Ruth Bonneville

Authentic shave ice business was sizzling, and then the pandemic hit

Frozen hands up if you remember the Frosty Sno-Man Sno-cone machine, created by the Hasbro toy company in the 1960s.

The cavity-inducing contraption worked like this: while depositing cubes of ice in Frosty’s hollowed-out, plastic noggin you would turn a crank that rendered the ice into slivers via a cheese grater-type device attached to the mechanism’s mid-section. Once there was enough shredded ice to fill a small cup, you’d then squirt a provided artificial sweetener — flavours included orange, grape, pineapple, blueberry and pink lemonade — over top of the ice, producing a chilled treat perfect for a hot summer day.

OK, maybe not so perfect.

A few years ago Tina Dixon, founder of Island Girl Shave Ice, a family-run enterprise that bills itself as the city’s first authentic, Hawaiian-style shave ice biz, was a registered vendor at ManyFest, an annual street festival held in downtown Winnipeg’s Memorial Park. (According to the ManyFest website, this year’s festival remains tentatively scheduled for Sept. 11 to 13.) During the course of the weekend Dixon and her husband Darryl heard it time and time again; people strolling past their booth, made to resemble a tropical oasis with its Tiki thatch umbrella, would give the set-up the once-over then mutter under their breath, “Oh never mind, that’s just a junky snow cone.”

Drive-in convocation caps school memories

LOUD cheers and car honks from balloon-laden vans greeted Nyume Mahmoud as she delivered her valedictorian speech in the St. Maurice School parking lot.

The school’s 44 grads watched her from physically distanced chairs placed on the concrete around the temporary stage. Behind the grads, rows of cars contained parents and siblings craning their necks. Families could leave their vehicle when their grad was on stage; until then, they had to listen through open windows.

“Complaining is easy, but we’re about taking action,” Mahmoud said in her speech.

And action St. Maurice School’s staff and students did take. Faculty of the kindergarten-to-Grade 12 Catholic school had been planning a socially distanced convocation for more than a month. They tweaked their plans as health guidelines changed, Principal Bryan Doiron said.

Grand-opening delayed for cafe featuring nutritious doughnuts

This weekend, a new, nine-seat coffee shop specializing in plant-based, gluten-free baked goods was due to open in Osborne Village. Suffice it to say, that won’t be happening.

“The other day I was dropping off boxes of doughnuts to customers’ homes. Somebody commented that while I was preparing to open nothing could have prepared me for this. I was like, ‘Yeah, you can say that again,’” says Maureen Gelvis-Pflueger, owner of Monuts Café at 120 Scott St.

Two weeks prior to her scheduled March 28 grand opening — days before the COVID-19 virus turned the restaurant industry and, seemingly, everything else in Canada and the United States upside down — Gelvis-Pflueger, a married mother of three, invited Rev. Eric Giddens of St. Paul the Apostle Church over to bless her premises. After reading a passage from the Bible, he led her and her store manager through The Lord’s Prayer, then sprinkled holy water about the 690-square-foot space. Although she doesn’t refer to herself as “super-religious or anything like that,” she is counting on her faith to help get through the days and weeks ahead, until she can open the doors for real.

“I was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic school,” she says, when reached by phone. “I no longer go to church on a regular basis but I do pray on my own almost every day. That’s how I connect with Him. Am I disappointed we’re not opening (today)? Of course. But Winnipeggers are being so kind. They’re not just ordering a dozen doughnuts (for delivery), they’re ordering three, four, five (dozen)...

City crafter binds journals and sketchbooks with her own unique selection of materials

For years, Seattle resident Hannah Cole has travelled to Winnipeg on an annual basis to spend time with her godmother, Debra Frances Plett, founder of Debra Frances Book Arts, a home-based enterprise that produces one-of-a-kind sketchbooks and journals, the jackets of which are fashioned from materials one might not expect, including timber, copper, ceramic tile, even detritus such as rusted chains.

Following one such visit, Cole treated her grandfather Tore Vollan to pictures she’d taken of Plett’s handiwork, which, in the artist’s own words, “challenge people’s ideas of what a book is.” Vollan, an accomplished carpenter who moved to the Pacific Northwest from Norway in the 1950s, was particularly intrigued by a set of books boasting covers made with sections of driftwood Plett collected during a summer camping trip to Ontario.

“In his younger days, he built furniture, clocks, jewelry boxes, you name it, but now that he was in his 80s, he’d largely slowed down,” says Plett, seated in Café Postal, 202 Provencher Blvd., one of a handful of spots in the city that sells her eye-catching tomes on a consignment basis. “But after learning what I was up to, Hannah said it sort of gave him a new lease on life. Practically overnight he started shipping me all these gorgeous pieces of exotic wood he had stored in his workshop, which he would cut down to size for me to use as book covers.”

Vollan was diagnosed with leukemia in April 2018. When it was clear the 87-year-old didn’t have long to live, family members began showing up at his bedside armed with stacks of old photographs; shots of loved ones as well as pics of items he built during his long, distinguished career. Mostly he smiled and flipped from one photo to the next without comment, Plett learned later. A few days before he died, however, he paused to examine an image of a book cover done with wood he’d sent Plett’s way months earlier.

City couple's print-making took root after neighbour's tree mistakenly removed

Remember the 2004 bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a non-fiction tome that, among other things, touched on syntactic ambiguity, a term used to describe how the meaning of a sentence or phrase can be completely misconstrued by a missing or improperly placed punctuation mark?

If you’re unfamiliar with the book, it borrows its title from an old joke about a panda that strolls into a café, orders lunch then draws a gun, opening fire on the other diners. When a shocked server asks the panda for an explanation, the plant-eating creature flips open a wildlife manual and points to a poorly structured entry that reads, “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

That makes us wonder: does Nice Art People, the tag chosen by married couple Pam and Darren Gerbrandt for their year-old, home-based business, mean their artwork is pleasing to the eye or that the two of them are agreeable sorts?

“Our name was actually suggested to us by a friend and I fell in love with it immediately,” says Pam who, along with Darren, specializes in tree ring art, a type of craft that involves slathering ink onto a readied slab of wood then laying a blank piece of paper over top, creating an image of a tree’s rings when the paper is lifted away.

Orchard at The Forks open to the public for pickin'

In 2013, a clump of ornamental cherry trees near Inn at the Forks became infected with black knot and had to be removed.

The loss led to an opportunity. Rather than put down a patch of grass, The Forks, in partnership with Winnipeg CORE, planted 61 fruit trees — apple, apricot, cherry, pear and plum — and about 75 fruit-bearing shrubs, creating an urban, public orchard.

Now, six years on, that labour is really starting to bear fruit.

“It’s amazing how fast it’s grown,” says Dave Pancoe, manager of special projects at The Forks. “People will finally get to try some ripe apples.”

Survivors’ sanctuary

Midday in the middle of the city, Winnipegger Yssa Licsi stops by a downtown chapel to find a little solace.

“I can quiet myself down, and I can find that quietness where I can listen to God in the midst of a busy day,” she says of her regular visits to St. Francis Chapel at the Holy Names House of Peace

Sandwiched between the parking garage of Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet to the north and a housing complex for refugee woman and children to the south, not much about the exterior of the House of Peace suggests the extent of activity inside, with thousands of people stopping by each week.

“The entrance is so subtle, so people walk by,” explains executive co-ordinator Sr. Lesley Sacouman of the plain façade of the red brick building at 211 Edmonton St., constructed in 1963 as a friary for Franciscan brothers.

For Public General Store, sometimes the best plan is no plan

Three years ago this month, longtime pals Olena Kozel and Erin Ahl were sharing a bottle of red when their conversation turned to a subject that had been on both their minds for some time: after years of working for other people, how satisfying would it feel to operate a business of their own?

For fun, they got out their phones and began looking up commercial real estate listings, checking to see if there were any vacancies in the fast-developing West Broadway-Sherbrook Street area, their mutual neck of the woods.

As it turned out, an antique store located at 156 Sherbrook St., about a 10-minute walk from their respective homes, had just hit the market. Interested parties were invited to check out the roughly 800-square-foot space, which was due to come available in a matter of weeks.

“We went down on our own without an agent, just our laptops to take a few notes on. Even though we couldn’t really see what the walls and floors looked like because the store was so crammed with stuff, we were both immediately like, ‘We love it, we’ll take it,’” Ahl says, her eyes lighting up.

Forty years later, Homer's restaurant, the birthplace of chicken souvlaki, is a Winnipeg institution

Although a restaurant in Chatham, Ont. begs to differ, Charlie Clements, the long-time face of Tubby’s Pizza, formerly located on the corner of Stafford Street and Grosvenor Avenue (now the Grove Pub & Restaurant), swore up and down during an interview years ago that his establishment was the first on the planet to serve Hawaiian pizza.

Not to be outdone, Shirley Eng, owner of Mitzi’s Chicken Finger Restaurant at 250 St. Mary Ave. once told us how, in the 1980s, her husband Peter created honey dill sauce by mistake — a honey boo-boo, we called it — while attempting to make another dip entirely.

Surprised? Well, here’s the story behind another famous foodstuff that, depending who you choose to believe, was purportedly invented right here in Winnipeg.

Forty years ago this fall, George Katsabanis, together with his brother Sam, sister Anna and her husband George Panopoulos, opened Homer’s Restaurant, a 100-seat dining spot at 520 Ellice Ave. that, to this day, offers traditional Greek favourites such as taramasalata, spanokopita and avgolemono soup.

A bridge to community

Recently widowed and new to Winnipeg, Carolyn Douglas had never played a hand of bridge until a friend suggested she take up the card game to meet people.

A decade later, she has four regular playing partners, a part-time job, and dozens of new friends, all because of bridge.

“For me it is probably the socializing,” the former Thunder Bay resident says about the main benefit of playing bridge four times a week.

“If I didn’t play bridge, I think I would be more isolated and home alone more.”

Up to the job

One of Stacey Friesen’s favourite parts of her job is greeting customers, menus in hand and a smile on her face.

“It makes me happy all the time,” Friesen says. “They totally like me.”

The 26-year-old volunteers at L’Arche Tova Café in Transcona. The restaurant has been employing people with developmental disabilities, such as Friesen, since opening its doors in 2012.

The idea came to one of the owners after visiting a similar café in Ireland. L’Arche International — a movement dedicated to providing support for people with disabilities — operates in 38 countries and 152 communities, according to its website.

A look inside FortWhyte Alive's bison safari

From the safety of a tour bus, visitors to FortWhyte Alive can spend a summer afternoon getting up close to the centre’s bison and learning about how North America’s largest land mammal shaped Canada’s history.

FortWhyte offers the bison safari four times a week until the end of August, then once a week in September.