John Woods

There’s a reason pickleball is the hottest court sport around

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… pickleball.

It’s 3 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, and the gymnasium at Sturgeon Heights Community Centre is echoing with the pleasing, rhythmic “pop” sound of paddles making contact with pickleballs — neon plastic balls with holes, not unlike a wiffleball. Members of Winnipeg West Pickleball have just taken to the courts, where they will play for the next couple of hours.

It was that sound that first hooked Rose Sawatzky. Sawatzky, 49, is not only a bona fide pickleball champion — she was ranked No. 1 in Canada within a year of first taking up the game during a trip to Arizona in 2017 — she’s also an organization director for Pickleball Canada and a certified instructor who has kindly agreed to school me in what has fast become the hottest sport at community centres all over the continent.

Pickleball is a badminton-meets-ping-pong-meets-tennis hybrid that can be played indoors or outdoors. According to pickleball lore, it was made up by three Washington State dads in 1965 and named after Pickles the dog, who liked to chase balls. (There’s some low-stakes debate about the origin of the name; others say it comes from a crew term for a boat full of thrown-together rowers.)

Hell-bent for leather… pottery, too

Let’s kick Father’s Day weekend off in style with a yarn involving Chuck Allen, a married father of four and founder of Earth and Hide, a home-based venture that turns out hand-crafted pottery and quality leather goods.

Four years ago, Allen, 43, was seated at the dining room table in his and his wife Amy’s St. James abode, struggling to come up with a moniker for his just-hatched business. He’d always liked the ring of this-and-that tags such as Deer + Almond or Elephant & Castle, so he was busily looking up synonyms for clay and leather, the two primary mediums he works with, hoping to settle on a pair of words that sounded good together.

Brick and something, he asked himself? Something else and tannery?

John, his second eldest, stopped to ask what he was scribbling down. The elder Allen replied he was trying to think of a name for his company and offered a few points of comparison. That’s easy, John announced; why not call it Ground Beef?

Spectre of losing common bond inside encampment adds to despair

The crowd is angry.

You can hear it in the chants erupting from the protesters, in the drum beat rippling through the tangle of bodies, in the tremble of the speaker’s voice in the bullhorn.

It is palpable in the sticky summer air.

Devoted couple offers warm-hearted welcome, generous spirit twice a week

The car pulls to a stop at 8:26 a.m.

Ted Martens swings open the door and steps into a windswept winter morning. His balance isn’t what it used to be, so he walks gingerly across the icy parking lot, doing his best to stay upright as he heads for the front doors of the grocery store.

Despite the cold, Martens, 69, is in good spirits — as he seemingly always is. He’s had some health troubles of late, and his hearing isn’t so good anymore, but he’s still got his driver’s licence, so he reminds himself to count his blessings.

Tent settlement remains a home for street family

Desirae has a pair of lungs on her.

“Don’t stare at the zoo animals!” she screams, as people walk down Henry Avenue, past the encampment, just off the Main Street strip, where she lives. 

The world around her is chaos.

There are more tents and makeshift shelters at the camp than ever before, and Desirae has recently moved hers off to the edge. A chop shop has been set up, and the frames and wheels of disassembled bicycles are littered everywhere, mixed in with discarded shopping carts.  

Salvation Army trio focuses on others' well-being during frigid overnight shift in pandemic

The night begins with a prayer, an incantation from the lips of three faithful members of the flock, standing in dim light with clasped hands as they implore God to direct them where help is needed most.

It’s a predictable start given the setting — the Salvation Army — where Merv Halvorsen, a longtime pastor with the non-profit religious group, is preparing to lead an outreach team into the streets of Winnipeg during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The plan is to find as many people experiencing homelessness as possible and help them any way they can — a bottle of water or loaf of bread, a toque or scarf, or a trip to the overnight shelter or methamphetamine detox.

Thunderbirdz rise on Winnipeg streets

Midway through September, Salena May Blunderfield realized her close friend, Katelyn Fontaine, hadn't been heard from in more than three weeks, so she decided to plan a community search.

She reached out to several groups before stumbling across the phone number for Thunderbirdz — a new initiative that aims to support marginalized and houseless people in Winnipeg.

"Right away, right when I asked for help, they were like okay, yeah, let's do it tomorrow," Blunderfield said in an interview the day after the search.

More than 80 people combed the streets with flyers in search of Fontaine. They travelled up Main Street to her known locations, then down Portage Avenue, showing her pictures to passersby.

Graeson Fehr is forging a name for himself with one-of-kind knives and other edgy art

Graeson Fehr, founder of Fehr Forgeworks, a West St. Paul-based enterprise specializing in one-of-a-kind, handmade knives, gets it all the time.

