Latest news with #EbbAndFlow
CBC
2 days ago
- General
- CBC
Newly unveiled designs reimagine Alexander Docks as vibrant community gathering space
Designs are now public for a project years in the making that promises to transform the historic Alexander Docks in downtown Winnipeg. Mock-ups for the docks, which have been closed off to the public for nearly a decade, reveal a bright, green, revitalized space along the Red River by Waterfront Drive complete with community gathering places, renewed active transportation routes, a new dock surface and a memorial site for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and 2SLGBTQ people. "It's deeply inspired by the rhythm of the Red River — its grace, its power and its unending movement," said Desirée Thériault, architect and partner with Narratives Inc., which is designing the dock revitalization, dubbed Ebb and Flow, along with the firm Scatliff Miller + Murray. "For too long this part of our waterfront has been fenced off, unreachable, no clear path to the water, no invitation to stand at its edge. And Ebb and Flow changes that. It says you belong here." The Alexander Docks have been closed off to the public since an ice storm rendered the site unsafe in 2015. The next year, the city tapped The Forks to take over public engagement over how to proceed. City council voted to grant The Forks a 99-year lease of the site and the contributed $600,000 through a fund devoted to helping downtown recover post-pandemic. The Forks estimates the redevelopment will cost about $10.8 million, and The Forks Foundation is leading fundraising efforts. Artists renderings released Thursday show a re-imagined community space that includes an enhanced active transportation corridor from Stephen Juba park to South Point Douglas. Roadside there are open outdoor spaces showing people meeting beneath a large red canopy space with a fire and cyclists biking by as people mill about a walkways that wind down toward the water. The dock itself will be made from reclaimed timber from the original dock with a new deck surface. The Spirit Tree area will be a site for reflection memorializing MMIWG2S. The site became associated with Tina Fontaine, 14, after her body was discovered in the Red River by the Alexander Docks in August 2014. Her death spurred calls for a national inquiry into MMIWG. "Today, we remember Tina," Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham said Thursday at the design unveiling at the dock site. "Now, we're turning the page and looking ahead." The designs include tiered landscaping leading to the water, seating at the road and water levels, improved lighting and accessibility both by land and water, and areas ideal for picnics, play and ceremony, said Sara Stasiuk, president and CEO of The Forks. Stasiuk said the dock will have improved access for canoes, kayaks and the waterbus, as well as spots for fishing. "This isn't just about rebuilding a dock; it's about reconnecting to the river, to each other, and to our shared story," said Stasiuk. That shared story goes back a long time. "This history of this land and the relationships fostered with in it date back further than the colonial periods for which the Exchange District is known," said David Pensato, executive director of The Exchange District Biz. The dock, originally built almost a century ago, was once part of a network of docks going up the Red River associated with commercial fishing industries that moved millions of dollars worth of cargo by through the area annually. A brick building in the area once served as a fish filleting and cold storage plant. What is now Waterfront Drive was once a railway that shipped those goods across Western Canada. Across the river from the docks is Victoria Park, where the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike started. Anishinaabe war hero Sgt. Tommy Prince saved a man from drowning at the docks in 1955. The last big ships to unmoor from the docks were The River Rouge and Paddlewheel Princess, which gave riders tours along the river until 2009 and 2014. "Before that, we can assume that folks were paddling on canoes and putting up here because it was a shallow part of the river," said Pensato. "There's a very long and deep history…. We're just excited to see this space come to life again with plans for community, for people, to enjoy the river, the land, to connect with each other, to connect with the past and to look to the future." Thériault said the design team has been drawing on all that history with guidance from members of the city's MMIWG2S+ Advisory Committee, elders and community members as they re-envision a future for the Alexander Docks that reflects its varied history. "The Red River has always carried our stories. It has been a gathering place, a travel route, a source of life and trade, a witness to joy, to ceremony, but it's also carried heavy truths," said Thériault. "When we lose access to the water, we lose part of our connection to place, to each other and to ourselves. The Alexander Dock sits at a point where that connection can be restored. Here, the river can welcome us back."
