Ditch promises some fun

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/09/2002 (8615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OK, so I’m driving down Portage Avenue last Friday with a trio of pro snowboarders from Whistler, B.C., crammed into the back of my Jeep.

Fresh from competing at Snow Jam, the ‘boarders needed a lift downtown and I was more than happy to oblige — in return for allowing Geeky Reporter Guy to pick their extreme-athlete brains.

After enduring a bunch of stupid questions from a flatlander who knows next to nothing about the world of competitive snowboarding, one of the mountain people turns the tables on me.

“So where do people go to snowboard around here?,” asks Dominique Vallee, a member of Canada’s national snowboarding team.

The answer, of course, is a hole in the ground — the Red River Floodway, whose slopes provide the closest thing this city has to an actual hill.

Yep, the big trench designed to keep Winnipeg nice ‘n’ dry in springtime doubles as our local ski hill. This elicits big laughs from the Whistler crowd and I can’t help but laugh along with them.

After all, why be ashamed? This is the Prairies, where a depression is as good as a hill.

But I wasn’t laughing the next day, when I picked up the paper and learned an expanded version of the floodway is being touted as some kind of outdoor-adventure panacea.

In case you missed the story, a group of engineers has endorsed a plan to dig a deeper ditch. In addition to protecting the city from another flood of biblical proportions, this ber-floodway would be navigable all year and open itself up to all kinds of recreational uses.

Ignoring the ludicrous assertion whitewater kayakers will flock to the trench (a few metres of rapids at the end of a spillway is not much of an attraction), there are some merits to this idea. A new, 47-kilometre-long body of water would serve as a decent stretch of flatwater in the summer and allow for cross-country skiing in the winter.

Even better, the mountain bikers who already tool around Springhill Winter Park would be thrilled if the entire length of the floodway was lined with single track — ideally with various grades of switchbacks up and down the slopes.

Right now, the “bike route” from Winnipeg to Lockport along Henderson Highway is way too busy on most weekends to be considered a relaxing ride. If the feds and the province shell out billions of dollars for the new floodway, they could easily spare a few more bucks for a multi-use recreational zone featuring a series of mountain-bike routes, paved pathways for in-line skaters and — as much as I’d like to see the floodway remain gasoline-free — a few areas reserved for the smelly off-road vehicles that already use the slopes.

Of course, even if this dream floodway gets built, Winnipeg’s recreational infrastructure will remain a joke. While the city is beginning to pay more attention to its heavily abused waterways, our system of cycling routes is sad compared to what’s available to riders in Calgary and Edmonton.

As anyone who commutes to work by bicycle can attest, Winnipeg cyclists routinely take their lives into their own hands. Closing Scotia Street, Wolseley Avenue and Wellington Crescent on weekends and holidays barely addresses the need and the demand of recreational cyclists, never mind commuters.

It’s enough to make you sympathize with those Critical Mass people — those protesters who choked off Portage Avenue cruise-night traffic to draw attention to the poor state of non-motorized travel in this city (and as an added bonus, really annoy the testosterone-addled morons who race their engines all night).

As an environmentalist and avid cyclist, Mayor Glen Murray has expressed an interest in making Winnipeg a better place to ride. But for now there isn’t enough money in the city’s public works budget — not even to fulfil the promise of a 1993 study aimed at improving both recreational and commuter bike routes, says city transport engineer Roman Manasterski.

Cyclists can take solace knowing the city makes room for bike lanes on all new bridges and underpasses and tries to widen curb lanes, whenever possible.

“Admittedly, there’s lots more to do,” Manasterski says.

No kidding. New floodway or no new floodway, this is still a place where recreational travel often means driving down Portage Avenue with your car stereo turned up to 11.

Have a good wilderness adventure or self-propelled travel tip? E-mail the Wannabe at bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca.