Positive Progress - A look at Selkirk Avenue today

Murals. The vibrant, colourful paintings filling the sides of nearly every building are the first thing that jumps out at you when walking down Selkirk Avenue in Winnipeg’s North End.

These wonderfully hand painted works of art by acclaimed Winnipeg painter Richard Manoakeesick are impossible to miss as you stroll down the street that has long been at the very core of North End pride. Each painting tells a story about its buildings history, taking us back to the street’s glory days and while Selkirk Avenue often gets a bad rap now, it’s clear that things are starting to look up in the present as well.

On a sunlit morning, the street shows no signs of the supposed crime problem that exists there. Instead, it is a bustling hub of activity with the low hum of cars failing to fully drown out the sounds of young children playing in the now fully melted fields attached to David Livingstone School.

The presence of kids is hard to miss throughout the blocks, with many parents walking with their children on their way to school or simply to shop. These people don’t seem discouraged by the Selkirk’s reputation; in fact they act carefree and proud of their neighbourhood. Every person passed delivers a cordial “good morning” or “hello” and some even stopped to chat.

Sandy Joseph is a young mother pushing her baby daughter in a stroller past the well known Gunn’s Bakery near Main Street. In between teasing her daughter with a rattle, Joseph was eager to talk about their positive experiences on the street.

“We walk here every day. We live just a few minutes away and she loves to come out here. People stop and talk to her. We love it,” she said.

It’s obvious that the people inside Gunn’s Bakery love it too. The lineup nearly stretched out the door with a mix ranging from elderly couples to toddlers waiting to get their hands on the hundreds of freshly baked items on the shelves.

It’s easy to smell why when you step inside. The scent of cinnamon buns and fresh bread is as overpowering as it is enticing and makes it hard to believe that anyone would be afraid to shop on Selkirk Avenue.

Further down the block it’s clear that other businesses are bustling as well. There was no space to be found at the picnic tables outside the Robin’s Donuts while the newly renovated Merchants Hotel was a hub of activity as usual as patrons chatted over the rattle of construction equipment across the street working on setting up a new green space for the area’s young people to play.

Both the city’s major universities also have a presence on the street with the University of Winnipeg running programs out of the Urban Circle Training Centre Inc. and the University of Manitoba setting up their Inner City Social Work Program building just down the street.

All this activity is music to the ears of North End Community Renewal Corp. Executive Director Robert Neufeld, who was beaming while describing the street’s progress from his office stocked with North End memorabilia.

“Things are looking up more and more here. There are great services and great people here, we want people to come out and give it a chance,” said the enthusiastic Neufeld.

Neufeld described how the murals were seen as a positive change when they started going up nearly a decade ago but how he now wants to see a new set to represent Selkirk’s evolution today.

Indeed, while old church bells still ring out loudly from Holy Ghost School to mark every hour that passes, a walk down Selkirk Avenue reveals that the street is not content with getting back to its former glory but rather looking towards future development. Neufeld summed the positive vibes up best.

“We’re moving forward and things are getting better every day. There’s a new Selkirk Avenue here to see, come see it.”

Election time...

It's federal election time here in Canada and we've been all over it in my journalism class. We did an assignment today to research different aspects of the election and, after tomorrow when we present our findings to the group, we should all be informed on how the process works and ready to cast our ballots.

For those of your who aren't in a journalism program, the election is probably not as interesting to you and you may not be as plugged in. But you should still vote and exercise your democratic right.

CBC Canada Votes has come up with a simple way for everyday Canadians to find out which party best matches up with their values and beliefs. Check it out if you are unsure who to vote for or think all the parties are the same!

Vote Compass

Happy voting.

keith

Winnipeg's Great War Part 2 - A follow up

Jim Blanchard’s book Winnipeg’s Great War: A City Comes of Age, touches on a staggering amount of people and places throughout our city that are affected by the war in some way. In following up on the information in the book, it’s clear that while the First World War ended over 90 years ago now, its impact is still being felt right here in Winnipeg.

