Winnipeg City Quotes

Funny how in a city of 750,000 one could feel so utterly alone and vulnerable - half a million people and no one to protect you. It's partially the nature of the location of Winnipeg. Alone in the Prairies, in the middle of the country, where the wind blows hard and the snow can pile up around your feet while you wait to cross the street.

Essex raised its ugly head. When i was a scholarship boy at the local grammar, son of a city-hall toiler on the make, this country was synonymous with liberty, success, and Cambridge. Now look at it. Shopping malls and housing estates pursue their creeping invasion of our ancient land. A North Sea wind snatched frilly clouds in its teeth and scarpered off to the midlands. The countryside proper began at last. My mother had a cousin out here, her family had a big house. I think they moved to Winnipeg for a better life. There! There, in the shadow of that DIY warehouse, once stood a row of walnut trees where me and Pip Oakes - a childhood chum who died aged thirteen under the wheels of an oil tanker - varnished a canoe one summer and sailed it alone the Say. Sticklebacks in jars,. There, right there, around that bend we lit a fire and cooked beans and potatoes wrapped in silver foil! Come back, oh, come back! Is one glimpse all I get?

On Saturday, June 21, crowds of veterans and their families filled the street in front of Winnipeg’s city hall to protest the arrests. Mounted police charged the throng; special constables attacked with clubs. “Bloody Saturday” and the ensuing trials of the strike leaders (British or Canadian to a man) gave Winnipeg’s workers a bitter memory of their ordeal. Driven back to the city’s north end, they gave their neighbourhoods a durable allegiance to labour and socialist politics.

From these unions with Indian women developed the large class called indiscriminately half-breeds, métis, bois brulés, which formed such a large percentage of all American and Canadian frontier settlements. Many of their descendants are men and women of distinction and social standing in the modern cities that have developed from old posts, such as Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Winnipeg, and St. Louis.

My first real trip out of the country was flying alone out of Winnipeg, landing in the Twin Cities to switch planes, and finally arriving in Miami. Going from negative 30 degree winter weather to the heat and humidity of South Florida was a shock to my Canadian senses, but I was ready for an adventure. One week later, I climbed out of a small Cessna 206 in the middle of the Amazon jungle that’s called the green hell! A month of living the missionary life on the Orinoco River in Venezuela convinced me that my future lay in this lifestyle.