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Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION
Love shacks and water mains
No gripes today. Kudos, instead.
First, I love love love the love shacks that artists and architects are building along Assiniboine River skating rink. That is exactly the kind of quirky, fun, cheap public thing a city with a fabulous art scene ought to be doing. Way to go, Forks folks. Top that, Ottawa.
Second, a water main broke on my street last night. It is a heartstopping thing for a relatively new homeowner when only gurgles of air come out of every tap in the house. It was a pretty serious break at the corner of Broadway and Langside -- neighbours told me an apartment building was badly flooded, along with a couple of businesses on Broadway. The corner was a big ice rink. The nice 311 guy warned us it could be 48 hours before we had water again, and I lay in bed half the night plotting a dreaded early morning trip to the Rady Centre or the Y for a shower and wondering how lame it would be to check in to the Holiday Inn for the weekend.
Instead, when my partner got up at 6 a.m., the water was back on. So, city crews must have been working all night in minus a bajillion to get the main fixed. I am very grateful and very impressed, and I hope the folks in the apartment building at the corner have water, too.
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About Mary Agnes Welch
Mary Agnes Welch joined the Free Press in 2002, first as a general assignment reporter and then covering city hall and the Manitoba legislature before moving to her current post as public policy reporter.
Before Winnipeg, she worked at the Windsor Star and the Odessa American, a small daily newspaper in West Texas. There, in addition to covering more than 20 counties, she took high school football scores from coaches all over West Texas by phone every Friday night.
Mary Agnes is a graduate of Columbia University’s journalism school, has won several Western Ontario Newspaper Awards and has been part of two teams of reporters nominated for a Michener Award. In 2011, she was nominated for a National Newspaper Award in the beat category. She is also the former national president of the Canadian Association of Journalists.
She once misspelled "Shih Tzu" in the paper and received 37 emails from angry dog-owners.
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