people in the park.  It was a world of white and surprisingly difficult to even find the tracks for skiing on the ground.  Eventually I found my way and I had a lovely ski.  I ended up feeling quite brave out there in the cold and snow where even the real Winnipeggers would not go.

As I look around downtown Winnipeg, and the neighbourhood that I now call home, I am reminded of the many stories that my grandmother told me about her childhood and life in Winnipeg.  She was born in 1902.  One story:  Her father was the caretaker of the Confederation building downtown, across from City Hall.  They lived on the top floor of that building. One day in 1919, she was coming home from work as a bookeeper and the doorman wouldn’t let her into her building because he was worried that she was a participant in the general strike and that she was a security risk.  My great-grandfather had to come to the door and identify her to let her in.  She watched the 1919 strike from the rooftop of the Confederation builing.  She was 17 years old. 

I see the cemetary where her and my grandfather are buried.  I see the old movie theatres where I used to see movies downtown.  I see the houses my family used to live in.  I walk the same streets.  I shop in the same stores.  My children attend the same school where my grandfather was the caretaker… He retired before I was even born, but I feel him in my life every day. 

Winnipeg is a living, breathing memory for me of a family built on hard work and devotion.  A family who lived through loss and pain, but who’s verbal history I was fortunate enough to hear with my own ears from a woman who was born at the beginning of the 20th century.  My grandmother was my living personal history of Winnipeg.

Kat Binding

The first time the televisions came out, I used to imagine what would it be like to live in the city. We’d watch the Archie Bunker Show and Barney Miller, also the Muppet Show and Three’s Company, and the rest of the half hour shows, especially Hawaii Five-0. I use to wonder if it would be fun living in an apartment or duplex or a house with next door neighbors. Have running water and sink where one can do the dishes. I use to think that was life.I didn’t know how to speak english but I used to pretend I knew how. Then came a time for me to come to the big city of Winnipeg. I was amazed with everything. I just wanted to touch everything and even imagined I was in one of those shows. How wonderful I felt. Ever since then I never went back to home. I now reside here in the city and it’s been now 32 years since I moved here.

Early summer is ripe for playing hookey at the end of a long stretch of studies.  Doing just that in Winnipeg can become a newsworthy event… the unexpected is always happening in this city. 

Friends of mine and I were playing touch football in our local park, when suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by horns blaring and many police vehicles.  My friends scurried in all directions, leaving me standing “holding the proverbial ball” so to speak.  I held my ground, thinking I was the only one who had a spine and some sanity when I noticed “all” of my friends were gestculating wildy in my direction and shouting things I could not here.

As my world paused in the glorious light of the afternoon I became aware of a sound behind me; I turned to face a stampeding and very frightened Bull Steer with brilliant sharp horns heading my way.  I immediately froze and remember nothing after a loud “thunk” when it hit me in the backside (thank god for small hips, as mine fit neatly between the aforementioned sharp horns).  By all accounts and although somewhat embellished over time, it was a vision to see me fly topsy turvy over myself and land scraping and flat on my face as the bull ran on by.

The cops kept after him, eventually catching him in the end.  It was front page news the next day where it explained the Bull had escaped from a truck on the way to the slaughterhouse, swam the Assinniboine river and continued on north in his efforts to escape his fate.  I was scolded soundly by my mother who wanted an explanation for why I wasn’t in school while I quietly cursed the paper for not getting my age right.

The Bull… I don’t know how he fared, but they got his age right in the paper.

The End

When I attend Ballet in the Park these days, and watch Professional Division students dancing on the Lyric Theatre stage to pre-recorded music, my heart never fails to wander back to a moment in that same field when time stood still for me. As a backstage volunteer in the early 80s, I stood at the edge of the open stage, under the blazing sun, watching Evelyn Hart and David Peregrine move together like mercury as they danced the Belong pas de deux, which had brought them such triumph in Varna, Bulgaria not long before. After giving us all such moments of lightning in a bottle, is it any wonder the RWB has grown and thrived?

Four years ago, my father passed away and left me with a business and a partner, neither of which I had planned on. I was worried that he would see me for the fraud I felt I was and would eventually cut and run, leaving me with nothing. We spent a lot of time together going over various things, including a multitude of lunch time meetings out of the office. After a few months of this, he made the following comment, “No matter where we go, you always run into someone you know! It’s amazing!” And I realized that, thanks to Winnipeg, my input was secure. In this great big wide little city, I always run into someone I know! Four years later, with his know-how and my contacts, we are better than ever!
Tracy

As a new immigrant, who is only 5 months here, everything is so new to me. I have such questions on how will I able adapt myself in this city, from memorizing all the bus routes and streets to finding friends. I came here only through the help of a family friend. The first few days were really hard. No job, looking for an apartment to live in and anything that will help me survive to my new home…Winnipeg! But through prayers, patience and people I met along the way, I was able to get through it little by little. And hopefully someday I will be able to make it…make it big in Winnipeg!

In the mid 80’s one huge November storm shut down the city for a couple of days.  After getting shovelled out of our house a few of my girlfriends and I hopped in a cab (cabbies always work!) and went to the bar!

My mother Carol Stoodley, had MS.  She always tried to do the best she could even with her disability.  When the flood was in full swing my aunt and I helped my mom sew mini sandbags with Flood of 97 written on them.  We sold them and my mom donated over $2,000 to the Red Cross.

It really bothered me when the Winnipeg Tribune got killed in 1980. There was a trade-off between two media corporations: one paper got killed in Ottawa,  the Tribune got killed in Winnipeg. The remaining paper in Ottawa and the Free Press in Winnipeg would be thus relieved of competition.  My family was a Tribune family. There was no criticism of the Free Press but I remember the more liberal leaning Tribune as being part of my family’s identity.  When the news broke, it felt like a member of my family had died. The 375 workers had no idea this was coming. One day it was business as usual. The next day they were fired and told the Tribune would cease to exist. I still feel sad, some 30 years after experiencing the shock. It was if a death occurred but there was no funeral, no investigation of the abrupt ending. The Tribune was a living, breathing entity, not just a building with desks and workers that could be dumped in an anonymous grave and forgotten about.    //  To end with something positive, I’d also like to say that I remember when burning leaves on the boulevard was allowed. That beautiful, pungent smell is also part of my childhood memory of growing up in Winnipeg.