Nick Barnes

Remember to ‘spring forward’ March 12

On Sunday, March 12 at 2 a.m., we’ll all be setting our clocks ahead an hour, owing to daylight saving time – something we experience each year on the second Sunday in March, and then reverse on the first Sunday of November. As we “spring ahead” – and even as we groan because we have to get up an hour earlier — most of us will appreciate it being lighter in the evenings as the weather begins to warm up.

Reflections at the dawn of a new year

Last year brought us moments of joy and sadness, with news events such as the ongoing effects of climate change and COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, women’s rights, World Cup soccer, the death of Queen Elizabeth II, fusion power and space telescopes.

FortWhyte Alive to add Buffalo Crossing

Exciting development plans are finally being implemented at the south end of FortWhyte Alive, a place many Whyte Ridge residents and families have visited to enjoy a slice of nature in an urban setting.

Memories of Guy Fawkes Night

I hope you all had a happy Halloween. My childhood memories of the biggest fall community event in England weren’t of Halloween, but of Guy Fawkes Night. Also known as Bonfire Night or Fireworks Night, Nov. 5 was a night that neighborhood children looked forward to almost as much as Christmas.

Plenty of upgrades and changes in our area

Several noteworthy developments in Whyte Ridge that are either currently underway or starting in the fall.

Spray pad soon to be under construction

With the recent award of the construction contract, Whyte Ridge Community Centre just passed another exciting milestone on the road to receiving Winnipeg’s 24th spray pad, providing a fun place for kids to play on a hot sunny day.

Decisions regarding funding allocation were made by all three levels of government several months ago and include $375,000 from the PrairiesCan and the Canada Community Revitalization fund, $400,000 from the Canada Community Building fund, and $225,000 from the City of Winnipeg. Since last year, Coun. Janice Lukes (Waverley West), and MP Terry Duguid (Winnipeg South) have played key roles in advocating for bringing a spray pad to young families in this part of Winnipeg, with more recent support from new Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan.

For those not familiar, spray pads are basically areas with non-slip or safety surfaces with various nozzles and colourful, water-based toys that produce sprays, mists, showers or streams of water. They differ from traditional wading pools, which don’t have all the toys, must be supervised due to standing water, and have reduced accessibility and hours of service each season.

Planning and design of the WRCC splash pad has been under way for several months, and WRCC directors have been working with a landscape architect and various city departments to provide input into the process. Initial discussions focused on a location which addressed aspects such as visibility, drainage, distance to water and electrical services, noise and distance to residences, parking and vehicle safety. The location needed to be close to the building. A site to the north was less visible and water and electrical servicing would be more expensive. A site to the southwest of the building was close to residents on Cloverwood Road and would require reconfiguring the parking lot. The only logical place was the southeast corner of the property, between the east hockey pen and basketball court. Unfortunately, this was the target location for the proposed gymnasium, but rising costs have reduced its viability, and more modest building expansions are now being explored.

Working to be the centre of the community again

As we all likely know, the main purpose of community centres is to bring neighbours together to enjoy sports and recreation activities. Like many other venues for social gatherings, the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affect the ability of community centres to serve their primary purpose.

April 11 is the date of the 2022 annual general meeting of Whyte Ridge Community Centre. Last year I reported that the board of directors was transitioning through a difficult period, with the loss of most of the executive and with COVID-19 constraints affecting almost all activities.

After a post-AGM meeting last year to discuss how to get things moving forward again, Kim O’Hara stepped in as president, with Chris Magura serving as vice-president. Both have been volunteers on the board for many years, working tirelessly in the background to help to get things done, and both decided that it was time to take a turn at the helm and begin to get organized for when residents could once again enjoy the community centre. Kim says her goal is to help energize the community centre and reconnect with the community it serves.

A big focus over the past year has been fundraising to improve the facility in anticipation of hosting activities this yea (assuming that COVID-19 issues will be manageable). The Pembina Active Living 55-plus group has settled into the building and much of the interior space has or will soon be renovated. Funding was also secured to renovate the building exterior and hockey pens, as well as to construct a splash pad this year, which is very exciting. The community centre has also applied for funding for several landscaping projects, and this year will also see the completion of the new segment of native prairie and installation of Trans Canada Trail signs for the interpretive trail.

The true meaning of Valentine’s Day

As we all know, Valentine’s Day is a day to celebrate love, and in this time of pandemic, it was nice to focus on something good and positive for a while. However, when I looked into it more closely, I discovered that the origins of Valentine’s Day involves far more than chocolates and roses.

The event is a blend of Christian and pagan celebrations that dates back more than 1,500 years. From a Christian perspective, the Feast of Saint Valentine on Feb. 14 was established to celebrate the death of Saint Valentine of Rome, one of several Christian martyrs of the same name who were executed by the Romans. Not a particularly romantic start to the event we celebrate today...

There seems to be general consensus that the more overt connection to love occurred about a thousand years later, when Geoffrey Chaucer (author of The Canterbury Tales) described the February Feast of Saint Valentine as the time when birds began their spring mating rituals (hence “lovebirds”). Apparently, members of European nobility picked up on this, and the tradition of sending love notes began at around this time. With the invention of the printing press and the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s, love notes became Valentine’s Day cards that could be mass-produced. The tradition followed North American settlers in the mid-1800s, with Hallmark Cards getting on board in 1913.

The tradition of giving roses on Valentine’s Day may “stem” from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and her apparent love of this flower, or perhaps the British adoption (and interpretation) in the 1700s of a Turkish process of assigning symbolic meanings to types of flowers as a way of communicating with love interests.

Coping with COVID-19 in 2022

At the end of each year there’s definitely value in taking some time to reflect on the year that has passed and to plan for the upcoming 12 months; however, over the past two years COVID-19 has greatly affected this process.

It’s hard not to dwell on all the things we weren’t able to do last year, and likely won’t be able to do for much of the upcoming year. I don’t know about you but I find that many discussions focus on what we used to do, and what we hope to do once we can travel without restrictions. While I’m sure we’ll eventually get through this, it can be frustrating and mentally draining.

I recalled taking a course on “mindfulness” a few years ago, and wondered if there was anything that could be applied to our current situation. I took the course to help with the stresses of managing complex projects with big budgets and tight schedules. I was working long hours and not really thinking of anything outside of work.

While the course involved meditation and perspectives from people such as Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra, one of the real benefits was developing a sense of mindfulness — focusing on experiencing and enjoying what’s in front of you, rather than worrying about the past or future. My course homework was to keep a daily journal, recording all of the positive and interesting things that happened to me each day.

Celebrating our cultural diversity

On Dec. 5, the Whyte Ridge Community Centre board of directors and Pembina Active Living 55-plus co-hosted a celebration of cultural diversity at the WRCC. More than 70 people attended the event and there was traditional music, dancing and food from Chinese, Russian and Iranian cultures. Winnipeg South MP Terry Duguid and Waverley West city councillor Janice Lukes were also in attendance.

The event was unfortunately cancelled last year owing to COVID 19, but it was great to repeat the successful inaugural celebration of 2019. Hopefully, this will be a regular occurrence at the community centre, as it’s something quite new, and different from other sports and recreation events hosted at the facility.

I spoke with Shahin Shooshtari, the WRCC diversity director, to get some background on her position on the board, and the cultural event that she organized. She immigrated from Iran in 1996 to take her PhD at the University of Manitoba and moved to Whyte Ridge with her young family in 2002. She explained that it was challenging for newcomers, for whom English is a second language, to become integrated with the community. While she registered her children in sports, she wasn’t aware of the potential for other activities until recently.

Her feelings about the various ways to reconnect with culture were likely fostered during her work with the Iranian Community of Manitoba organization, which she helped establish in 2008.

Purple loosestrife: here to stay?

Cycling through the community a few weeks ago, I was struck by how attractive the flowers were at and around the retention ponds.

Having watched them grow over the summer I wondered why they were still there, because I knew they were purple loosestrife, something I thought was classified as a noxious weed requiring control. While waiting for a call back from the city’s naturalist services branch, I did some research on the plant.

Purple loosestrife is native to Europe and Asia, and likely came to North America accidentally in the ballast water of a ship about 220 years ago, during the European colonization of this continent. Two key things make it a problem - high reproduction and no natural predators. It grows and germinates quickly, with adult plants producing more than 2.5 million seeds annually. In its native habitat (it prefers wetlands or riversides) it provides food for more than 100 species of insects that control its population, as well as deer, muskrats, rabbits and several bird species (excluding waterfowl).

In Manitoba, regional impacts to wetland and riparian areas began in the 1930s as purple loosestrife out-competed native plant species, and in the 1990s it was listed under the provincial noxious weeds act, which required actions to control its spread.

Big plans in the works for community centre

Friday the 13th of August was a positive step forward, rather than a day of bad luck, for the Whyte Ridge Community Centre.

It was the first on-site planning session for the Splash Pad. The landscape architect has been retained to start the design, and staff from several city departments, the community centre president and site development director walked the site and discussed possible locations. Issues included access to water, washrooms, drainage, distance to residences, parking, safety, and co-ordination with existing infrastructure and other development plans. Given the type of summer we’ve had, it will likely be a welcome addition to the community centre next year, if all goes to plan.

It’s been a reasonably productive planning period for the community centre. The Pembina Active Living (PAL 55+) group is poised to move into the building this fall, and plans have been developed to convert one of the changing rooms to a meeting room, and some of the open space into a small office. Summer students have been working hard to spruce up the hockey pens and residents have offered to help with some of the maintenance tasks. Maintenance will likely also include replacing the hockey viewing windows and repairing stucco from puck damage, and maybe a new coat of exterior paint to freshen up the building. The new area of tall grass prairie was seeded this spring, but has been struggling to cope with the hot dry weather.

A site development Wish List is underway and City staff and Councillor Lukes have been assisting with ideas and cost estimates. The PAL 55+ group has also provided initial ideas. Details will likely be shared on the community centre website, but so far, short-term items include benches for the teams using the soccer fields, portable basketball hoops for the east hockey pen, a flower garden at the Cloverwood entrance to the site, and more trees, including about 10 (either silver maple or green ash) to fill in the spaces between the elm trees. Longer-term projects could include asphalting the pathways and rinks, a small external storage facility, a community vegetable garden, and a portable (trailer-based) water tank, to water the plants at the north end of the site.

Cultural awareness in Whyte Ridge

I was contacted recently by Shirley Delorme Russell, asking if I could give her a tour of the Whyte Ridge Interpretive Trail, and in particular, the provincial plaque describing the Stopping of the Survey historic event. It was a cold, windy morning when we visited the site, but educational for both of us.

Shirley is an instructor of Métis culture and history with the Louis Riel Institute. The Stopping of the Survey was an important event in Manitoba; in 1869, Louis Riel stopped federal surveyors from identifying lands to be annexed by the Dominion of Canada, one of the first actions leading to Manitoba joining Confederation.

The event happened fairly close to the plaque location, and Shirley was anxious to see it in preparation for sessions she will be leading for Whyte Ridge Elementary School Grade 4 classes.

Shirley explained that the Louis Riel Institute is regularly invited to schools, universities and various organizations to present on Métis culture and history in Manitoba.

A different kind of service at 201 Scurfield

At almost 30 years old, the building at 201 Scurfield Blvd. is one of the oldest in Whyte Ridge. It was built to house the Whyte Ridge Baptist Church, and for more than a quarter century it served the religious needs of many members of the community.

On Jan. 18, the building began once again providing community services - but now of a medical nature, rather than religious.

The church has relocated to a new facility on McGillivray Boulevard, so 201 Scurfield is now the home of the Scurfield Medical Centre. I sat down recently with Dr. Paul Cheung, who established the clinic, and is at the core of its planning and development process.

Dr. Cheung and I share the common experience of attending high school in England before moving to Canada with parents. His family located to B.C. and he completed his undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His medical training included doctorate and post-doctorate research in virology and heart diseases at UBC and the University of Manitoba, and cardiac surgery and family medicine residency at the U of M.

A tale of algae and public pushback

As part of an effort to develop a multi-year balanced budget the City of Winnipeg’s 2020 fiscal plan removed the funds to operate the 12 fountains and lights at retention ponds for the next four years, including the two located in Whyte Ridge. Each fountain costs just under $7,000 a year to run. Based on considerable negative public and political outcry, councillors approved a motion to reopen the fountains at the July 23 city council meeting, using unspent funds from other areas. Here’s some background information about this issue.The fountain in the east pond at Scurfield Park was one of the first features constructed in Whyte Ridge in 1986, and was a big part of the marketing to draw residents to the subdivision, as was the fountain in the west pond at Leon Bell Park, when it was constructed in 1990, as part of the second phase of development. During the spring thaw or heavy rainfall events, the drainage ditch can back up and allow fish to enter the ponds, and there is a fairly diverse invertebrate and fish population in the ponds, which attract interesting birds such as pelicans and loons.Fertilizers used on lawns, storm water runoff from streets,and the presence of geese creates high nutrient conditions in the ponds, causing algae to grow, as we’re currently experiencing with the hot summer weather we’ve had. This affects the capacity of the ponds to function effectively and causes unpleasant odours. The City uses a small barge-mounted harvester to remove algae every one to two years.There is no doubt that the fountains play a role in reducing problems with algae and mosquitoes, but not sufficient to effectively manage these issues, given the total surface areas. Physical removal is effective, but only a short-term solution. Herbicides are more effective, but can affect the fish and birds using the ponds, as well as thirsty dogs. Aeration of the ponds with diffuser piping would stimulate the decomposition of the algae and be beneficial to fish; however, installation and operation costs would need to be compared to the current program. The most effective mechanism to reduce the algae problem is to create a natural buffer around the ponds to reduce the amount of lawn fertilizer and runoff from entering the ponds. It would also serve to deter the geese. Newer retention ponds incorporate this more naturalized look.Regardless of the role the fountains play in controlling algae, I think it’s important not to downplay the esthetic value they have to Whyte Ridge residents, and we’re pleased that we can continue to enjoy them. Nick Barnes is a community correspondent for Whyte Ridge.