While the landscape of the city has clearly been altered over such a long period of time, many of the organizations mentioned in the book still remain in their traditional roles. The Salvation Army and St. John Ambulance are still important pillars within the city and have branches set up across town to serve roles not unlike the wartime versions of themselves.

Many military regiments mentioned in the book are also still active. The Royal Winnipeg Rifles moved from their original location in the book Minto Armoury in the city’s West End in the 1940’s and have been there ever since. Nicknamed the “little black devils” and renowned for their valour and fighting prowess in the war, the regiment is still proudly sending soldiers into conflicts across the globe. They have men and women stationed in Afghanistan currently and while they are proud of their present standing, they’re careful to never forget their illustrious past.

Master Corporal Beaudry has been with the regiment for 12 years now. He says it is a source of pride to be a part of a regiment so well known across the country and that it’s important to them to educate future generations through their museum, located at the Minto Armoury.

“We are very proud of our museum; we always do our best to keep it going. We have offer tours to school groups and scouts to try to make sure our name and our history stays around.”

“We have a website as well that we keep updated and we put as much as we can on that as well,” said Beaudry on the regiment’s efforts to stay current and not live off of their name.

The impact of the war is still being felt in across the city in general as well. A quick drive through Winnipeg’s North End shows that Winnipeg’s traditional divide, one that was exacerbated by mistreatment of various “enemy” immigrants during the war , still exists and many buildings in the North End appearing run down or abandoned. Selkirk Avenue is no longer the bustling commercial street referenced in the book but many ethnic businesses are still around with a heavy Ukrainian presence still existing through businesses like Gunn’s Bakery and Todaschuk Sisters’ Ukrainian Boutique.

Karl Thordarson works in the North End. He says the area still suffers from many problems mentioned in the book, but the situation has gotten far worse and the neighbourhood is no longer the unified place it once was, with pride giving way to danger.

“It’s not really a safe place to be, especially at night. It used to be kind of rough but there were always families and it was a tight knit place,” he said.

“It’s definitely taken a turn for the worse, whether that was from the war I don’t know, but it isn’t the same place anymore.”

The struggles in the North End are a perfect example of how while Winnipeg has changed since 1918, it has largely stayed the same. The city is bigger and technology plus various other factors have lead to new problems, but many of the stories, places and even military regiments remain as reminders of the war’s everlasting impact.

It is this impact that makes Blanchard’s book an interesting read not only for historians but for all Winnipeggers concerned about their city.

Winnipeg's Great War

In my journalism class this semester, we were assigned to read the book Winnipeg’s Great War: A City Comes of Age by Jim Blanchard. While the book was very different in style from both Hiroshima, which we read earlier this year, and much of our coursework in general, I enjoyed it.

The book really worked in the sense that it achieved its main goal, which was to educate readers on Winnipeg during the First World War. As someone who is a big history buff and an avid supporter of our city, I found the information in the book tremendously interesting as it brought together two things I really enjoy and it did it by providing an almost unbelievable amount of information.

The amount of detail in the book really is quite staggering. Blanchard came to our class to speak about the book earlier today and shared with us how it had taken him about three years worth of research to get enough information to compile the book. That’s another thing about the book that really works; you can tell that Blanchard really loves what he is talking about. His attention to detail and passion for the source material really comes across while reading. The book seems meticulously researched and really paints a vivid picture of how the city was like during the war.

Finally, the book works because it provides very interesting and very different look to war history. When I think of the First World War, I think of battles in Europe, trenches, mud, death etc. Blanchard lets us know how not all of the war takes place on the front and that life at home also changes drastically. This interesting portrait into the home front definitely opened my eyes to a whole different type of war history.

The way Blanchard wraps up this portrait with an effective ending to tie everything together was solid as well as he added the necessary emotion without losing his fact-based account.

That said, the book was not perfect. While the amount of information was impressive, it was also overwhelming at times. The details were so numerous that it became difficult to follow and it was too easy to get totally bogged down in all of the fact. At times, I wished Blanchard would have picked a few central figures and focused the story on them rather than trying to cram everything in. While Blanchard said he did not want to be like a historian, he ended up including a few too many facts and not quite enough narrative for me, though the letters from Alec Waugh were a nice touch.

