Riverview’s vibrant past comes alive

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This article was published 03/05/2015 (3916 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Perhaps it was the weather. Dozens showed up Saturday in short sleeves and shorts under a brilliant sunny sky for a spring rite called Jane’s Walk.

The event, held in cities across Canada and the world, consists of 90-minute instructive strolls through city neighbourhoods that peel back the pages of history, street by street.

 

Jane Jacobs was an American journalist and author who turned her success in saving her beloved Greenwich Village in New York City from developer Robert Moses into a career and an urban movement to save city neighbourhoods from the wrecking ball. The walks are held in her memory each year around the date of her birth, May 4.

Jacobs rose from being derided as a “crazy housewife” — she had only a high school diploma — to near-iconic status over the course of nearly 50 years of work to alter urban planning in North American cities.

By the time of her death, in her longtime home of Toronto at age 89 in 2006, her reputation had come close to celebrity status.

This year, Winnipeg mustered 30 distinct walking tours, led by volunteers with a passion equal to Jacob’s vision for turning urban planning into a vibrant movement.

Dozens of Winnipeggers showed up at the Banana Boat ice-cream shop on Osborne Street South for a stroll through Riverview, a mixed commercial-residential neighbourhood along the Red River, where there once stood a brewery, a zoo with bear pits and a ski slope.

Jino Distasio, a University of Winnipeg urban studies professor, said he’s led the Riverview walk for years, and it’s a labour of love.

“I grew up in the area,” he said in a series of interviews between his speeches to about 70 participants. They trailed him from the Banana Boat, in the 300 block of Osborne Street South, through part of a river trail and a cemetery, south to the Park Theatre. The stories featured anecdotes about boxer Donny Lalonde and a mysterious brick of gold said to be buried somewhere along Osborne Street.

Riverview owes its origin to a route to the district operated by street cars built in the 1890s, Distasio said.

“There are so many wonderful things about Winnipeg,” said participant Trish McBride. “The history, obviously. And there’s a quote, I can only paraphrase it, but it says something like ‘Men didn’t love Rome because she was a great city. She was a great city because men loved Rome.’ Jane’s Walk epitomizes that.”

‘There are so many wonderful things about Winnipeg’ — Trish McBride

Two sisters who showed up early for the Riverview stroll said the event was a chance for them to spend time together. Barbara Herriot-Miller said the walk was a birthday gift from her sister. “We do events, experiences, for birthdays,” she said, adding it was her first walk.

Her sister, Nancy Militano, said she discovered the annual rite a few years ago and looked forward to bringing Herriot-Miller this year. They planned to go on another walk in the afternoon.

The 30 walks planned in Winnipeg included strolls through some of the oldest neighbourhoods, including Armstrong’s Point, the home of the Gates, and sculptures and public art in St. Boniface.

Other walks were held downtown, with an emphasis on Métis leader Louis Riel; the North End, focusing on the roots of the Jewish community; Crescentwood; and the revitalized Selkirk Avenue.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca