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Bartley Kives
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Katz bogeys again
In a perfect world, where land use was dictated solely on the basis of environmental principles, every city-owned golf course along a river would be shut down. All golf-course land immediately alongside waterways would be re-naturalized, allowing riparian zones to return to their natural state and provide vital habitat for a variety of plants and animals.View Full Column | 05/19/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Owl River opens to paddlers
For the first time ever, Wapusk National Park is allowing back-country travel without the accompaniment of a shotgun-toting guide. The northern Manitoba park is opening up a 166-kilometre stretch of the Owl River to paddlers during the month of June, when polar bear activity within the Wapusk interior is low because the dangerous predators are still out on Hudson Bay.View Full Column | 05/18/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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White sucker right for Manitoba
Facing hordes of angry municipalities, flood-affected farmers and disenfranchised voters, the Selinger government took decisive action Friday to restore confidence in this province. They asked Manitobans to choose an official fish.View Full Column | 05/12/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Survey accurate within, well, nothing at all
DUE to the reduced accuracy of the nation’s new census methodology, the proportion of Canadians who are visible minorities is either “one in five” or “totally awesome.” The face of the average Manitoban is either a 21-year-old aboriginal male or an 80-year-old Klingon warrior from the upcoming J.J. Abrams movie Star Trek: Into Darkness.View Full Column | 05/9/2013 8:11 AM | 0
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Winter is coming
Now that the sun is shining, the grackles are croaking and half the population of the city is distracted by the NHL playoffs, it's possible not to notice Winnipeg sits on the precipice of disaster. No, the Red River isn't coming to swallow us up, as it now attempts to do every second spring or so. The latest flood forecast suggests the Red will crest in southern Manitoba around the same level as it did in 2001, when Highway 75 didn't close at Morris and nobody other than perpetually aggrieved agricultural producers suffered from the deluge.View Full Column | 05/5/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Dugouts could change the game
PLUMAS, Man. -- Halfway between Riding Mountain and Lake Manitoba, Lorne Rossnagel raises 600 head of cattle on some of the flattest land on the Canadian Prairies. Five generations of his family have farmed in and around the RM of Westbourne on land criss-crossed by drains that carry water into Big Grass Marsh. When his great-grandfather immigrated from Poland, the priority in the region was to get rid of water. So many drains were cut in Westbourne and neighbouring Lakeside a century ago that Big Grass Marsh was reduced to a desolate patch of easily windswept silt and highly combustible dried peat.View Full Column | 05/3/2013 3:21 AM | 0
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Why must we buy our good news?
If your glass of ice-cold Red River water is perpetually half full, the announcement of 50 new high-tech jobs coming to the heart of downtown is exciting enough to make you actually drink the murky stuff. But if your glass is half empty, the sobering notion each one of those gigs comes with $24,000 worth of government incentives may drive you to consider quaffing something a little stronger.View Full Column | 05/3/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Beloved piece of Winnipeg's music history deserves better
One hundred years ago this November, Winnipeg entrepreneurs Angelo Ferrari and Patrick Grogan opened a hotel on Albert Street, a short distance from the corner of Portage & Main. The brand-new Royal Albert Hotel had 54 rooms, a buffet restaurant, telephone service and hot water, according to an advertisement in the Free Press at the time. But according to city heritage documents, the Albert's opening was overshadowed by the larger and more luxurious Hotel Fort Garry on Broadway the same year.View Full Column | 05/4/2013 12:00 PM | 0
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How I spent my shoulder season
The late arrival of spring means waterways are still clogged with ice and trails are in soggy condition across southern Manitoba and northwestern Ontario. If you own a drysuit and have superior paddling skills, you could find an open seam of water on the edge of Lake of the Woods. And if you don't care about erosion, you could take your bike and chew up the sandy soil at Spruce Woods, Grand Beach or some other quick-draining area.View Full Column | 04/27/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Whining won't solve infrastructure woes