I think journalists can learn a lot from the book, even though it is much more long winded than most journalistic articles would ever be.

First off, journalists can learn the importance of doing our homework and conducting research for stories. While we will rarely have enough time to include the same amount of facts or spend hours at the library like Blanchard, we need to take the time to get our facts right and decide what the reader will want to see because ultimately they are the true judge.

We can also learn the benefit of being passionate about our subjects because that makes your work stronger. You can tell Blanchard loves his city and its history and that makes his book more effective.

Finally, we can learn that using people in your stories makes them the strongest. Blanchard did not do enough of this in my opinion. The sections with Waugh were the best and most interesting in his work and it could have used more. People love to read about other people and we should keep this in mind.

I would compare this work to John Kersey's Hiroshima. The two works are similar in the sense that both contain tons of factual information and do it at the expense of much added colour or opinion. Both prefer to let the facts tell the story.

The works are also similar in how they tell a side of war away from actual conflict areas and focus on how cities were affected by the fighting. They both strive to show how the cities have changed as a result of the war, though one is much more obvious.

The key difference is how Hiroshima does a better job of humanizing the story. It focuses on a few key people and uses their stories to paint a portrait of the whole ordeal. Blanchard instead chooses to touch briefly on many things and not get too specific. While both approaches have merits, Hiroshima was easier to read but also much more graphic.

The discussion with Blanchard was informative for me in the sense that I learned the challenges the author faced in writing the book and how much work really went into it. I don’t think it fully registered with me just how much work would be required to find all of the information he included, especially when the conflict he is writing about happened almost a century ago.

I was also interested to learn a couple of his specific quirks like using recipe cards rather than typing his research out and how he actually knew little about the war before he started.

Overall, the book is definitely impressive but perhaps the sheer volume of facts narrows the potential audience. While those who are interested in war history or the history of Winnipeg will love the book, it may be too dry for casual readers.

Inspiring

As I mentioned in my last post, this week myself and all second year CreComm students presented their Independent Professional Projects at the Convention Centre.

I was completely blown away by the work of my peers and feel genuinely honoured to be included in a program with people so talented. I was particularly in awe of the video projects as it is something I know I just could never do if I was given years to work on. Kudos to everyone for their great work.

Too much happened for me to properly explain in a blog post, but I invite and encourage you to take a look at the #IPP11 Twitter feed where a team of first year students did an awesome job of filling the public in on and promoting everyone's projects. Give it a read, you won't be bored or disappointed.

keith

IPP Presentations

This week on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday my fellow CreComms and I will be presenting our Independent Professional Projects at the Convention Centre.

The projects are something we have all worked on all year as a project we think up, get approved and work on completely independently (as the title implies...) all while still having to work on our regular classes. The projects have been real labours of love for all of us and it will be a very exciting time to see them presented this week. It definitely serves as a sort of culmination for our two years in the program.

My project was a promotional campaign for the Manitoba Soccer Association that centred around a blog entitled "The MSA Blog".

I chose it because it allowed me to write articles, use social media and do video all while promoting a sporting organization that is important to me. I think it gave me a chance to cover all of the bases.

Other students have done novels, coffee table books, video and radio documentaries, events, promotional videos and even live TV broadcasts or concerts.

It promise to be a great afternoon so I encourage you all to come down and support. Starts at 9 AM each day at the Convention Centre. Hope to see you there!

Charlie Sheen...

I just got back from a reading week trip to the States with my girlfriend and while we were hanging out in the hotel room between shopping and dinner, we came across this crazy interview with everyone's favorite wacko Charlie Sheen on the Free Press website.



This seems to finally be the last straw in this year (or decade really if you have followed Sheen's career) of scandal for the Two and a Half Men star. After some shocking comments in that interview, the show has been pulled by CBS, will likely be cancelled and may just end Sheen's career.

The interesting thing is how much coverage Sheen has received through all this, much of it potentially defamatory. Check out some of the articles on Chuck's "indiscretions" if you want to learn a bit about journalists covering Hollywood, covering controversy or if you just want a good laugh.