Step by step

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/02/2019 (2596 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Before merchants roll up their security gates and boot up their cash registers each morning, Arla Anderson and Ruth Stefanson have finished their day’s business at the city’s largest shopping mall.

Instead of indulging in retail therapy, the cousins have caught up on a bit of social networking and some physical activity during their two-hour morning stop at CF Polo Park Shopping Centre.

“This is like a job for us,” explains Anderson, 79, who leaves her Crestview-area home at 7 a.m. to drive to Polo Park.

“I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t come here,” adds Stefanson, 83, who lives in St. James.

“I would be lost.”

Anderson and Stefanson walk several laps around the mall five mornings a week, and then grab the same table in the upper level food court to catch up over a cup of coffee. Often they’re joined by mall friend Shirley Hoban, who travels to Polo Park by bus.

“There’s a purpose when you get up in the morning,” Hoban, 83, says of her daily walk.

Polo Park is home to a committed group of mall walkers, who hoof it from end-to-end multiple times before retailers open for business at 10 a.m., says general manager Peter Havens. Mall doors open at 7 a.m.

“It’s free, it’s climate-controlled, the floors are smooth without transitions,” Havens says of the attractions of walking inside in winter.

“You can walk fairly far, but if they (the walkers) need a break, the benches are there.”

Walkers of all ages traverse the tiled floors alone or in small groups. Some wear exercise gear, and others make the circuit in casual clothes.

Havens says the mall provides a coat rack for walkers on the second level, although some people prefer parking their parkas at a favourite food court table or locking coats and valuables in their car and making a chilly dash into the mall.

A full lap, which involves walking along the outer edge of the mall’s wide hallways and into every nook and bump out, measures about a mile, or 1.6 kilometres, says Danis Thompkins, 63, who makes five rounds of the mall after walking about 7 kilometres to Polo Park from his west Winnipeg home.

Putting on about 30,000 steps daily, Thompkins says walking saved his health by lowering his blood pressure and burning up excess weight.

“I was so fat I couldn’t even bend over to tie my shoes,” he says of where he started five-and-a-half years ago.

Now down more than 45 kilograms, Thompkins starts his daily trek at home at 4 a.m., pausing at 9 a.m. to meet with a bunch of friends at one of the small tables near a main floor coffee shop.

“There’s a group everywhere, so you find a group you mesh with,” he says of the socializing that occurs after walkers complete their laps.

Those connections also happen informally after walkers pass each on the same circuit regularly. Gloria Macdangdang started walking alone two years ago, but soon joined up with a half a dozen other Filipino women each day.

“We just met here,” she explains, gesturing to the women seated at the round table at the food court. “We just talked and smiled.”

That same sort of chance encounter developed into a strong friendship between 75-year-old Armand Tesoro, and Marc Gregoire, 58.

“I met Armand because he pulled me aside and asked what I did,” recalls Gregoire, who started walking for fitness reasons after a shoulder injury ended his construction career.

“When I see him, I might slow down and walk a couple of rounds with him.”

Tesoro alternates between working out at the Reh-Fit Centre on Taylor and walking laps with his wife Erlinda at Polo Park. The Charleswood residents used to walk in Assiniboine Park, but allergies drove them indoors.

Gregoire witnessed the strong social connections his late father-in-law made by walking the mall, and he now understands the benefits of following in those footsteps.

“If you put exercise and socializing together, it makes a healthy mind and a healthy spirit,” he explains.

Even if they don’t have coffee or breakfast together later, fellow walkers acknowledge each other, and notice if someone is missing for several days in a row, says Leslie Holden, who walk five laps — or 10,000 steps — every morning before heading to work at Polo Park Hearing Centre, the family business located in the mall’s lower level.

“I was away for three weeks and when I got back it was ‘welcome back,’” she says of responses from fellow mall walkers.

Holden usually walks alone, but frequently meets up with West End resident Dianne Malinoski, another solo walker, who used to walk with her mother, until she died four years ago at age 98.

“Everyone sort of talks with each other,” says Malinoski, 75. “You check up with each other and when people are away, you wonder.”

As widows living alone, their daily meet-ups at the mall offers a social lifeline for Anderson and Stefanson, who joke that no one would notice if they died during the night.

Unless other appointments call them away, they remain committed to continuing the daily circuit they started 20 years ago.

“God willing, we are here tomorrow,” says Stefanson.

Do you have a special place you meet and build community in Winnipeg? Email your story idea to brenda@suderman.com