Terminal fit for a Queen
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Monthly Digital Subscription
$1 per week for 24 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $4.00 plus GST every four weeks. After 24 weeks, price increases to the regular rate of $19.00 plus GST every four weeks. Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
Monthly Digital Subscription
$4.75/week*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $19 plus GST every four weeks. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Winnipeg Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
*$1 will be added to your next bill. After your 4 weeks access is complete your rate will increase by $0.00 a X percent off the regular rate.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/06/2010 (5553 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Returning a rental car to a busy and unfamiliar airport often is the most stressful part of a trip. It’s as if there are too many signs, arrows, warning lights, ramps up, ramps down, lanes left and right to negotiate, all the while knowing a wrong choice could mean soaring expectations are grounded.
The thousands of Manitobans expected to flock to Richardson International Airport for a glimpse of the Queen Saturday likely will experience similar stresses and for similar reasons — as familiar as the old airport might seem in the mind’s eye after half a century of service, it is an entirely new and different place for the uninitiated.
The new Canada Post centre is impressive, as is the Greyhound bus terminal. The sprawling, 1,600-stall parking garage is open and most of the new roads and ramps to overhead roadways are in place.
But it’s the new terminal that’s the jewel in the $585-million airport redevelopment, which is the main reason the A-330 bringing Queen Elizabeth II to Winnipeg will dock at Bridge 7 Saturday. Her Majesty will become the first official passenger to use the terminal, which also will be the first “public” terminal at which she has ever arrived. Buckingham Palace officials have said the royal couple is quite excited by the prospect.
Or might that be prospects? As impressive as the 440-metre-long terminal is from the outside, its half-million-square-foot interior is more so, a vast swoosh of curved space and openness that mimic the vast, flat plain and endless sky beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass exterior walls, through which the view of downtown reveals that Winnipeg actually has a modern skyline.
Much of the local tile floor is laid, as are carpets in blues and golds, the hues of which were taken from Manitoba’s landscape. Everywhere, even the luggage carousels that are lit by 55 skylights aimed according to a sun survey to flood natural light into the heart of the terminal, reflects that “wow factor” that too often seems missing in Winnipeg.
It would seem the terminal, which already is fit for a Queen, will become “the nice front door to Winnipeg” airport official Christine Alongi described as she opened it to the Free Press for a tour on Monday.