In the eyes of many Winnipeggers, Mayor Sam Katz is a politician who broke a campaign promise to not raise property taxes. In reality, that's not the case. During the 2010 mayoral race, Katz promised to do everything in his power to avoid a property-tax increase. In an effective bit of campaign messaging, he did not actually promise to maintain the freeze.View Full Column | 04/26/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Singing in the slush puddles
REGINA -- The slush puddles on the streets and charcoal-grey snow piled up on boulevards probably give first-time visitors to Saskatchewan the wrong idea of what late April usually looks like on the Canadian Prairies. Yes, it's a good thing the Juno Awards are in Regina rather than Winnipeg this supposed spring.View Full Column | 04/21/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Call me mainstream
Last Sunday, viewers of HBO's Game of Thrones were treated to one of the greatest musical moments in TV history: A surprising act of violence (no spoilers here) followed by a quick cut to a jarring, end-credits rendition of The Bear and the Maiden Fair by indie-rock band the Hold Steady. This Sunday, you can watch the Juno Awards.View Full Column | 04/20/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Cold comforts: Winter's refusal to leave is driving us to drink
A year ago today, there was drizzle and fog to start the morning. But it cleared up in Winnipeg by 2 p.m. and the temperature peaked at 17 C at 6 p.m. The Environment Canada forecast for April 14, 2013 is a high of 1 C, with five to 10 centimetres of snow in the evening. It's enough to drive a winter-weary Winnipegger to drink.View Full Column | 04/14/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Chance to do it right at Forks
Generally, it's a bad idea to encourage Winnipeg to take its sweet time considering a new downtown development. Give 'em an inch, as the cliché goes, and they'll probably take a parsec. But it's a relief to see the city take 11 months to decide to take as much as another 12 months to determine what the heck to do with Parcel Four, the downtown surface-parking lot that's been empty for decades.View Full Column | 04/13/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Despite fears, forecast isn't all that dire
About halfway from Swan River to The Pas, in one of the lonelier corners of Manitoba, Highway 77 swings across the north side of the Porcupine Hills. Driving west toward the Saskatchewan border, you'll come across the tiny town of Barrows and the road to Red Deer Lake, an even smaller community at the south side of the lake of the very same name. According the 2011 census, Red Deer Lake had 13 occupied dwellings and a total population of 36 people. According to a 2006 provincial fact sheet, there were no businesses in the community and the combined value of all of its real estate was less than $200,000.View Full Column | 04/11/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Uneven city wards ignored by council
Uneven growth in different regions of Winnipeg has exacerbated the population disparity among city council wards -- but politicians are poised to ignore the problem for another four years. Between 2006 and 2011, the City of Winnipeg's population grew by 37,878, a census-data analysis released late last week by the city clerk's department said. But the rate of growth varied widely among city council's 15 wards.View Full Column | 04/10/2013 1:16 PM | 0
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Katz still the one to beat
Now that the conflict-of-interest case against Mayor Sam Katz has been put to rest, Winnipeggers don't have to worry about going to the polls this year. But it's only 18 months before the city does get a chance to select its mayor; the next general election is set for Oct. 22, 2014.View Full Column | 04/7/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Just relax and smell the humus
In the middle of a wilderness trip, the last thing you want to experience is a mysterious medical ailment. But only a few days into a Bloodvein River excursion, one of my tripmates started to notice something was not quite right with one of her legs. Every few minutes, whether she was paddling or standing or walking along a portage, a strange vibration would pulsate over the vicinity of her hip.View Full Column | 04/6/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Politically tone-deaf mayor clueless on ethics matters
Instead of hosing down the streets of Winnipeg this spring, the city should go out and get a big, fat bottle of hand sanitizer. In the words of Queen's Bench Justice Brenda Keyser, this city's mayor "exhibited bad political and ethical behaviour" when he spent taxpayers' money at his own restaurant, while the citizen who complained about the incident displayed "egregious" behaviour of his own and came to court with "unclean hands."View Full Column | 04/6/2013 10:04 AM | 0
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Mayor, you must do better
For 34 years, Mississauga, Ont., has known no other mayor than Hazel McCallion. Her lawyers were in court Wednesday to defend against allegations she pushed for a real estate deal that may have saved her son's company $11 million. Joe Fontana is both the mayor of London, Ont., and a former Liberal MP. On Oct. 28, he will appear in court to defend against a fraud charge stemming from a $1,700 cheque he signed toward the end of his 18 years in Ottawa.View Full Column | 04/4/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Wrong guy for the battle
As the architect of a conflict-of-interest case against Winnipeg's mayor, Joe Chan appears to be the wrong guy making the right argument for motivations that remain unclear. Chan is the owner of Transcona's Cathay House restaurant and a professional associate of Daniel McIntyre Coun. Harvey Smith. He's also the reason Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz faces the prospect of getting kicked out of office over a December 2010 decision to spend $3,000 worth of taxpayers' funds on a Christmas party at Hu's Asian Bistro, a now-defunct Ellice Avenue restaurant the mayor owned at the time.View Full Column | 04/3/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Go with the flow
As every sentient being in southern Manitoba is well aware by now, there's going to be another flood in the Red River Valley this year. This deluge may be more severe than the Red River spring flood of 2011, when the Assiniboine River basin posed a bigger and more protracted problem. The 2013 flood should be more predictable than the 2009 edition, when ice jams wreaked havoc around Breezy Point and left officials in Winnipeg scrambling to deal with fluctuating river levels.View Full Column | 04/1/2013 11:12 AM | 0
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It's buyer beware when it comes to choosing sustainable seafood
So you're standing in the freezer section at the supermarket and you're thinking about buying some fish. The problem is, you have a general sense of environmental issues facing the worldwide fishing industry. For starters, many ocean-going species are suffering from decades of overfishing. Other species are caught through means that scar the ocean floor or coastal areas, damaging the environment and harming the livelihoods of the people who live there.View Full Column | 03/27/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Choosing my religion: Jets or Passover seder
If you scour all 40 chapters of the book of Exodus, you won't find a single passage pertaining to icing the puck, going offside or causing a delay of game. Yet for Jews living in Winnipeg, the story of Moses leading Israelites out of bondage in ancient Egypt has become synonymous with the struggle of the NHL Jets, another group of long-suffering long shots striving to reach a promised land.View Full Column | 03/26/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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A big serving of stupid
On the outskirts of Miami, people know better than to offer up barbecue scraps to the alligators who occasionally clamber up on to lawns. On the streets of New Delhi, people know better than to offer produce to roving gangs of rhesus monkeys. In suburban areas of every city from Los Angeles to Toronto, people know better than to feed the raccoons that patrol the cul-de-sacs at night, searching for scraps of organic matter amid the garbage bins.View Full Column | 03/25/2013 9:36 AM | 0
About Bartley Kives
Bartley Kives wants you to know his last name rhymes with Beavis, as in Beavis and Butthead. He aspires to match the wit, grace and intelligence of the 1990s cartoon series.
Bartley joined the Free Press in 1998 as a music critic. He spent the ensuing 7.5 years interviewing the likes of Neil Young and David Bowie and trying to stay out of trouble at the Winnipeg Folk Festival before deciding it was far more exciting to sit through zoning-variance appeals at city hall.
In 2006, Bartley followed Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz from the music business into civic politics. He spent seven years covering city hall from a windowless basement office. He is now reporter-at-large for the Free Press and also writes a pair of columns – This City for Sunday Xtra and Offroad for the Outdoors page.
A canoeist, backpacker and food geek, Bartley is fond of conventional and wilderness travel. He is the author of A Daytripper’s Guide to Manitoba: Exploring Canada’s Undiscovered Province, the only comprehensive travel guidebook for Manitoba – and a Canadian bestseller, to boot.
Bartley appears every second Wednesday on CityTV’s Breakfast Television. His work has also appeared on CBC Radio and in publications such as National Geographic Traveler, explore magazine and Western Living.
Born in Winnipeg, he has an arts degree from the University of Winnipeg and a master’s degree in journalism from Ottawa’s Carleton University. He is the proud owner of a blender.
Bartley Kives on Twitter: @bkives
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