Jen Tries

From 2025 to 1851: What does it take to be a historical interpreter?

In this instalment, Jen Tries… being a Lower Fort Garry historical interpreter/living in the fur trade era.

Auditioning for the RWB School’s Professional Division a real grand jeté for columnist

Welcome to Jen Tries, a semi-regular series in which Free Press columnist Jen Zoratti tries something new and reports back. In this instalment, Jen Tries … auditioning for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School Professional Division.

For this series, I have shot a gun. I have thrown an axe. I have hung upside down. I’ve even flown a glider plane.

But this, by far, was the most nerve-wracking Jen Tries yet.

She’s a lumberjack and she’s OK…

Welcome to Jen Tries, a semi-regular feature in which Free Press columnist Jen Zoratti will try something new and report back. In this instalment, Jen Tries... throwing an axe.

First of all, allow me to confess that throwing an axe has never been high on my list of things to try.

But axe throwing, as a leisure activity, is growing in popularity — so much so that there’s been a recent proliferation of urban axe-throwing clubs for those who want to embrace their inner lumberjack. Bad Axe Throwing is one such club. The first location opened in Burlington, Ont. in 2014; now, Bad Axe Throwing is the largest urban axe-throwing club in the world, with 16 locations across the U.S. and Canada. The Winnipeg location opened last spring, so I thought I’d pay the folks there a visit and get a lesson from an professional axe master.

My coach is a tall guy with a formidable beard who goes by Big Dan. I feel that I am appropriately nervous around sharp objects that will be turned into projectiles, but I do what I do when I’m nervous: I talk non-stop. Big Dan is very patient.

The gun whisperer: How to shoot like a movie star

Welcome to Jen Tries, a semi-regular feature in which Free Press columnist Jen Zoratti will try something new and report back. In this instalment, Jen Tries... shooting a gun like Keanu Reeves.

There’s one person on Earth who can say he’s been shot twice in the stomach by Sir Ben Kingsley in a bar on Pembina Highway. His name is Dave Brown.

Brown, 61, has been the firearms safety co-ordinator on pretty much every major film that’s been shot in Winnipeg in the past 25 years. He is the guy who has helped make actors such as Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Williams, Keanu Reeves and, yes, the man who once played Gandhi, look like they know what they’re doing with a gun. He is basically the Jedi master of firearms, although that’s not how he’d put it.

“I don’t work with guns,” he says. “I work with people who happen to work with guns.”