Doing it wrong on the south side of town

It was just two years ago that the Kenaston extension was built to feed traffic from one of Winnipeg’s busiest roads into Winnipeg’s largest, sprawlingest, new suburb — Waverley West. The purpose of the new stretch of Kenaston Boulevard, however, was not just to feed commuters to and from their new abodes on what was…

A bigger beach for Bird’s Hill Park

Canada Day, July 1 2014, was a cold and miserable day. A terrible beach day. The five park employees playing cards on the deck of the life guard cabin outnumbered the three 20-somethings drinking beer in a tent-like shelter at the far end of the lake. I was there cooling down after a jog around…

Winnipeg Election: Email performance

Door-knocking is so old fashioned. The internet is where you want to be if you’re a candidate for Mayor, or anything else. It is inexpensive, has a wide reach, and can be an effective tool to engage voters. How effective it is depends on how you use it. I have devised a scorecard based on…

Winnipeg Election Poll: what does it tell us?

Today, the novel Manitoba Forward/United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg 2014 Winnipeg Mayoral Election crowd-funded survey results were released. And even though the results were already plastered all over the internet while I was still at work, I am still proud to have been a sponsor of this poll. As a sponsor I feel I should…

Portage and Main Roundabout

Brian Bowman recently made a pledge to tear down the barriers at Portage and Main and reopen the iconic intersection to pedestrians if elected Mayor of Winnipeg. It’s an idea that has been gaining momentum as the long term agreement that shut off the intersection to non-motorized people nears its end. I fully support opening…

The Lorrie Steeves Affair

Controversy erupted on Twitter Friday when an anonymous account posted a screenshot of racist comments (or what most people would consider racist) that the wife of Gord Steeves, candidate for Mayor, posted on Facebook four years ago. This is troubling in a number of ways: It is troubling that somebody’s interaction with panhandlers downtown produced…

Revisiting the golf course debate

Winnipeg candidate for mayor Gord Steeves made one of the biggest splashes last week in what has been a pretty dull race so far. On Friday, July 25, Steeves announced a $100 million road and infrastructure fund, with the money coming from the sale and redevelopment of underused city golf courses. Thus the dormant city…