Whenever he’s a registered vendor at a pop-up event or craft show, as he will be Sunday when he takes part in the second Manitoba Night Market & Festival of the summer (1-11 p.m. at Assiniboia Downs), passersby invariably pause in front of his booth, eye his meticulously crafted wares — everything from carving knives to pocket knives to finely etched Bowie knives — and begin directing questions to his father, often positioned to his right.

“They’ll start asking about this or that and he’ll shake his head going, nope, it’s all him, pointing over at me,” Fehr says, seated inside his parents’ double garage, a section of which serves as his everyday workspace.

“I certainly don’t take any offence when that happens. If I was them I probably wouldn’t expect to see a person my age doing this kind of thing, either.”

Kid-friendly stuffed creations combine 'the perfect balance of cute and creepy'

Kami Goertz is a fibre artist whose plush boogeymen and hobgoblins have been described as being as much at home tucked in a child’s bed as lurking under one.

With Halloween right around the corner, Goertz agrees that assessment fits her huggable, bug-eyed creatures to a T, citing the television show My Pet Monster, a fave of hers growing up, as an early inspiration.

“He was this stuffed animal with horns and blue fur that came alive and protected the kid, and I guess I liked the idea that monsters could be on your side instead of something you should be afraid of,” she says, seated on a stool in her Exchange District studio, located on the fourth floor of the Silvester-Willson Building, 222 McDermot Ave.

“It’s funny, when I’m doing a craft sale, adults sometimes seem apprehensive about my stuff, commenting it might be too scary for their son or daughter. But seriously, what kid isn’t fascinated by something that’s a little dark and spooky? From my experience as a mom, kids seem to enjoy having a bit of ‘Boo!’ in their life.”

Model watercraft enthusiasts make a splash at Assiniboine Park's duck pond

It’s Sunday morning at Assiniboine Park’s Riley Family Duck Pond, where members of the Winnipeg Model Boat Club have gathered for their annual, day-long regatta, made more special this year as it coincides with the organization’s 25th anniversary.

Shortly after Claude Dupuis launches a scale model, radio-controlled canoe, a pair of women approach him, explaining they spotted him and his cohorts while they were walking their dogs and immediately felt compelled to wander over to get a closer look.

They’re not the only ones whose curiosity has been piqued. An elderly gent, grandson perched on his shoulders, has been pumping Dupuis with questions about his eye-catching contraption for 10 minutes already. Meanwhile, a family of five is busily snapping pictures of the canoe’s pint-size paddlers, both of which can be controlled separately, allowing the metre-long vessel, made of birch plywood, to travel forward and backward, as well as perform full 360s.

(Holy oarsmen, Batman! It turns out one of the two figurines bolted inside the canoe, the one painted green, is a converted caped crusader toy. “I bought it at Spencer’s, cut the bat ears off, filled the holes with a bit of putty and voila, it was just what I was looking for,” Dupuis says, noting his model’s maiden voyage occurred in a less-than-glorious setting, his bathtub, “just to make sure it’d float.”)

Three Manitoba veterans recount their roles on D-Day

Three Winnipeg and area veterans recently shared their D-Day experiences with Free Press photographer John Woods.

Two were in the air, while a third was on the Normandy beach on June 6, 1944. Hear their interviews, see their photographs and read excerpts of their stories below.

Len van RoonLance corporal, 19th Field Regiment

Where (the ship) normally would have a lifeboat, they had sort of a motorboat. It had a crew of three and a naval officer. They were the ones who would take us to our positions, which was halfway between the ships that were shelling the shore and the shore itself. So we had a grandstand view.

Highway closures, treacherous conditions all in a day's work for hockey-team bus drivers

Roger Hamelin wriggles his nose to steady his glasses as his eyes dart up the day’s schedule, which he smooths out on a table in the break room at the Beaver Bus Lines depot in St. Boniface.He is booked for an hour’s drive to Steinbach, where at 11 a.m., he’ll pick up the Pistons, the reigning champions of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League, then stop in Neepawa for lunch before arriving in Waywayseecappo with time to spare before the team’s 6 o’clock faceoff against the Wolverines.

On paper, the drive is a simple one, Hamelin says. But buses don’t drive on paper; they get where they’re going over Prairie highways, where things can go wrong just as easily as they can go right.

A bus driver’s schedule represents an ideal scenario, an unobstructed sequence that takes a 25,000-kilogram machine from Point A to Point B to Point Z and back, with nothing impeding its motion.

To follow a schedule to a T, it’s understood, is aspirational — a dream — but Hamelin is attempting to make it a reality.