Podcast made from what’s real Friends focus on what makes Winnipeg Winnipeg By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 5:30 PM CDT Wednesday, Mar. 27, 2024

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This article was published 27/03/2024 (558 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This is a story about a podcast.

But this is also a story about making new friends as an adult.

Rebecca Hadfield and Paige Lloyd met in a spin class. Hadfield was teaching the class at the front of the room; Lloyd had taken a bike in the back.

“And I was just howling,” Lloyd says. “She was making exercise funny and fun —”

“— and she was the only one getting my jokes,” Hadfield says.

“So I just said afterwards, ‘Hey, your class is funny, let’s hang out,’” Lloyd says.

That was a decade ago, and now, Lloyd, 44, and Hadfield, 51 — a.k.a. Peej and Roy — have parlayed their instant chemistry into a podcast. They are the hosts of Made From What’s Left, a chatty, funny exploration of the buildings, people, places and food that make Winnipeg Winnipeg. (The title is a cheeky reference to our current civic slogan, “Made from what’s real.” “If you have to say it, is it true?” Lloyd asks.)

Since its debut in 2022, the podcast has, over its 42 (and counting) episodes, explored everything from street cars to ghost signs to Brutalism. And snacks. Lots of snacks.

Lloyd is the principal architect and owner at ARCCADD ​Architecture, where Made From What’s Left is recorded with producer Rebecca Driedger (a.k.a. Young Rebecca), so she initially wanted to focus more strictly on Winnipeg’s architecture.

“And I said, ‘Well, if I’m going to come on board, I want there to be snacks,’” Hadfield says.

They’ve done episodes on Old Dutch and Nutty Club, have explored the city’s craft brewery scene and, for their debut episode, arbitrarily ranked all the Sals locations — a true meeting of both of their interests.

Their skill sets also complement each other.

“I have a background in tour guiding; I also worked at city hall for a spell, so I think we’re both interested in Winnipeg history, Winnipeg buildings, Winnipeg people,” says Hadfield, who is a communications specialist.

Working on the podcast together has been a source of discovery — and, in some cases, re-discovery — for these born-and-raised Winnipeggers.

“Every single time I’m researching, I find out something new.”–Paige Lloyd

“Every single time I’m researching, I find out something new. Whether it’s an architectural detail on a building that I’ve driven past a thousand times and never noticed, or whether it’s like a cool or seedy history about a building or a group of buildings or something like that. I’m always so excited to talk about it on the podcast,” Lloyd says.

“There’s inspiration everywhere,” Hadfield says. “I don’t think we’ll ever run out of topics.”

Lloyd has never really lived anywhere else, save for an early childhood stint in Edmonton she doesn’t remember.

She recalls a time when she was cycling through River Heights, the neighbourhood she grew up in, with a friend and found herself providing an on-the-fly tour of her childhood haunts — her schools and hangouts.

“And by the end of it, my friend that I was with said, ‘I don’t have that. I could not do that,’” Lloyd says. “So much of my life was in this small area and all of the memories were good. It just sounds so cheesy, but for me, everything was a bike ride away and a blast. And then now that we’re doing these adventures, it’s the same thing — although maybe it’s a car ride away.

“I would love for people to go do something because we said, ‘Hey, this is a lot of fun and we think you should try it out.’”

“That was my thing: ‘I want to go anywhere else.’ And then once you’re in those places, you realize, well, it doesn’t have this sense of community that Winnipeg has, or it takes a really long time to get anywhere.”–Rebecca Hadfield

Hadfield, meanwhile, couldn’t wait to get out of Winnipeg.

“That was my thing: ‘I want to go anywhere else.’ And then once you’re in those places, you realize, well, it doesn’t have this sense of community that Winnipeg has, or it takes a really long time to get anywhere,” she says.

“I moved to Toronto, and I thought, everything’s way too fast. And then I moved to B.C., and everything was way too slow. I was kind of like Goldilocks. Where do I fit in all of this?”

The answer, it would turn out, was Winnipeg. Community was a draw for Hadfield, but so was affordability.

“In B.C., they always used to say, ‘Oh, you can ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon.’ Well, no, you can’t because you’re always working or sitting in traffic.”

In April, Peej and Roy are hosting an invite-only celebration of 50-ish episodes; listeners can enter to win tickets to on the Made From What’s Left Instagram page (@madefrompod). The event will take place at the Gargoyle Theatre — which, as it happens, was the site of their first friend date when it was the Ellice Theatre.

 

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com