To the margins of our rivers, our marginalized
Opinion
When my kids were younger, during pre-COVID times, I used to put little life-jackets on them and we'd head from West Broadway down to the little park beside the Granite Curling Club, fishing rods in hand. We'd pack some snacks — toddler-friendly Goldfish crackers and blueberries each in their own little containers.
The river access at the park is on a gentle slope and there's a little bare area of hard clay that's perfect for casting from the shore, with perfectly placed deadfall providing a place to sit. Even though we live in one of the lowest-income areas of the city, it felt like we had some kind of cheat code to have this little bit of nature so close by. There's a little trail too, winding along the river to the Osborne Bridge and meeting up with the Assiniboine River Walk on the other side. We could stroll all the way to The Forks without seeing a car, and often did.
But the riverbank by the Granite hasn't been suitable for this kind of outing for years. Currently, it's occupied by a revolving cast of Winnipeggers who call it home, and has been since before the pandemic. The ground is strewn with used syringes and garbage, and it's just not a safe fishing spot any more.
A large encampment along the embankment of the Assiniboine River at the end of Spence Street off of Balmoral Street. (Mike Deal / Free Press)
The river, of course, has always been our lifeblood here on the Prairies. Many of our ancestors, if they didn't come by rail, came by canoe or riverboat, following the promise of our waterways to provide a more comfortable life. The rivers have been our sustenance and our playground and our highway. A place to ski and skate, to fish and paddle and swim, before we ruined that, too, with billions of litres of raw sewage.
But we still want to be near the water, we still pay premium rent to get the apartment that overlooks it. I helped a Toronto friend buy a small riverfront home in our Glenelm neighbourhood during the pandemic and watched as he was comically left speechless when the real estate agent suggested that here, he could own a speedboat and take his family to the beach for the day. This kind of lifestyle simply does not exist for the middle class in Toronto.
The rivers still provide a refuge for those seeking the most minimal of comforts. The areas between the road and the water are shady and out of the way of regular foot traffic. They're areas like our fishing spot: cool, comfortable and somewhat removed from the complications of city life. So it's not surprising that in these not-quite-public spaces on the margins of the rivers live the marginalized, the people not quite suited, for whatever reason, to a life away from its shores.
When General Garnet Wolseley arrived to depose Métis leader Louis Riel in 1870, he didn't get the fight he'd been anticipating. Instead, he and his 1,000 tired and angry men, having made the roadless overland journey by foot from Ottawa, took out their frustrations on the Métis citizens, scattering many of them across the province and westward into Saskatchewan and Alberta. There, they made their homes on land surveyed for roads, running between the straight square-mile plots laid down for settlement and agriculture. They earned the name 'the road allowance people' — not quite in society, not quite out, but living quite literally on the margins of colonization, with little provision made for them in the planning of the society that would take root on their homeland.
It's sad to think we haven't changed much. We still fail to provide for people who run afoul of a system we designed for them to run afoul of. We fail to anticipate the needs of people who have nowhere else to go and act proactively to provide landing pads and off-ramps before they reach the very bottom rungs of society. We fail to recognize the patterns of oppression that have brought them to live life on the margins of rivers we've nearly ruined with disease and disregard, and we act without compassion and responsibility when we discuss them.
Wednesdays
A weekly dispatch from the head of the Free Press newsroom.
The smoke rising from the riverbanks of late is a cry for help not only from the people who live along them but also from the land itself. The rivers belong to all of us, and we belong to them. We need to listen to what they're telling us, and act in a way that conveys respect and dignity for those that rely on them: all of us.
rebecca.chamber@freepress.mb.ca
Rebecca Chambers
Rebecca explores what it means to be a Winnipegger by layering experiences and reactions to current events upon our unique and sometimes contentious history and culture. Her column appears alternating Saturdays.
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