THE EXPEDITION Chapter Nineteen: Winnipeg… (Section Two)

In which  Ann couchsurfs Winnipeg...which is a strange adventure in itself  

Dates: mid July to August 4, 2019

Winnipeg

I found a place for a few nights with some young people who share a huge and unbelievably eccentric house in the middle of the factory and warehouse district. It’s the only house there, and the whole area was its former estate. The family never sold the home, though, and the last descendant apparently went a little dotty.

Except for a few blank-walled rooms, everything is an array of colours and patterns. Vivid geometric designs in intricately masked-off lacings and rays of metallic and primary colours open into eerie life size portraits, hastily sprayed jumbles and stripes, a checkerboard ceiling, and mismatched walls so bright it doesn’t matter. All the heavy wood trim and whatnot is original, much ornately carved. The radiators installed when such a thing was newfangled and big fancy ones were de rigeur in such a respectable dwelling still heat the whole place. The floors ought to be in a floor museum.

Woven through this is their own mosaic of the local rivers, restored heavy wood floors, an ornate stairway that must weigh as much as the rest of the house, and a basement where massive ancient beams keep the building from falling on what is now a pretty serious music and recording studio.

There’s also bicycles everywhere, inside and out. They all have their own, and some extras, and an awesome cargo bike, but they also run a successful business refurbishing a couple hundred or so ‘plain bikes’ regularly recovered from the Netherlands, where one of them is from and visits much. There’s even bikes in the small home office of their nonprofit organization, a group largely responsible for the increasing bike-ability of the city.

Outside, most of the yard is filled with gardens or planters, with plenty of wildflower space. Trellises climb everywhere, plants and vines weaving and bridging between them. The entire driveway is filled with tomatoes in pots and in anything vaguely resembling a pot. They say they can’t stand to waste any seeds. They ran out of room a few years ago, so they started planting vegetables amongst the city plantings… in gardens and containers and plots and greenspaces all throughout downtown Winnipeg, if you look, you’ll find corn and kale and cabbage and tomatoes and peppers and all sorts of things.

They do it very nicely, integrating their plantings with the aesthetics of the spot; it’s never just random or ramshackle, and the whole idea is beautiful. Why do we not have food gardens all over our towns and cities, instead of imported fancy things that don’t belong, mess up the insects and whatnot, throw wrenches in local ecosystems, and just don’t make sense here? It would make so much more sense.

I still hadn’t figured how to make sense out of northwestern Ontario, though, and these folks had other people coming. I searched the couchsurfing-type websites like the one where I’d found this place, and found another place to stay. Lois was lovely, and so interesting. Her home was quiet. We got along. She got a contract that involved imminent travel, though, so I was looking for somewhere again.

I stayed a few nights with a young woman from South America who whips up absolutely delicious empanadas from scratch the way the rest of us make throw together a sandwich, and then takes them for a paddleboard picnic! Her neighbours are a lovely family, First Nations, and very aware of things many of us don’t realize. While technology and mainstream uninformedness is taking over younger and younger minds, these children were illustrating the sidewalk with SAVE THE BEES signs, asking people to leave to flowers for the butterflies, and talking about how old growth logging destroys the planet as well as cultures.

One night while I was there, she was heading out the front door to return her friend’s car, when a man ran up her tiny front walk begging to come in and hide – he said there were eight men with guns chasing him. We didn’t even think twice. My host pulled him in while I ran to shut and lock the wide open back door. As I stretched out to grab the handle, a dark figure tried to reach it first from a couple steps down but I was quicker, or at least closer. We shut all the windows and curtains, too, and called the police.

They turned up pretty quick, but as soon as they saw our guest was Indigenous, they started cracking jokes about meth and paranoia, and sleeping things off. It was disgusting. Yes, they were all white.

I’m not sure where they took the man but not somewhere threatening; it was probably a station where he could make a statement or something, or possibly an escort home, or somewhere likewise agreeable to him. They were still laughing and making nasty comments as they left. Throughout the entire episode, our guest, who was clearly not under the influence of anything except extreme fear, quietly maintained his dignity.

Not even five minutes later, there was a huge takedown less than a block away. Apparently eight men with guns were apprehended, though there was no mention of who they’d been chasing.

I hate cities and what we’ve let the powers that be turn humanity into makes me cry.

I didn’t sleep much that night and all the trains of thought tangled together. One thing was abundantly clear though: I couldn’t keep spending so much time finding places to stay – I wasn’t getting anywhere that way. Although I’d gone to some more activist meetings and discussions and things, and had met so many good people, I was stuck. I still didn’t know how I’d do NWO, but I figured I could make it to Thunder Bay. I’d mapped out stops, and noted where to be most careful. It was time to go.

Before I left, I met with a friend I know from Jamaica. Barbara is Canadian, and lives here in Winnipeg half the year, but her heart and her home and her real life are there. She understands my frustration with having perspective about the ‘first world’ constantly misdiagnosed as culture shock (still, five years later!), and my love of places where many things are more simple, and my belief that that’s how we live best. I hadn’t seen her since leaving the island in 2016 and it was so good to catch up. She had multiple things going on at the time, and also has a cat and sometimes family at home, otherwise we’d have stayed with Barbara – I’m just really happy we could have a visit while I was in the city.

Date: August 5, 2019

Central Winnipeg to Town and Country Campground 17km + Detours

It takes a while to walk out of big cities, and there’s always so much traffic (and so many of them seem so frustrated). To me, it’s psychologically better than coming into a city, but nervewracking nonetheless. This time, particularly so. I got lost a few times. The new bicycle basket on my scooter handlebars, for things that must be kept handy, broke. We kept crossing paths with other dogs. The replacement gear was heavier. I don’t even remember the rest, but by the time I passed Jenn’s place to say goodbye and pick up Mr Myrtle’s back-up boots, which had arrived, puppy and I were both frazzled to pieces and I think I was crying with frustration. She cried with me, and hugged me, but they were literally on the way out the door to begin a camping trip, and I ended up (after McGyvering the basket and adjusting the rest of the load better and taking of care of Mr Myrtle). having an absolutely lovely visit with her neighbours, talking about what I was doing, and their own similar concerns, as well as the insane human rights issues affecting indigenous people in this land. I felt so much better after meeting them; that visit and Jenn’s care made the rest of the day better.

On the way out of Winnipeg, google maps sent me down a road that didn’t actually go anywhere. Once I disentangled myself from the miniature suburb I landed in and gotten back on track, and figuring in the rest of the getting lost and whatnot in the city, my 15 kilometer day had become more like 50.

When we finally reached the Town and Country Campground, on the outskirts of the city, I was truly zonked from the whole everything, and travelling much farther than intended, and I had one nerve left. I stank. And I couldn’t find my bank card, or some ridiculous and completely un-called-for thing like that. A friend offered to pay for my stay, and for an extra night to de-citify, but the campground didn’t do telephone transactions. I sat on the deck and cried, it was finally sorted out, I was too tired to register how, let alone remember, and they sent me to a spot right beside a road in the middle of everything with no privacy or shade, after informing me that dogs must never been left alone (as if I would have) and that even service dogs are not allowed in the “facilities.” This is of course baloney and not legal at all, but I was too tired to argue. She’d already made her views about my walk, and my self, abundantly clear, and had clearly been hoping I’d go away.

That night, the solar kit wouldn’t charge anything, though I’d tried it out in Winnipeg and it had been fine. I was too tired to figure that out, too.

#WalktoWakentheNationexpeditionbook #Winnipeg