Finding new paths in familiar places

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This article was published 01/05/2024 (757 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Choi Ho’s favourite part of hosting Jane’s Walk tours happens well before she hits the trail.

“It’s the legwork I do beforehand. I look at bylaws, I look at newspaper articles, I do a bunch of desktop research that leads me down great rabbit holes,” she says.

Ho has been leading walking tours during the annual event inspired by urban activist Jane Jacobs for nearly a decade.

She got involved with the local chapter of the global festival after moving to Winnipeg from Toronto for architecture school.

Jacobs’ theories about livable cities and the connections Ho made during Jane’s Walks and other community events inspired her to pursue a career in city planning instead.

“Anything I can do to honour Jane Jacobs or celebrate her ideas, I’m all for,” Ho says.

During her life, Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, organized grassroots efforts to protect neighbourhoods in New York, and elsewhere, from disruptive development and railed against harmful urban planning policies. She died in 2006 at the age of 89.

This year, there are 17 Jane’s Walk tours (and counting) scheduled to take place Friday through Sunday in neighbourhoods across Winnipeg.

Ho is leading a leisurely stroll through St. James on Sunday at 2 p.m. While she usually focuses on neighbourhoods where she lives or works — such as Wolseley, West Broadway and the Exchange District — this year’s route is the epitome of a hidden gem: an unofficial active transportation trail between Portage Avenue and the Assiniboine River.

“It’s not even a trail, it’s just a series of streets that loop and jog between some greenways, residential areas, under bridges,” Ho says.

“It’s a really great way for people to learn about the city. It’s an opportunity to meet with your neighbours and to start conversations about the things you care about.”– Tamara Rae Biebrich, Winnipeg Arts Council public art manager

“I think it will be pretty familiar for locals, but if someone new is coming on the walk, I’m hoping it’ll be a way they never thought was possible to get from the Wolseley area to Assiniboine Park.”

Tour highlights will include conversations about Bruce Park, Bourkevale Community Centre and the confounding continuation of Assiniboine Avenue west of downtown. Attendees will be encouraged to improve trail wayfinding with sidewalk chalk during the two-hour, 3 1/2-kilometre walk.

The tour starts at the Omand Park footbridge north of the park’s baseball diamonds near Portage Avenue. Ho will be sporting her usual tour guiding uniform: a colourful hat, megaphone and a bucket, which she uses as a makeshift riser.

“It gives me that extra two feet that helps me be more visible, and it just adds a little more quirkiness or liveliness or charm that I know people probably expect or look forward to on these walks,” Ho says, adding she regularly guides groups of 50 people or more.

Other Jane’s Walk tours — which are created and led by community volunteers — include a public art trek through Glenelm, a jaunt past Indigenous projects on the University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry campus and a nature walk through Transcona’s green spaces.

The Winnipeg Arts Council (WAC) has been facilitating the annual festival for the last number of years. With an expected 20 tours on the docket this year, the in-person event has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

Exploring Winnipeg’s eclectic neighbourhoods on foot is one way to foster the kind of community engagement heralded by Jacobs, says Tamara Rae Biebrich, WAC’s public art manager.

“It’s a really great way for people to learn about the city. It’s an opportunity to meet with your neighbours and to start conversations about the things you care about,” she says.

Jane’s Walk tours are free to attend, but registration is recommended. Sign up and find a full list of tours on Eventbrite.

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com

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