CBC
11-06-2025
- Sport
- CBC
Why Anishinaabe writer Kyle Edwards sees hockey as a ceremony
Before becoming a writer, like many kids in Canada, Kyle Edwards dreamed of playing in the National Hockey League. Edwards, who grew up on the Lake Manitoba First Nation and is a member of the Ebb and Flow First Nation, has complex feelings towards the game he loves — and how it doesn't always love Indigenous people back. Edwards' debut novel, Small Ceremonies, follows a hockey team of Ojibwe high schoolers from Winnipeg, who are chasing hockey dreams and coming of age in a game — and a place — that can be both beautiful and brutal. "There is just a hierarchy in sport, in the same way there is in the world, and I think a lot of times sports is a reflection, a mirror of the real world," he said on Bookends with Mattea Roach. Edwards joined Roach to share how sports reflect society and how hockey is its own type of ceremony. Mattea Roach: What kind of a pull does hockey have on you personally? Kyle Edwards: I think it was probably like my first dream as a kid, other than being a writer. I wanted to be a hockey player. When I was growing up, I wanted to go to the NHL. That did not happen. But I loved it. I loved playing the game growing up and I think I always had this sort of conflicting relationship with it just in terms of the different types of violence that are associated with it — mostly on the ice. I think it was where I experienced violence for the first time, both physically and verbally, but I love the game. I think it's very beautiful and poetic and I love how much it means to Canadians and Indigenous people. It's held on such a pedestal that I felt like I really wanted to write about it in this book. What was it like engaging in hockey as an Indigenous person growing up? It was difficult. I grew up on a rez, so you're constantly playing teams from small towns. There's this sort of racial aspect to it, the team from the rez and the team from this small, probably mostly white town and just the history of violence that is Canada, I think it just sort of creates this arena for different tensions and histories that sort of play out on the ice. That was difficult. As a child, there was a time where I just didn't want to be associated with it. But Native people in Canada, Indigenous people in Canada, we just love this game so much. It's really beautiful to see. It brings us together all over the country. There's Indigenous only tournaments all over Canada. Indigenous people in Canada, we just love this game so much. - Kyle Edwards I think we just fight through that. Hockey is known for being such an exclusive sport. It's very exclusive to people who can afford it. People who are of a certain social class. Indigenous people aren't often seen as part of that. But we really don't care in a lot of ways. I haven't been to a rez in Manitoba that doesn't have its own hockey rink and hockey rinks are not cheap. What is the kind of relationship between passion and violence that you wanted to explore in your novel? Passion and violence can be kind of closely related and hard to distinguish in this game. Small Ceremonies follows this team that's sort of being thrown out of the league because they're being perceived as too violent. But one of my biggest concerns while writing the book was that people are going to think this is unrealistic, that this could never happen in Canada. It has happened. This is probably the journalist part of me. It's not directly based on this, but around the time that I was going into university in 2017, there was this really good junior hockey team from this First Nation in Manitoba. They were really good. They went on one of the craziest winning streaks that their league at the time had ever seen. And they ended up going out to win the championship. The very next season, all of the junior teams from small white towns voted to separate from all of the teams that were based on First Nations, including Peguis, who had won the championship, to create their own league because they didn't want to travel to these teams anymore. This was only a few years ago. This all happened before I even started writing the novel. I remember reading that and I was like, "Wow, that's just so typical." You probably wouldn't expect that sort of thing. I wanted to evoke that same sort of shock in this story because I feel like there's going to be a lot of people reading this, a lot of Canadians in particular, who think that this is a type of story that would never happen, but it happens all over the country, and it happened not too long ago. The title of the book is Small Ceremonies. What does ceremony mean to you and to the characters in the book? Ceremonies can be anything, things that get you through the day. Definitely, hockey is one of those ceremonies. There are so many characters in the book that have little things that they cling onto on a daily basis that sort of help them just survive in a way. We think of ceremonies as these huge things, but I think they can be quite small. - Kyle Edwards We think of ceremonies as these huge things, but I think they can be quite small and hockey is a ceremony because it brings us together in the same way that pow wows and sundances do and other different ceremonial things within Indigenous cultures. There's this chorus of characters and each of them, I hope, has their time to shine in the book and they also have very distinct things — they do different practices and rituals that are just so unique to them.
