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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Eadie shows how to get hands dirty fighting city hall

By: Gordon Sinclair Jr.

Posted: 07/28/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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Tom Denton, left, Gay Sul and Ross Eadie plant petunias on Main Street. (GORDON SINCLAIR JR. / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

I've seen Coun. Ross Eadie (Mynarski) many times, but I keep coming back to this one freeze-framed memory of a moment.

He's standing alone on north Main Street, white cane in hand, waiting for a bus.

I guess the reason it's so memorable is because I've never seen a city councillor -- a sight-impaired one at that -- taking the bus to work.

What's even more memorable and inspiring, though, is the way Eadie has been standing up for north Main of late. Earlier this week, Eadie was looking for people willing to get their hands dirty to send a message to city hall.

Eadie already has.

The message is that the blighted and all-too-often bloodied North End deserves to be beautified, too. Or as Eadie puts it: "The North End deserves to have flowers, too."

Last Friday, by way of delivering that message, Eadie and three helpers dumped soil into seven planters along the north Main Street median and filled them with petunias where weeds had been growing all summer.

The now-planted planters are located at Main Street and Magnus Avenue, the same corner where Tom Denton works. It was Denton who brought the neglect of weed-infested planters along north Main to public notice last week. It's the kind of neglect that symbolizes city hall's attitude to an area that, as Denton suggested, can use all the care and beautification it can get.

Or, at the very least, what a lot of other regional streets are getting and what so-called "image routes" that feed directly into downtown are supposed to be getting as a matter of documented city policy. To the city's credit, it did respond to last week's column on the issue by sending someone to weed the 98 planters that stretch from Sutherland Avenue, on the north side of the Higgins underpass, to St. John's Avenue. Although, according to Eadie, the city's first instinct had been to remove them. Until he said no.

So on Saturday, with the help of anyone who wants to volunteer, Eadie intends on filling the rest of the planters with flowers.

Phil Sheegl, the city's chief administrative officer, made it known Wednesday that he doesn't think that's a good idea. As he wrote in an email to Eadie:

"Given the extremely busy nature of the location ... we have serious safety concerns for the volunteers who would take part without blocker vehicles or the appropriate personal protection equipment, and would urge that volunteers not be encouraged to undertake this task."

Eadie knows it can be hazardous, which is why he wants the city to block off one lane because they have that equipment and authority to do that.

So far, I don't get the feeling Sheegl sees it that way. Talk about the blind leading the truly blind.

Anyway, Eadie says he already has volunteers who are committed to do what he, his wife Patty, his assistant Aaron Mcdowell and local resident Gay Sul did Friday when they planted, watered and brought seven planters to life. In 22 minutes.

Just 91 planters left now.

"I'm not happy that we're going to plant them," Eadie told me this week, "because I still believe the city could have done this."

But he'll be there planting, anyway. He's using some of his councillor's allowance to pay for the soil and Free Press gardening columnist Colleen Zacharias helped Eadie source some flowers.

So if you can help Saturday starting at 8 a.m. -- if you'd like to get your hands dirty to make a statement for the people who live in the area -- call Eadie at 391-6259.

You can even just show up and cheer them on.

After they're all planted, he hopes city hall will feel obliged to help maintain them. And who knows, maybe they will. Sheegl also said this in his email to Eadie.

"I appreciate your concern for the aesthetics of Main Street, as a major route, and in response to your email, asked staff to determine the status of the planters to which you referred, and suggest an appropriate course of action."

If that "action" doesn't include watering, Eadie may need more volunteers with watering cans. When I showed up last Friday, Patty Eadie was using a watering can to finish the planting and I was wowed by what a difference the flowers made. And even more impressed by the courage of watching Eadie working on a narrow median with cars whizzing by. Yeah, it can be dangerous, but that's why the city should be doing it, not a man with a white cane.

It was as we were leaving that something happened that suggested the true beauty of this story.

A passing bus driver, obviously one who's had to drive by all the weed-glutted planters and who had given the city councillor a ride before, shouted out his window.

"Way to go, Ross."

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 28, 2011 B1

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