Winnipeg Free Press > Opinion > Columnists

Bartley Kives

About Bartley Kives:

Bartley Kives is a city hall reporter.

  • Take one downtown, fill it with people

    The next time I hear  somebody say downtown Winnipeg’s revitalization depends on the construction of a supermarket, I’m going to call the logic police to come and drag the offending intellect away. Ditto the (impossible) relocation of an IKEA store from the industrial outskirts of Tuxedo to the upper floors of The Bay at Portage and Memorial. Or the construction of a downtown water park for Ty Tran and Mayor Sam Katz to enjoy.

    View Full Column | 8/02/2010 8:33 AM | 34

  • Paranoid? I think not

    Back in the early 1950s, almost everyone in North America believed someone else was out to get them. The Americans were scared of Communists. Intellectuals were scared of being blacklisted by McCarthyists. And little kids were scared of having their brains sucked out by bug-eyed, bulbous-headed aliens, thanks to movies inspired by the paranoia of the times.

    View Full Column | 1/02/2010 8:46 AM | 6

  • Monopoly and more

    Last week, I received a couple of emails from the City of Winnipeg urging me to do good things on behalf of humankind. On Tuesday, in a press release about a council contribution toward relief efforts in Haiti, Mayor Sam Katz encouraged me to donate cash to speed the flow of aid to earthquake victims and help the Caribbean nation rebuild.

    View Full Column | 24/01/2010 1:00 AM | 6

  • Will this fly?

    In 2001, a police officer and a civilian pilot landed their helicopter in a dirt field outside a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts shop in Albuquerque, N.M., and picked up a box of double-glazed goodies.

    View Full Column | 18/01/2010 12:21 PM | 8

  • Spliffy-looking torch, eh?

    If Canadians need something to feel proud about this winter, it's the sight of a giant spliff being handed from person to person along a 45,000- kilometre route encompassing 1,000 communities. Under the guise of something called an "Olympic torch," a metre-long, stainless steel joint designed by aerospace company Bombardier is making a 106- day trip across Canada on the way to Vancouver, where it will spark an enormous bowl -- cleverly disguised as an "Olympic cauldron" -- on Feb. 12.

    View Full Column | 11/01/2010 11:27 AM | 5

  • Y2K bust set the tone

    At the beginning of this weird and not-so-wonderful decade, a bunch of nerds said the end of the world was sort of nigh. Elevators were supposed to plunge. Planes would fall out of the sky. Crappy IBM clones prone to spewing out error messages were going to spew out even more of them.

    View Full Column | 28/12/2009 7:13 AM | 1

  • Stop the madness

    Back in 1963, Andy Williams recorded a little ditty about the winter holidays called It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Almost half a century later, the easy-listening crooner has yet to pay for his cultural crimes, as the song he popularized became the foundation for the most oppressive sonic pastiche to ever assault the ears of humanity: The dreaded phalanx of Christmas tunes that batters every denizen of the western world at this consumer-mad time of the year.

    View Full Column | 21/12/2009 6:51 AM | 11

  • Wake-up call dims holiday spirit

    If there's one city council meeting where nothing serious is supposed to happen, it's the final gathering of the year. In the middle of December, after the capital budget has been put to bed, members of council are more concerned with Christmas parties than the intricacies of legislation and have no desire to joust with each other.

    View Full Column | 17/12/2009 1:00 AM | 5

  • Giant mistake

    When you type “say no to gangs” into the search engine on the province of Manitoba’s website, you get a curious suggestion.
    “Did you mean, ‘say no to giants?’ ” it asks. Why, of course. I’m always being pushed around by giants.

    View Full Column | 14/12/2009 7:49 AM | 11

  • Go go gadget

    To a withered rump of Winnipeggers who still follow every move Glen Murray makes, the dude’s decision to run for office again inspires a trip down memory lane. The former Winnipeg mayor, failed Charleswood MP and wannabe Toronto Centre MLA will always be remembered in ’Peg City as a big talker who promoted ideas like a downtown-first policy and the ill-fated New Deal.

    View Full Column | 7/12/2009 8:31 AM | 0

  • Go, Alouettes!

    Well before the days when Canadian football ratings skyrocketed and TSN broadcast every game, the Grey Cup was way more popular than the Canadian Football League itself. This was supposed to be due to the fact Canadians will take any excuse to get loaded. But the reality is, those of us who drink don’t need an excuse.

    View Full Column | 30/11/2009 7:23 AM | 7

  • Land bid raises questions on ballpark's parking deal

    Earlier this month, councillors gathered behind closed doors to hear who answered the city's call to build a water park with the help of a $7-million grant. They learned the sole respondent to Winnipeg's second attempt to give away water-park cash wants to build a luxury hotel on a vacant, city-owned gravel parking lot at the southwest corner of Waterfront Drive and William Stephenson Way.

    View Full Column | 27/11/2009 1:00 AM | 10

  • Arena not a panacea

    Have you ever tried to fix a car by baking banana muffins? Faced with a flooded basement, would you consider solving the problem by reading Spider-Man comics?

    View Full Column | 23/11/2009 7:05 AM | 36

  • City hall’s Selinger factor

    A couple of Fridays ago, a group of youngish NDP members gathered at a downtown pub to hold a send-off party for a former city hall employee named Mathieu Allard. Since 2006, Allard had been working as the executive assistant for St. Boniface Coun. Dan Vandal, an active NDP member who’s good friends with another St. Boniface politician — Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger.

    View Full Column | 15/11/2009 7:04 AM | 3

  • A wave of optimism

    Seeing as Winnipeg struggles with a housing crisis, a crime problem and a shortage of cash for rapid transit, road repairs and sewage upgrades, it makes perfect sense one of the most contentious issues in town is the need to build a big, bright room full of waterslides, wave pools and lazy rivers. For the past two years, Winnipeggers have watched with a mix of bemusement and bewilderment as the city has tried, failed and tried again to give away $7 million to someone, anyone who might be willing to build a 70,000-square-foot water park -- an amenity Mayor Sam Katz believes will make 'Peg City a more exciting place to live, work and wear a Speedo.

    View Full Column | 8/11/2009 1:00 AM | 4

  • Park your expectations

    As much as I love every idiosyncratic individual who lives in this weird little, weather-beaten town, I have to wonder where Winnipeggers get their bizarre ideas about parking. People who are born and raised in this place seem to believe it’s their God-given right to drive up to the front of any restaurant, retail store or doctor’s office and immediately find a free and convenient place to park, as if walking a few metres would constitute some form of undue hardship and dropping a loonie or two in a pay station will force them to stop contributing to their retirement plans.

    View Full Column | 2/11/2009 7:06 AM | 7

  • Park your expectations

    As much as I love every idiosyncratic individual who lives in this weird little, weather-beaten town, I have to wonder where Winnipeggers get their bizarre ideas about parking.

    People who are born and raised in this place seem to believe it's their God-given right to drive up to the front of any restaurant, retail store or doctor's office and immediately find a free and convenient place to park, as if walking a few metres would constitute some form of undue hardship and dropping a loonie or two in a pay station will force them to stop contributing to their retirement plans.

    View Full Column | 1/11/2009 1:00 AM | 0

  • Toddlin' town

    CHICAGO -- Spend a few hours walking among the skyscrapers strung across the centre of The Windy City, and you quickly realize Winnipeg never deserved to call itself Chicago of the North. At the turn of the 20th century, Winnipeg acquired this dubious nickname when the railway boom brought our city a semblance of Chicago's prosperity.

    View Full Column | 24/10/2009 1:00 AM | 6

  • Just ignore it

    Way back in the deep, dark depths of the 1990s, an old friend named Roland Gatin called me up depressed after a day at work as a teaching assistant in Beausejour. Rollie, an exceedingly gentle dude with a vaguely hippie-ish outlook on life, was upset some of the kids who lined up to have their faces painted at a school carnival wanted to have the Nike swoosh emblazoned across their visages instead of being done up as lions or cats or werewolves or whatever little kids are supposed to want to be.

    View Full Column | 17/10/2009 1:00 AM | 1

  • They just won't die: NHL, stadium stories walk among the living

    No matter how many times Hollywood tries to reinvent the zombie, there's really no improving on the undead creatures originally conceived by George Romero. The only good zombie is a decomposing corpse that A) Refuses to die; B) Moves at a painfully slow pace; and C) Creates a nauseating sense of foreboding because of its relentless efforts to pursue your still-living, breathing body.

    View Full Column | 10/10/2009 1:00 AM | 3

  • Someone might yet fumble the ball

    Whether you love Canadian football or couldn't care less about the three-down game, you're probably at least a little concerned about David Asper's plan to build a new home for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Ever since April, Winnipeggers have been trying to wrap their brains around Asper's plan to build a high-end shopping mall at Polo Park and use the profits that will eventually flow from the retail project to fund a new stadium and recreation upgrades at the University of Manitoba.

    View Full Column | 9/10/2009 1:00 AM | 16

  • Quantum of suspicion

    If Winnipeg were about to enter into negotiations with Blofeld, Dr. No and Goldfinger, you can bet the public would start wondering what the heck was going on.

    But there wasn't much in the way of outcry when the city quietly revealed that the final three candidates to become a "strategic partner" with its future utility are similar to the real-life inspiration for the latest James Bond villain.

    View Full Column | 3/10/2009 1:00 AM | 1

  • Food for thought

    You may not remember the precise moment when every menu became a minefield, but at some point the simple act of eating became extremely political. To a vegetarian or a vegan or somebody on a medically restrictive diet, this is a painfully obvious statement. But to the carnivores and omnivores and outright hedonists among us, the notion you can simply shove something in your mouth without considering where it comes from now seems archaic, if not outright barbaric.

    View Full Column | 26/09/2009 1:00 AM | 0

  • Home, peculiar home

    If it seems like there's more traffic on the road, longer lineups at your favourite restaurant and even more people on the streets, you are not suffering from the delusion you live in a higher-density city. As Statistics Canada reported back in June, there are more people in Winnipeg than the number-crunchers previously predicted would be hanging around this town in 2009.

    View Full Column | 19/09/2009 1:00 AM | 0

  • Green with envy

    IN 218 B.C., the Carthaginian killer Hanni­bal crossed over the Alps with three dozen elephants who scared the bloody Caesars out of the Romans down below. Elephants are massive and frightening. They have long snouts and even longer memories. The mere sight of a Punic pachyderm was supposed to be sufficiently fearsome to make your average early-Italian forget about curing ham long enough to slink away from their bocce-ball battlefields and run for their Latin lives.

    View Full Column | 12/09/2009 1:00 AM | 4

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