How about a look at Winnipeg from someone who lives here?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/01/2024 (734 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I think I speak for more than a few Winnipeggers when I say I am tired of reporters from other Canadian cities flying in for a few days and making some pronouncement about our city being the dud or darling of the country.

This month marks eight years since Maclean’s magazine published its well-known cover story declaring Winnipeg the “most racist city in Canada.”

I could quote another dozen or so articles from central Canada about how we are the country’s “coldest city” — physically or emotionally. Or, the “poorest city” — in poverty and people. Or, the “most surprising city” — because of culture or content. And so on, and so on.

Over the holidays the Globe and Mail published a feature by Shannon Proudfoot calling Winnipeg a “beautiful, winsome, urban, creative, smartass, fun, livable — and, yes, profoundly challenged — city that does not deserve anyone’s condescension.”

Thanks and miigwech… I think.

Proudfoot’s piece was prompted by the Globe’s annual study of Canada’s “most livable cities” — in which Winnipeg came third, due to “access to amenities,” “transportation” and “broad demographics.”

For anyone interested, other Manitoba communities on the list were Brandon (22), the bustling metropolis of East St. Paul (69), my hometown of Selkirk (199) and Portage La Prairie (204).

While it’s nice for our city to finally be recognized by national media as something other than cold, crime-ridden and culturally inferior, it’s also frustrating.

With due respect to my eastern colleagues, Winnipeg is not some darling or dud of the week. It’s one heck of a complex, interesting and complicated place — a conclusion, to her credit, Proudfoot arrives at.

One might even call it resisting definition.

Here’s a good example.

In 2016, Mainstreet/Postmedia ran a national poll asking approximately 4,200 Canadians which city they thought was most dangerous. Winnipeg earned the dubious distinction with 56 per cent of respondents saying it was “unsafe.”

The thing is, it wasn’t Canada’s most dangerous city. Statistics revealed Saskatoon was, and Edmonton, Regina and Vancouver also had worse crime-severity index ratings than Winnipeg.

That prompted a reporter at the National Post (which commissioned the poll) to remark: “Though Canadians think Winnipeg is the most dangerous city in the country, that’s by no means true.”

Yet, stories, polls and features written by national reporters continue to declare Winnipeg “the most” this or that.

The fact is that the best sources to characterize Winnipeg come from those who live, write and work here, but more people will read a well-funded, well-platformed and well-distributed story published out of the East than out of this city any day of the week.

So, I wrote a book.

Over the five years I’ve been writing for the Free Press, I’ve written more than 400 columns, about a dozen feature pieces and the occasional news article. I’m coming up to 400,000 words.

About a year ago, I was approached by publisher McClelland & Stewart in — yes, I know, Toronto — to publish a book. I was then asked what would I like to write about.

I said Winnipeg.

I’ve reshaped, edited and rearranged about a fifth of those 400,000 words since.

The result is Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre, coming out May 28.

The book is one part journalism, one part history, one part photo essay, one part love letter, one part allegory, one part political treatise, one part fiction and one part non-fiction.

For those who haven’t read the things I’ve written — or only a small number — over the past five years, it will be an introduction, or maybe a catch-up.

For those who are caught up, there will be updates on stories you know.

There’s a bunch of new pieces, too, and even some — gulp — research I’ve done.

There are contributions from the amazing photographers, editors, reporters and everyone else at the Free Press, who helped me with the book in a thousand ways.

Just as this city, this community and this place resists definition, I’ve attempted to define through the people, experiences and visions one finds in everyday life here.

I hope you read it and feel the same sort of pride I feel while witnessing the remarkable life in this place and how we are each a small part of it.

At the same time, I’m a little tired.

I’m taking a break from the Free Press. Barring something that drives me to write a piece, this will be my last column until the spring.

I’ve also got a book tour coming up, so I will be headed out on the road to talk about Winnipeg. First stop booked is Yellowknife (my second favorite city), so it should be exciting.

In the meantime, I want to say thanks, miigwech for all you have done to help this small-town guy who never believed he would be in the big-city pages of the Free Press and be a part of your day.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca