Seeing hometown anew both sobering and rousing

Opinion

In the more than two-and-a-half years that I lived outside of Canada, Portage and Main opened to foot traffic. It was, to this Winnipegger living abroad, a homesick and dislocating moment: a gleefully, distinctively hyperlocal history was being made, without me there to see it.

Worse, there wasn’t even anyone I could marvel about it with.

Trying to explain the importance of the occasion to European friends was an exercise in futility. “No, you don’t understand,” I’d bleat, while showing them videos of the mayor strolling across the street. “This was one of the most painful and divisive civic debates Winnipeg has ever had. It left lasting scars on our entire social fabric.”

My friends blinked in patient, but uncomprehending, sympathy. “I see. We are still talking about an intersection?”

The point is: we often say Winnipeg never changes, but in my absence, Winnipeg changed. It wasn’t just the somewhat anticlimactic resolution to the decades-old Portage and Main debate. The face of the city shifted, albeit in largely subtle ways.

Businesses closed. New ones opened. The skeleton of a new downtown building, unfinished when I left for Ukraine in January 2023, became a gleaming tower. The rambling old brick house that long stood near the corner of my Osborne Village street vanished; in its place now sits a grassy field waiting for development.

And our long, slow walk towards reconciliation took a few more steps forward. As I drove around the city, I thrilled to see street signs that now read Abinojii Mikanah, instead of Bishop Grandin. At The Forks, I was delighted to discover the new Explore Indigenous space and signs offering Turtle Tours’ Indigenous-led excursions to explore the site.

I have always believed, in order to flourish, that is exactly what Winnipeg needs to strive towards: a city that cherishes its Indigenous character, that leads with it, that weaves it into its physical and cultural fabric.

All of these small changes stand out when you experience them only as a then and now, a before and an after, with no sense of continuity linking those states.

Yet since landing back home late last month, it isn’t only the ways the city has changed that have most struck me. It is also the ways it is the same — and these, in both wondrous and challenging ways.

We don’t often get to see our home with the eyes of a newcomer. Two-and-a-half years is not so long away, but it is long enough to forget the exact textures of the city; to interrupt the disinterest, born of familiarity, with which we perceive it. Now, as I walk and drive around Winnipeg, its sights and curiosities seize my attention.

The city is at once more beautiful than I remembered and more barren. Only an hour after my plane landed, I took a short walk through West Broadway. As I came to the end of Granite Way, I gazed up at the edifice of the legislative building and let out a gasp of wonder.

I’d always thought the legislative building was beautiful. I hadn’t realized until that moment just how gorgeous it is. Now, it looks breathtaking to me, as graceful as any grand building in Europe — and in the expanse of tree-lined green park around it, even more accessible, more belonging to the community who hold it.

That day, the Sikh community was holding a religious festival in front of the building. Thousands of Sikh Winnipeggers thronged the site, dressed in their cultural finery. Around the event’s margins, passersby of many ethnic backgrounds paused to enjoy the festivities, laughing a little in amazement. The city was alive through the peoples that make it.

For me, not even an hour back home after living nearly three years in a far more ethnically homogeneous country, seeing this diversity was visually and emotionally striking. This is my Canada and my Winnipeg: a place where the world’s stories meet and weave their threads, carrying their traditions while forging new ones together.

I’d missed that energy while overseas. I’d missed that sense of hope in what we are creating.

So these images and others have captivated me upon my return. It hasn’t all been so rosy. As I’ve reacquainted myself with Winnipeg, I’ve found myself even more troubled by its battered spots and bald patches and by the way its pain is spread out in the open.

After being immersed so long in the dense bustle of Ukrainian cities, Winnipeg’s pockmarked sprawl is dismaying. Surface parking lots, empty storefronts. The treeless stretch of Pembina as it stretches south, grey and unwelcoming to pedestrians.

The city now strikes me as hollowed, a scattered amalgamation of disconnected parts.

Above all, I saw with new eyes the despair that lives on our streets.

Even in Ukraine, one of the lowest-income countries in Europe and now under existential threat, there is little equivalent when it comes to visible urban poverty and the impact of addiction.

I’ve become unaccustomed to seeing everyday suffering laid bare, for all to see.

To see that part of Winnipeg with fresh eyes has been sobering and motivating.

It doesn’t have to be like this. It shouldn’t. I know that, in my absence, the immense work to alleviate that suffering has been ongoing and discussions about what more we can do have been unfolding.

Yet when we see such pain every day, perhaps we can grow numb to the possibility of change; we receive it as a fact of the city’s environment.

In that way, taking time away — and coming back — is a blessing. The Winnipeg I left in January 2023 was imperfect, but it was home, a face I knew as intimately as my own. The Winnipeg I came back to was a place to be discovered, charming and hopeful in places, torn by despair in others; but it is also a place I no longer see as stubbornly staying the same.

Winnipeg can change. It already has. It’s in our collective power to transform it, to build on its bones a city that can safely hold all who live in it. We can sometimes forget all the ways we’ve already inched towards that better vision; but we ought not forget that its brightest potential is still very much within our reach.

I still haven’t had a chance to walk across Portage and Main yet, but I’ve only been back a few weeks. Gotta save something to look forward to in winter, right?

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca