Freeze-thaw cycle all about the reawakenings

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/04/2024 (901 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s spring in Winnipeg, and there is a unique joy, a palpable revival of our collective spirit. Awakening in us are perennial superstitions, trying to stave off further snow by timing our own spring awakenings perfectly. If it snows, it’s because we changed the tires too early, after all.

Yearly, we awaken from our winter, dazed and blinking in the sun. At some mystic cue, we decide with certainty it is time to put aside mittens and boots, to stow snow shovels away. We join in the traditional songs of sump pumps and the percussion of pot holes. We talk of gardening. We rise early and wage battle against the campground booking system.

This season is heralded by honking geese and snarling motorcycles, decorated with dubious treasures revealed by melting snow. Each sunny day is celebrated, and each cloudy day is mourned, and we thaw and freeze and thaw again along with the landscape we call home.

The child within our Winnipeg souls wants desperately to crack the sidewalk ice and jump in the puddles. When spring arrives, slushy and pocked with potholes, we emerge, noisily, cautiously and full of suspicion that it may not last.

In the performance of our spring rituals and traditions, we may consider these peculiar habits as part of the thaw itself. We warm within the shelter of our city, we flow with our newly ice-broken rivers and anticipate the delight of watching things grow and bloom.

If we’re generous with our optimism and seasonal elation, perhaps we might extend that hopefulness to our city, itself.

Optimism, though plentiful in our early days on the Prairie, is generally in short supply on Winnipeg streets these past few years. The pandemic, the cost of living, our unhoused neighbours and relations, the changing climate: we feel it all in our change of season. Though our boot heels remember the joy of cracking that spring ice, they feel heavier now.

Our city has a history of boom and bust, of seasons of hope and despair. It is because of these seasons of economic freeze and thaw that we have our incredible historic Exchange District, that was slated to be razed in the 1960s in the name of progress.

When the economics of that plan became unworkable, the Exchange District entered its own winter. Like those treasures forgotten under the snow, we’ve many times preserved our heritage and culture unwittingly beneath the drifts of hard times, to be rediscovered when the ice recedes.

The Forks entered a similar freeze-thaw cycle that resulted in its rediscovery and repurposing.

So, too, the historic buildings that make up Red River College’s Princess Street campus.

The Times Change(d) High & Lonesome Club, housed in the Fortune Block at the corner of Main and St. Mary, was rescued from the snowplow of demolition in 2019.

Portage Place, at long last, shows signs of its own impending spring.

The downtown Hudson’s Bay Co. store endured a slow autumn, lights blinking out floor by floor like leaves falling from a tree, until finally the last windows were boarded up for its own season of slumber in 2020.

But the property formally changed hands to the Southern Chiefs’ Organization, and in partnership with True North Real Estate Development, plans are in development for a dramatically repurposed reopening of the flagship store.

Under our frozen blanket, we are a unique city of co-operation, innovation and creativity.

The streetcar tracks that push up through the concrete like spring weeds each year will never allow us to forget our times of prosperity and progress.

Perhaps with the right warmth, care and attention Winnipeg itself may again put away winter woes and step into a noisier and more colourful season.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca