Uncovering city’s history at Elmwood Cemetery

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This article was published 05/05/2017 (3413 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Wendi Oryniak has lived 58 of her 63 years in east Winnipeg, so she’s something of an expert on that part of the city.

On Sunday afternoon, she’ll be leading a walking tour through her favourite spot in northeast Winnipeg — Elmwood Cemetery — as part of Jane’s Walk, a series of free, citizen-led tours that are held in cities all over the world over the first weekend of May. Founded in 2006, Jane’s Walk is named for the late Jane Jacobs, a pioneering urban planner, writer and activist who believed that in order to truly understand a city, you have to get out and walk around in it.

Jane’s Walk Winnipeg kicked off Friday and 16 more walks — including Oryniak’s Who’s Who in Elmwood Cemetery tour, which begins at 1 p.m. — will take place today and Sunday in neighbourhoods across the city. Participants can learn about everything from wild edibles in Whittier Park to murals in Transcona.

The point is to get people up, out and exploring their city, and engaging with neighbourhoods they might not otherwise.

Before she led Jane’s Walks, Oryniak was a participant. She also belonged to another walking group that got her into Winnipeg history. Elmwood Cemetery has always had a place in her heart, a peaceful place she often walked and biked through. When she started carefully examining the headstones, she was inspired to research the names immortalized by Winnipeg schools and streets.

“You start going down rabbit holes,” she says with a laugh.

Founded in 1902, Elmwood Cemetery is Winnipeg’s oldest non-denominational cemetery. As the final resting place of many significant historical figures, it’s also practically the Père Lachaise of the Prairies. Free Press editor John Dafoe (1866-1944) and agricultural reporter E. Cora Hind, who was also Western Canada’s first female journalist, are there. Premier Duff Roblin is there, and so is former Winnipeg mayor Bill Norrie. Dr. Gordon Bell, too.

On her tours, Oryniak tells the story of little Grace Eveline Lemon who, at just nine months and three weeks old, became the first burial in Elmwood Cemetery on March 8, 1902. She tells the story of Lola Cowan, the 14-year-old victim of the so-called Dark Strangler, thought by some to be North America’s first serial killer. Oryniak had read about Lola, who died on June 9, 1927, in a Free Press story last August. “It intrigued me and sure enough, I found the headstone in there.”

If you live in a city long enough, it’s easy to stop seeing it, to stop noticing things about it. We fall into a routine — and the routes of routine. This way to work, that way to the store, passing the same places everyday. Jane’s Walk gets people out in the name of exploration and observation, reacquainting us with where we live.

In addition to being educational, these walks are also community-building exercises.

“When people go on these walks, what I find is that people will start slowing down because they start talking to each other,” Oryniak says.

Her tour is ever-changing, which keeps her inspired year after year. She sees these walking tours as something of a civic duty. As she points out, helping people understand and appreciate the significance of hidden neighbourhood gems such as her beloved cemetery helps “make sure these things remain standing,” she says. After all, it’s these places that make up our city’s DNA.

Oryniak says the passion and pride the citizen guides have for their communities is inspiring.

“They feel an ownership,” she says. “They are very enthusiastic about their little part of Winnipeg.”

For the full list of Jane’s Walk tours, visit janeswalk.org/canada/winnipeg.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @JenZoratti