Anyone else from Winnipeg? Or ever been there?

[Donovanf]

Seeing if there are another peggers out there. Tell us an awesome Winnipeg story.

[HEyHEY]

1. Been there.

There is Two Duers from the Peg. I won't say there names in case they don't want it to be known.

My story.

I was taking the Via across Canada. I walked outside and had a smoke in front of the train station. Then after getting on the train, we moved about 4kms until it broke down. SOme guys from Winnepeg had just gotten on, we sat in the smoking car talking as they showed me the city while the train slowly moved through it.

I'd like to go back and really explore.

[mitchtv]

2. was there in the late 70's

my problem was I was refused entrance into Canada. I though WTF. went back and tried again at Int'l Falls and got through. Not very impressive the visit to lake winnipeg was fun though , along with the drive though the Canadian Shield to Toronto

[ironflange]

3. Been there twice

1. Drove straight through on the way to Expo '67.

2. Brief stopover at the airport, on the way to Moscow for the hockey series in Sept. '72.

Sorry, I guess I should have said "Been through twice."

[metis]

4. Winnipeg

Anyone here old enough to remember this?....

Winnipeg's Snowstorm of the Century - March 4, 1966. This winter blizzard dropped 35 cm of snow with winds blowing at 120 km/h, paralyzing the city for two days. Winnipeg's mayor issued a warning for everyone to stay at home. The drifting snow blocked all highways in southern Manitoba and forced the cancellation of all air travel in and out of the Winnipeg airport.

[iverglas]

5. I've been to Portage and Main in February

So I think that makes me a real Canadian. (Winnipegers: how do you pronounce "Portage"?)

Drove in a luxury U-drive car, from southwest of Toronto. I didn't drive, so I was in the back seat with the down-at-the-heels middle-aged hitchhiker we'd picked up, and his bottle of rye. The heater conked out north of Superior at 5 a.m.

We were travelling cheap because the Liberal Party had only paid gas money. The Liberal Party?? Yes, I took money from the Liberal Party. We'd formed a Liberal club on campus. Why? Because there wasn't one. And because when we did, the student council gave us money, which we used for organizing a strike. We weren't really Liberals. But then the Liberal Party started inviting us places. That's how I ended up drinking Benedictine & brandy in Marcel Prud'homme's hotel room in Winnipeg. (And, uh, dancing my first dance with Colin Thatcher's nephew or cousin or something, in the seedy Algonquin Hotel in Toronto.)

Winnipeg. We had a ball. Except for when the three of us were lighting up a joint outside the convention hall and I lit my hair on fire, and for the rest of the day people who came within six feet of me kept screwing up their noses and saying "ew, what's that smell?" (Real Young Liberals were such a shiny-haired lot back then, not really Basi's Boys material at all, and I'm sure they never inhaled, let alone ran grow ops.)

After that little catastrophe, we went into the hall, where they were singing O Canada for some reason. We decided to stay at the back and lower our heads and raise our right fists. Some years later, I bought some trashy book by Lubor Zink* at the Sally Ann, musta been "Trudeaucracy", and discovered that he had written us up as "the Red Guard of the Liberal Party". hahaha.

And that's all I remember about Winnipeg. It was cold in Winnipeg. But was it a dry cold?

______________

* "Do you remember a party you attended at the Press Club last month?"
"Vaguely."
"Do you remember being bitten on the shin by Lubor Zink?"
"Sure, but it wasn't anything serious. He barely drew blood."
"Well, that's how it all begins. Now, whenever a full moon is out, you become a rabid, raving, big C Conservative. ..."
http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/200/300/aardvarks_eyes_press/les_pages_aux_folles/book_1/01LPAF98.htm

For Mr. ZINK, a veteran journalist who was often ridiculed for his staunch anti-communist views, the crumbling of communist governments in Eastern Europe was the ultimate vindication. "He knew he was right and the fall of communism made him feel very good," said Mrs. ZINK. ... "He was one of those rare journalists whose assessments seemed extreme at the time, but were understatements a mere five years later," Toronto Sun columnist and former Sun editor Peter WORTHINGTON wrote recently. "Few of those who used to mock him realized how courageous and true he was." Mr. ZINK was ridiculed over the years, often by peers who, in the words of one former colleague, felt he was a "one-trick pony who never got over the communist era."
http://www.ogs.on.ca/ogspi/200/o200r004.htm

Well, that was putting it mildly. The man was foaming at the mouth mad. But what he wrote about me was damned funny.

"The problem I find with most right-wing columnists (leaving aside my obvious political bias) is that so few of them seem to have any kind of a sense of humour. Lubor Zink (probably Canada's most fervent anti-communist columnist, now deceased) could occasionally turn out a humourous piece, but the current crop of right-wingers are merely (and consistently) tedious to read."
http://realitystick.blogspot.com/2004/07/lord-of-right-wing.html

[fudge stripe cookays]

18. So others actually call it the Sally Ann too?

reprehensor does that, and I've picked it up now. Now I have to translate for my American friends when I use the word.

I'd never heard that expression before meeting him. Or "brekky" for breakfast.

FSC

[iverglas]

20. ah yes

I said it to a USAmerican in Rock Island, Illinois, once, and eventually realized that the blank stare I got back meant that I was speaking Canadian. ;)

I believe the Brits also just call it the "Sally", and I also see "the Sally Army".

Ask google for "sally ann" salvation and you get 1,880 results; limit the search to Canada (click the box at google.ca) and you get 618. And heh, they do it themselves:

http://www.salvationist.org/poverty.nsf/0/43BA11AAAE7E76CE80256B04004FA663?opendocument
"The Salvation Army - Sally Ann International - Fair Trade Project"

In context, I think I'd be more likely to say "Sally Ann" when talking about the thrift shops -- going down to the Sally Ann to check out the leather coats -- and "Salvation Army" when talking about its social programs/activities or saying critical things about it/them, which I am wont to do. Although at xmas, I do take toys to the Sally Ann. ;)

[PerpetualYnquisitive]

6. Been there, froze half to death.

Both of my younger brothers were born in Winnipeg and it is where I first attended school, Mulvey School to be exact.

http://timelinks.merlin.mb.ca/imagere1/ref0284.htm

Cheers from Ontario.:beer:

[Spazito]

7. I had to fly into Winnipeg during the 97 flood...

for a commemorative service in the Air Park. It was amazing as we neared Winnipeg, it looked like an island in the middle of a sea. I found it to be a somewhat dreary city but that may very well have been because of the flood conditions. The people were great tho, very friendly and welcoming!

[Lautremont]

8. Proud 'pegger.

Can't wait for winter to start so I can warm up a bit.

It's a fine city, with a strange mix of grassrootsy politics. On the one hand (to oversimplify for a moment) you have your beer drinkin', Sun-readin', mullet-headed, gun totin' rasslin' lovers, and on the other the beer drinkin', pot smokin', art-makin', Trotsky-readin' sons and daughters of the old-style prairie socialists.

The pick-up hockey games that follow from this admixture are often quite colourful.

[Donovanf]

9. The Winnipeg Sun...

has to be the worst newspaper in our fine Dominion.

[ironflange]

10. I find that hard to believe

It can't possibly be worse than the Calgary Sun.

[Lautremont]

11. Gives it a run for its money, that's for sure.

A local columnist whose name I forget manages that on his own, never mind the rest of it.

[TrogL]

12. Nothing beats the Edmonton Sun

It's so full of shit I can't use it for birdcage paper. It won't absorb any more crap.

[ironflange]

15. Sorry, no

Calgary's Sun makes Edmonton's look like the Times of London. Well, the Times if it was a tabloid and was 80% advertising.

[Darth_Kitten]

14. it's a Sun paper.......

all right wing editorials... :) Yuck.

[TrustingDog]

26. LOL! so true. I'm from East Kildonan. hi ya.

[Darth_Kitten]

13. More artsy and fartsy than Toronto and Montreal......

believe it or not. :) the big centres always get all the credit for being major players, but we have festivals, and concerts, and whathave you that people actually ATTEND in Winnipeg.

We are also Slurpee capitol of North America (or is it the world?)

You get my point? :)

[Canadian_moderate]

16. slurping capital?

Sounds like fun! What do you slurp? :o Just kidding of course. B-)

[Darth_Kitten]

22. Slurpees....

:evilgrin:

[AmericanErrorist]

17. I've been twice

You must go to the Mondragon anarchist bookshop and coffeehouse on 91 Albert St. They have everything left you could ever think of. Dispatches from the Worker-Communist Party of Iran? Got it.

[Darth_Kitten]

21. They make great chickpea curry...

;)

[Canuckistanian]

19. Lived there once

For about 10 months in '85 or '86, I think. I moved back to Toronto just one day before a HUUUGE snowstorm. Shut Winnipeg down for about 3 days. They had to use the army (no, this is not Toronto) to help dig them out.

[SmileyBoy]

23. I'm 220 miles south of The Peg, I've been there countless times.

The best city in Canada, IMO.

[Donovanf]

24. hey

Where do you live?

[SmileyBoy]

25. Fargo

Just a three hour drive away.

All of our city's senior citizens are buying their meds in Winnipeg.

[TrustingDog]

27. the Folk Festival!