Helen Lepp-Friesen

INAC at Polo Park creates jobs, hope

Many businesses took a hard hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, but others flourished, and others were born. Winnipeg based entrepreneur Michelle Cameron’s business Dreamcatcher Promotions flourished and then gave birth to a branch company called Indigenous Nations Apparel Company (INAC). Since opening in June of 2021, the INAC store has garnered an active and loyal clientele in Polo Park.

It’s all about a mutual love of music

On Saturday mornings, the Fort Garry United Church at 800 Point Rd. is filled with the sound of music. That’s where the Winnipeg New Horizons Band (WNHB) meets from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., every week from September to May.

Dynamite women in the trades in the North

On Nov. 16, the Manitoba Construction Sector Council (MCSC) hosted its second Women in the Trades conference at Victoria Inn in Winnipeg.

Carter Lee brings smiles through street art

Carter Lee was always interested in art through his primary and secondary school years. A few years ago, when Lee was in Grade 11, the 2021 Garden City Collegiate graduate participated in a project whereby the Seven Oaks School Division teamed up with an artist to mentor and train students to do mural art. The COVID-19 pandemic had begun and classes were intermittent, so having the opportunity to experience different art media and to work on large-scale pieces was an ideal way to spend art class.

Ants love peony nectar in July

What do ants and peonies have in common? Peonies, sometimes known as the ‘king of all flowers’ provide a brilliant burst of colourful fireworks in July. With the arrival of the buds, and later flowers, come the ants. I used to think ants were damaging the flowers and therefore set out to research remedies, only to discover that ants and peonies have what science coins “biological mutualism,” defined by the integrated pest management program at the University of Missouri as the concept of different species benefiting from each other’s actions and behaviour.

Manta swimmer heading to Acadia University

For some teenagers, getting up at 8 to make it to school on time seems like an early start. For Vincent Massy Collegiate Grade 12 student Myles McTavish, getting up at 5:45 a.m. to make it to the pool by 6 is just part of his everyday routine. Being part of the sports program at VMC gives him some flexibility in his schedule.

About seven or eight years ago one of McTavish’s friends invited him to try swimming. After an initial assessment, he decided to continue and has been a competitive swimmer with the Manta Swim club since Grade 5. His favourite events are the 1,500 freestyle and the 400 individual medley, which is a combination of all four strokes in this order: butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle.

McTavish’s training regimen includes nine trips to the Pan Am pool per week — four early mornings and five weeknights. Gym and dry land training are scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays. He didn’t start with 18 hours of training per week but slowly graduated from twice per week to three times to his current regimen.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 completely affected his training.

About spring and loss

Spring is a time of new life and renewal. We usually see buds appearing on trees and bushes, and green shoots breaking through the ground from once drab brown lawns. This spring seems to have a different sense about it with its starts and stops, thaws, fresh snow, and plenty of rain. Although the pandemic has changed to endemic, COVID-19, with its starts and indecisive stops, is still among us. Individually and collectively, we have all suffered loss in the last two years.

As people slowly emerge from their winter hibernation and see friends and community members again, I hear about the loss that people have suffered – loss of partners and having to grieve in isolation. My mother passed away a year ago, my mother-in-law a few months ago. People have experienced loss of jobs, premature loss of careers, loss of friendships and relationships, people have been unfriended and have unfriended because of differing philosophies and ideologies on COVID-19.

As if COVID-19 hasn’t caused enough loss, lives are lost every day as a senseless war rages in Ukraine and we witness tragedy on the news without apparent evidence of it ever ceasing. If my father and his family had not immigrated as refugees to Canada from Ukraine almost 100 years ago, that could be my family and me fleeing for our lives now. People are witness to atrocities they will never forget. My condolences to the families in Ukraine that have suffered loss.

Although things here are supposed to be getting back to pre-COVID times, things will never be the same again because loss and memories stay with us — loss of family members, relatives, close friends, premature loss of physical and mental health due to isolation and loneliness, loss of friendships and relationships to ideological disparity. Families have been torn apart and communities have suffered loss. Dormant gardens, yards, and sidewalks collect winter’s tears this spring.

Paddles for all

In 2019, artist, wood-, metal-, and leather-worker, historian, and sort-of-retired vagabond teacher Mark Blieske made a canoe paddle every week of the year. The 52 paddles were on display at Festival du Voyageur in 2020, where Blieske regularly demonstrates his skills. The only thing Blieske enjoys more than making canoe paddles is helping others make paddles.

Blieske, credits Indigenous designers for the canoe paddle.

“Indigenous people figured this out from scratch,” he said.

“I was a tinker and have been a tinker all my life,” Blieske added. His father was a metal-worker and working with metal and wood came naturally for Blieske. After graduating from high school, he studied industrial arts, which he taught for 36 years at Selkirk and Lockport Junior Highs. During his tenure as an industrial arts teacher, he also took students on two to three extracurricular canoe trips per year, totally 86 canoe trips over the course of his tenure as teacher.

Meet the man running the new FreshCo

Kevin Mark, the new owner and manager of FreshCo at the corner of Pembina Highway and McGillvray Boulevard is not new to retail. Mark began his career in grocery stores 20years ago as courtesy clerk with Safeway in the same location, where he worked for eight years.

He eventually became assistant store manager and then moved to become store manager of a Sobeys Cash and Carry on Dufferin Street near Arlington Bridge.

When Safeway announced plans to convert some of its stores to FreshCo, and the Pembina/McGillivray location was one of them, Mark knew what he wanted and put in his application. He was very excited when he was successful.

“I love FreshCo. I love the brand. There was definitely a lot of emotion,” Mark says of the store’s grand opening on April 1. What Mark likes about FreshCo is its selection of ethnic foods.

A salute to Winnipeg Transit drivers

Tent cities used to emerge downtown along the river in the summer, but in recent years they have expanded to other neighborhoods, including Fort Garry.

A tent community appeared in the median on the corner of Bishop Grandin Boulevard and Pembina Highway this summer, and when it turned cold, it disappeared leaving its remnants behind.

Resource Assistance for Youth (RaY) has found that the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected the unsheltered population in Winnipeg with more people becoming de-homed and living on the streets than in years past.

Bus shelters have become homes. I regularly cycle by a bus shelter at the corner of Broadway and Osborne Street and have observed its changing contents. One day the shelter overflowed with a person’s belongings, including toiletries strewn on the ground, such as sanitary napkins and a toothbrush.

Orange to remember – always

In May 2013, the Commemoration Project and Reunion invited students of the former St. Joseph Mission Residential School students in B.C. (which operated from 1891 to 1981), their families, and the community to remember the residential school experience and to work towards healing.

During the event, former St. Joseph Mission student Phyllis (Jack) Webstad related her memories of her first day at residential school when she was six years old. She proudly wore the new orange shirt that her grandmother had given her. But school authorities took the shirt from her and she never saw nor wore the orange shirt again.

The reunion events inspired the creation of Orange Shirt Day, which was observed for the first time on Sept. 30, 2013, because September signaled the beginning of the school year. Since 2013, people across the country have been encouraged to wear an orange shirt each Sept. 30 to symbolize the loss of culture, self-esteem, and language experienced by Indigenous children in residential schools.

This year, Orange Shirt Day was declared a national holiday known as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Orange shirts were seen everywhere and thousands of people wearing orange shirts in Winnipeg walked five kilometres from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to St. John’s Park on Main Street, singing and drumming along the way.

Forest piles are allegories for life

Fort Garry artist and painter Ingrid McMillan regularly walks through Crescent Drive Park, where she notices ever-changing lines of trees, patterns, light, colours, and now the sneak peek of fall. The forest and the people who frequent the park have inspired her art.

Art has always been a part of McMillan’s life, starting when she was very young and setting up art projects in her room on weekends was a natural pastime.

When she was 12, she began painting lessons with a German painter after her Saturday morning German lessons. Once she reached high school, McMillan consciously chose not to take art because she thought she should consider a financially viable career option.

McMillan decided to go to art school after all when, after her children were born, some  of her paintings were accepted into the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s rentals and sales program. In university, she studied art and art education.

Fort Garry, home to the king of butterflies

As part of its wandering life, the monarch butterfly makes Crescent Drive Park in Fort Garry its home for the spring and summer months (along with other parts of the city).

Exceptionally strong and resilient, monarch butterflies have rightly earned their name as the king of butterflies. The monarch butterfly is one of the largest in its species with a wingspan of 10 cm. Some monarchs can fly up to 3,000 kilometres during migrations of up to 50 lilometres per day, and they are able to find their warm, ancestral winter homes when they get there.

Upon their return, instinct leads them back to their spring and summer homes. For this reason, they have been called “the Wanderer.”

In one life cycle, monarch butterflies undergo four stages and in one year, four generations are born. The four stages are the egg, the larvae or caterpillar, the pupa or chrysalis, and the beautiful adult butterfly.

May we never forget

On Thurs., May 28, Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc (saykwepem) Chief Rosanna Casimir confirmed that the remains of 215 Indigenous children had been found on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.

The discovery of the remains of Indigenous children is not just a First Nations tragedy. If we are all relations, this is a national tragedy that affects all of us. Indian Residential Schools were part of the colonial practice of assimilation by forcibly removing Indigenous children from their homes, placing them in government and church run boarding schools with the intent to scrub the children of their language and culture.

In Canada, Indian Residential Schools operated from the 1870s, with the last school closing in 1996. According to the Residential School Settlement, there were 139 residential schools across Canada and 14 of them were in Manitoba.

Over the years, when former chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Honourable Senator Murray Sinclair has been asked why (First Nations people) can’t just get over it and move on, his answer has been:

Well done, Fort Garry

Over the long weekend, when I listened or watched the news, the first thing I heard was how people were gathering in large groups, oblivious to the new public health orders.

At the beginning of May, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister said:

“I’m saying to those folks, you will pay your fine. And if you do not, you will not be driving your car. We will not issue you a driver’s licence. You can put your car up on blocks and you can leave it there until you pay your fine. And if you don’t drive, we will garnish your wages. You will pay.”

What motivates people to compliance? Reward or punishment?

Do blue-light glasses really reduce eye strain?

Although the pandemic caused a financial loss for many companies, optical companies that sell blue light blocking glasses have seen an exponential growth in sales last year, says Web MD.

Previous frequent users of blue-light blocking glasses were people who relied on computers for work, as well as video and online gamers, but the pandemic has expanded the market, since almost everyone has now become a heavy computer user.

As a relatively new product on the market, the limited research does not yet endorse nor denounce the effectiveness of blue light blocking glasses.

So do blue-light blocking glasses really reduce eye strain? Blue-light blocking lenses claim to protect eyes by blocking or filtering the glare of the blue light from digital screens.

Anti-Racism Week an important initiative

“What would Winnipeg look like without racism?” was the theme of the City of Winnipeg’s first Anti-Racism Week from March 21 to 27.

At the virtual launch of Anti-Racism Week, Isha Khan, host MC, and chief executive officer of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, stressed the importance of a week such as this and challenged every Winnipegger to take responsibility to do their part in challenging racism.

Khan said taking responsibility starts by acknowledging racism.

“We have to do the work of listening to Indigenous people, Black people, and all people of colour to even begin to appreciate the impact racism has in our community every day,” Khan said.

Mobile ski library offers free use of equipment

Some libraries have books and some have skis. The Winter Trail Association, a local non-profit organization, has been busy grooming ski trails to give as many Winnipeggers as possible the chance to get out and ski trails right in their own neighborhood. No driving required.

Nelson Flett has been breaking and grooming ski trails since late November and not with a machine. He dons his skis and goes out and breaks ski trails the old-fashioned way.

The Winter Trail Association has been able to groom ski trails in 30 parks across the city, including Centennial Park, Whittier Park, Bunn’s Creek, Kleysen Park, Dakota Park and Kirkbridge Park, among many others.

The group also operates a mobile equipment library featuring donated skis, skates, sleds, and snowshoes. Its mobile ski library launched on Feb. 19 and will deliver a trailer of skis and snowshoes to three city parks per day on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays until the snow melts (which may not be too much longer). The ski library remains open for three hours at each park. 

It’s far from Groundhog Day in Fort Garry

Like in the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, in which an egocentric weatherman is caught in a time loop reliving Groundhog Day over and over again, pandemic life may have some of those characteristics of repetitive monotony.

We may not be going far this winter, but a walk around my Fort Garry neighborhood is evidence that people are not caught in a time loop but rather going the distance in imagination and creativity and making the best of a stay-at-home winter.

The Red River winding through Fort Garry has turned into an outdoor activity park with a cleared trail for walking, plenty of ice rinks in all sizes, landscaped with Christmas trees, fire pits surrounded by chairs and benches, and homemade hockey nets built for practice.

I came across a backyard that was fashioned into an ice slide that traversed the whole yard.

The ice-sculpture man cometh

Fort garryIf a superhero character hailed from Manitoba, he could be called Iceman. Winnipeg ice sculptor John Wade could be that iceman. His talent is taking blocks of ice and turning them into beautiful pieces of art; ice swans, ice pedestals with business logos, multilayered display tables, ice bars, shot glasses, and snowflakes are a few of the masterpieces he makes for customers. “I love sculpting ice,” says Wade who sculpts ice not only for fun, but as his full-time business. I’ve been sculpting for many years,” says Wade, “before I had the opportunity to start my own home-based business about 12 years ago.” Wade’s primary venues are weddings, anniversaries, birthday celebrations, receptions, conventions and fundraising galas. People sometimes hire him to make a sculpture for their front yard just for winter enjoyment. Running a successful ice sculpting business takes perfectly translucent ice, which, believe it or not, is not easy to come by, even in a place like Manitoba.Wade makes his own ice. To make crystal-clear ice suitable for sculpting, clear with no cracks, he runs city tap water through three filters to extract common sediments. While it is freezing, he runs pumps to circulate the water. During the freezing process other non-desirable elements in the water, such as chlorine, fluoride and calcium, either evaporate or are forced to the surface. It takes approximately four days for the blocks of ice to freeze in 50-gallon vats. Once the process is complete, the blocks are then harvested, measured to a 10-inch thickness and the non-desirable surface “white ice” is trimmed off and discarded, resulting in clear ice, ready to store for his next creation. The four block making vats occupy one part of his workshop. Next to them are two 10-foot by 12-foot walk-in freezers, where Wade stores his ice blocks. A block weighs over 200 kilograms when first harvested. Once the waste is trimmed off, they are ready to be sculpted.On the day of my visit, Wade was working on a large snowflake, which sat on his work table. He chiselled as we talked; ice chips and spray flew around as the snowflake came to life.  Carving ice requires special tools. A broad assortment of chisels, chainsaws, an iron, and a blowtorch, can be seen on Wade’s work bench. Each tool has a specific function. Once Wade finishes a sculpture, he stores it in the walk-in freezer. To transport his creations, he wraps and insulates the pieces and assembles the art on site, whether in a hotel lobby, the head table at a wedding, or someone’s front yard. Wade came to sculpting ice from culinary arts. While working in commercial kitchens, the ice sculptures at venues really caught his attention. In the mid-’80s he befriended a couple of local chefs turned sculptors, Larry MacFarlane and Tom Pitt, who shared many skills and secrets. About 20 years later, when MacFarlane was ready to move on to other ventures, Wade bought some of his equipment and he into sculpting ice full-time. “It was just supposed to be a hobby, weekends and evenings to start,” Wade says. “According to my wife, I was not allowed to quit my full-time day job yet. Well, a couple of years later, with business growth, I said goodbye to the day job. I consider it a real privilege to be able to work out of my home full-time as an artist, in my hometown.” Wade moved out of his garage shop after eight years, and leased a 1,600-square-foot space.“It’s not finished yet,” he  says. “However, the space is operational and does the job.”  For more information, contact John Wade at johnwade@shaw.ca or visit his website johnwadeicesculptures.ca  Helen Lepp Friesen is a community correspondent for Fort Garry. You can contact her at helenfriesen@hotmail.com

If a superhero character hailed from Manitoba, he could be called Iceman.

Winnipeg ice sculptor John Wade could be that iceman. His talent is taking blocks of ice and turning them into beautiful pieces of art; ice swans, ice pedestals with business logos, multilayered display tables, ice bars, shot glasses, and snowflakes are a few of the masterpieces he makes for customers. 

“I love sculpting ice,” says Wade who sculpts ice not only for fun, but as his full-time business. I’ve been sculpting for many years,” says Wade, “before I had the opportunity to start my own home-based business about 12 years ago.” 

Creating holiday recitals for care homes

Jaden Tanner, a Grade 12 student in the international baccalaureate program at Kelvin High School, began taking music lessons when she was two-and-a-half years old and piano lessons at age four.

For the past three years, she has been under the tutelage of Fort Garry piano teacher Leanne Hiebert. When COVID-19 put a big damper on the ritual of holiday recitals, Tanner decided recitals just needed to be reimagined.

After a virtual Halloween recital, Tanner’s mom asked what the plan was for the annual holiday recital, since care homes customarily hosted them. Without recitals, not only would the students miss out on performing at care homes, but care home residents would miss out on enjoying the show.

“I knew that I wanted to be able to continue to share music this year, and had to figure out a plan of attack,” Tanner says.

Needed: Civil discourse

As I write this article, a winner in the U.S. presidential election has finally been announced, but I wonder who the winner actually is after months and weeks of contentious rallies, violent protests, and vitriolic rhetoric flying from and at all sides.

We Canadians smugly stand on the sidelines and pat ourselves on the back, priding ourselves that we are not like those Americans. The Pew Research Center in the U.S. says that words most used by Canadians about the states include “Trump” and “president” along with negative words such as “chaos,” “confused,” “bully,” “discrimination” and “racism.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford was recently reported to have said: “Thank God that we’re different than the United States and we don’t have the systemic, deep roots they have had for years.”

 Although Quebec Premier François Legault acknowledged incidences of racism and discrimination in Quebec, he quickly moved to say that our discrimination at least isn’t systemic and “it’s not as serious or as widespread as in the U.S.”

Serious about moonlight

The phrase ‘once in a blue moon’ has come to refer to the second full moon in the same month.

On Oct. 31, a blue moon will rise. Blue moons are a rare occurrence and therefore the idiom has come to mean something that does not occur often.

The last blue moon was in 2018. In fact, there were double blue moons that year — Jan. 1 and 31 and March 1 and 31.

 A double blue moon is very rare and occurs only three to five times in 100 years, says Vigdis Hocken of timeanddate.com

Late bloomers in Fort Garry

School has started again, although not exactly like last year. The temperature has already dropped to almost freezing, and the leaves have started to turn colour — all signs of fall and the change of seasons.

When trees turn brilliantly yellow, orange, and red, they offer us one last bright bouquet. Nature writer Katharine Sanderson says that autumn leaves turn bright colours as the trees conserve nutrients before winter. Chlorophyll is the green pigment in leaves that captures the sunlight’s energy. In the fall, the tree breaks down the green chlorophyll in its leaves and reabsorbs and redistributes the nutrients to the trunk and roots. When winter comes, and sunlight is scarce, the tree depends on the nutrients stored in its trunk and roots.

Nature researchers say that when leaves turn yellow, the chlorophyll loss reveals the carotenoids that were in the leaves before. Leaves turning red is when the tree generates a new anthocyanin, which is a pigment.

Change in colour serves as a sunscreen for the leaves as they reabsorb nutrients. The colour increases the leaf temperature, which also protects the tree from the cold. Researchers say that the pigment may serve as an antioxidant, which helps trees survive the frigid winter.