As part of an effort to develop a multi-year balanced budget the City of Winnipeg’s 2020 fiscal plan removed the funds to operate the 12 fountains and lights at retention ponds for the next four years, including the two located in Whyte Ridge. 

Each fountain costs just under $7,000 a year to run. Based on considerable negative public and political outcry, councillors approved a motion to reopen the fountains at the July 23 city council meeting, using unspent funds from other areas. 

Here’s some background information about this issue.The fountain in the east pond at Scurfield Park was one of the first features constructed in Whyte Ridge in 1986, and was a big part of the marketing to draw residents to the subdivision, as was the fountain in the west pond at Leon Bell Park, when it was constructed in 1990, as part of the second phase of development. 

Neighbourhood projects get going

As you can imagine, it’s been challenging to write about community activities in the past few months, with other priorities to be concerned about, but there have been some recent developments.

For example, it’s great to see work underway on the pathways at Scurfield Park. The park was part of the first phase of development of the community in 1986 and has been in need of a facelift for a while. This is a continuation of work begun last year, which also included replacing the Whyte Ridge sign at the corner of Scurfield and Columbia boulevards.

According to Coun. Janice Lukes (Waverley West), the focus this year will be to upgrade the lighting and install gravel surfaces, with asphalt resurfacing next year.

Several trees that were removed due to their roots creating safety hazards, and a new row of trees will be planted along a new section of pathway to Prospect Road.

Exciting developments in Whyte Ridge

I attended the Whyte Ridge Winter Carnival a few weeks ago, and I think it was the first time I can remember having to park several streets away because it was so busy. It was great to see so many families having fun.As usual, Coun. Janice Lukes (Waverley West) and Winnipeg South MP Terry Duguid were on hand to chat with local residents. I think it’s so important and appreciated that our local politicians take the time to attend community events, despite being so busy. Curtis Rossow (Whyte Ridge C.C. president) was also there, and I was able to get an update on activities at the community centre and Whyte Ridge in general. Curtis said that this year the centre has received funding to install high-efficiency LED lights, and to install air conditioning throughout the building. Currently, only the multi-purpose room is air conditioned, and this space will also be getting new paint. The centre may also be part of a program to facilitate accessibility, with modifications being made to the entrance to the building.Speaking of the building, I asked the group if building expansion was still on the table. Terry again indicated that he would support this but the general feeling was that a group in the community needs to champion the initiative.Janice noted that Stage 2 of the Southwest Transitway project is ramping up this year.  Public information will start flowing next month, with April 12 targeted or the start of the new service. As I reported last year, this will include a high -frequency north-south corridor, improved local collections, larger buses and more heated shelters.There are also new things happening at several community buildings. The Steinbach Credit Union building on the corner of Kenaston Boulevard and McGillivray Boulevard will be expanding upwards in the near future, resulting in a four-story structure. The site of the former Baptist church on Scurfield Boulevard will become a regional medical centre, with major architectural changes. And Terry noted that FortWhyte Alive has received funding to renovate existing facilities and construct a new facility at the south entrance to the site on McGillivray.In terms of roads, it’s good to see the improvements to traffic flow in Kenaston Commons, with a new employee parking lot and stop sign to help cars from turning left into ongoing traffic. It looks like similar changes may be occurring along McGillivray that should alleviate stress when turning left from Brady Road and McCreary Boulevard. Funding’s in place for a set of lights at South Landing Drive – about half a kilometre west of McCreary.I’ll provide additional details in upcoming articles.Nick Barnes is a community correspondent for Whyte Ridge.

I attended the Whyte Ridge Winter Carnival a few weeks ago, and I think it was the first time I can remember having to park several streets away because it was so busy. It was great to see so many families having fun.

As usual, Coun. Janice Lukes (Waverley West) and Winnipeg South MP Terry Duguid were on hand to chat with local residents. I think it’s so important and appreciated that our local politicians take the time to attend community events, despite being so busy.

Curtis Rossow (Whyte Ridge C.C. president) was also there, and I was able to get an update on activities at the community centre and Whyte Ridge in general. Curtis said that this year the centre has received funding to install high-efficiency LED lights, and to install air conditioning throughout the building.

What’s Halloween all about, anyway?

Well, another Halloween as come and gone. If you have young children, I hope they enjoyed the evening and I hope you enjoyed taking them around the community or handing out treats and meeting the neighbours.

So why go through the rituals of costumes, jack-o’-lanterns and trick or treating?

Like Christmas, Halloween is actually a blend of pagan and Christian celebrations.

On the pagan side of things, it stems from a British celebration, more than 400 years old, of fall harvest and the transition to cold, dark winter. Folk tales about the boundary between the living and dead becoming blurred, with the souls of lost ones visiting home before finally departing. People were known to impersonate the souls of the dead to disguise themselves, and/or pretend to be the bad spirits, playing pranks and carving harvested vegetables like turnips and beets into scary faces representing the dead.