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For some people, the city is a place to escape in the summer.
They want to get away — to campsites and cottages and long prairie drives. They want to breathe in the peaty air of the woods and dive into cold bodies of water and eat beach sandwiches (accompanied by plain ruffle chips and cherries, those are the only acceptable sides, I don’t make the rules) and watch thunderstorms roll in over lakes and canola fields.
All of that is great, but I have to say: I like summer in the city. I like the oniony fug of hotdog carts on Broadway and the hot summer nights where it’s still a bit light out and patios with string lights and sweating glasses of rosé.
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Getting away affords what can often be a much-needed change of scenery; I especially like when the scenery disappears completely out of an airplane window. But summer in Winnipeg is when the scenery changes around you.
This city comes to life in the summer. It thrums with an energy forced inside in the winter; winter is all sharp elbows and hostility, skeletal trees and bracing wind and frozen surfaces. Of course, you can enjoy the outdoors in winter — there is a brutalist beauty about it — but there’s an ease, a frictionlessness, about summer. You can just… go outside. You can sit down on a surface and drink a coffee. You don’t have to get bundled up or choose an activity in which you have to keep it moving lest you freeze to death. You can linger.
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Ballet in the Park (Nic Adam / Free Press files)
There’s also lots to do, including free stuff, which is nice since it seems like “going outside” costs $100 now. There’s the Summer Entertainment Series at Assiniboine Park, which includes movie screenings, concerts, wellness activities and cultural happenings, such as the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s annual presentation of Ballet in the Park and the Folklorama Kick-Off Event.
The Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival starts next week; WAG Wednesday Nights is still going strong.
You can also just go walk around and look at public art. Make a colour walk out of it. Stop and have a little treat on a park bench. Enjoy summer in the city.
Because before you know it, it’ll be over.
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