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Winnipeg Free Press
24-05-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Even time-sculpted sands scarred by the selfish
Opinion An escape from the harshness of the world to a homestead near Cypress River two weeks ago, to a night in a loose-gapped pop-up geriatric tent trailer with all of the outside seeping in liquid through seams, the sounds of the night birds peeping and whistling on the wind, a thunderstorm passing and a pack of coyotes passing, too, yodelling and yipping as they travelled down the road. A few minutes of magic, that short coyote transit, canine conversation distinct and so carefully shaped while half-sleeping that you could hold it in your hand like a ball. It was after lawn chairs and fire tankers rolling down the road to nearby wildland fires, after hot dogs and chips and potato salad and children finally asleep, after sloughing off worries and tamping down fears, sliding into that period where you talk among friends and family without even having to talk. Best of times. RUSSELL WANGERSKY / FREE PRESS A dune at the Spirit Sands in Spruce Woods Provincial Park bears the signs of time and nature. We were heading for the Spirit Sands in Spruce Woods Provincial Park the next day. Up in the bright morning, cautioned at the park gate about the heat rising on the sands, the way the dunes can make it as much as 10 C hotter. Out and up the trail edged by fading Prairie crocuses and yellow stoneflowers, past spruces and rogue chipmunks, trying to outrun the voices of other hikers. Looking for hard alone, looking forward to the dunes. There is a repetition of signs: 'Stay on the trail,' 'Fragile ecosystem' — and yet, at any point where it looked like there might be a view, there was an unregulated path pounded down through the undergrowth to allow off-path hikers to see a glimpse of the winding Assiniboine far down in the valley, or a sloped and shallow dell that might just hold a view of the river — but didn't — but might if you and everyone after you tromped your way in. Later, up the grey, weathered wooden stairs to a lookoff over the dunes, interpretive signs to tell you what you could see — one defaced with heavy Sharpie graffiti — and every single surface of the greyed wood railing was carved with initials and names, the important and necessary proofs of who loved whom at one precise moment in time, and who was exactly right here, at this railing, on May 15, 2019, holding that essential point-down penknife. But at least you could look up and away to the sweeps and hollows of the sand lands, the way they look accidentally peaked and valleyed, yet are precise creations of climate, physics and geometry. Sand, its peaks and slopes set by the unremitting values of the angle of repose of the size and shape of each of its grains. The sand is washed clean — a new slate — when there's a rain, the dimples of raindrops like small shallow dimples or cups, filling in between each other with the randomness of their fall, until they overlap and erase things like footsteps. RUSSELL WANGERSKY / FREE PRESS Park Road in Cypress River, the route the coyotes took. And a thunderstorm had passed through the night before, the very one we heard in the tent trailer, grumbling and flashing along the horizon, but its rainfall had not been heavy enough to reach down into the deepest footprints in soft sand. The dimples had dimpled, but had failed at success erasure. So out on the dunes, on the rail, you could still see a spiderweb of footsteps heading away from the trail in almost any haphazard direction, ample evidence that just as many people ignore the requirement to stay on the trail as actually do take the path. But worse was ahead. Deep in the trail, right where you turn back, once you're confused enough by the straggle of other unofficial trails, you come to a resting spot, a few benches under a sloped roof, and a pair of cables run up a dune face, the cables passing through and attached to logs to make a set of soft stairs on the sand incline. A dune ladder, the least damaging path up the face. There was a family of five at the top of the dune, 30 or 40 feet up, the parents looking away over the vista of the sands with their smartphones, taking pictures, while the kids, maybe 12 to 15, whooped and hollered and climbed the ladder before running across the dune top and then throwing themselves down the face of the dune in long looping sliding strides, rivers of sand rushing away in front of them, breaking up the duneface before heading back to the ladder, picking a fresh untrammelled section of dune, and then doing it all over again. RUSSELL WANGERSKY / FREE PRESS Austin and Maryanne decided to leave their mark on a park railing at the Spirit Sands. Deep gashes left behind won't fill for ages, fragile plant life overrun by individual exuberance. And not a word was said, no remonstration. Half an hour's personal fun that won't be undone for the dunes for months, and for the plants, perhaps ever. Lighten up, old man: it's just kids, being kids. We're out here to have fun. There is garbage in the woods, pop cans and water bottles, and bagged poop-and-scoop doggie bags hanging from occasional branches a short fling away from the path. Weekday Evenings Today's must-read stories and a roundup of the day's headlines, delivered every evening. Someday, maybe the prevailing ethos in our world will not be 'me and mine's fun first before everything.' Maybe it will be 'we all share a responsibility.' Sadly, that time is not now. The sands may still have spirit. RUSSELL WANGERSKY / FREE PRESS Fragile flowers often meet careless hikers at Spirit Sands. Me? Not so much. Russell Wangersky is the Comment Editor at the Free Press. He can be reached at Russell WangerskyPerspectives editor Russell Wangersky is Perspectives Editor for the Winnipeg Free Press, and also writes editorials and columns. He worked at newspapers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Saskatchewan before joining the Free Press in 2023. A seven-time National Newspaper Award finalist for opinion writing, he's also penned eight books. Read more about Russell. Russell oversees the team that publishes editorials, opinions and analysis — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Winnipeg Free Press
25-04-2025
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
The nation? Sorry, but it's not just you
Opinion I wonder sometimes what people are thinking when they argue this country is broken. And sometimes I wonder if what they mean has more to do with the fact they, personally, don't have all the things they feel they deserve. Canada has coasted along well enough for a long time on low interest rates and conspicuous consumption. The ability to borrow beyond your means has meant a huge increase in what people possess, and a corresponding increase in what they think they're owed. Two cars. Vacations in the south. Cruises. RUSSELL WANGERSKY / FREE PRESS If you think Canada is broken, are you doing anything to fix it, or are you just complaining? It's hard to take a guy seriously when he says he's being unfairly financially crushed in Canada when he's fuelling up a $70,000 truck that's never seen a load in the back larger than a spring-cleaning trip to the Brady landfill. It's also worth remembering that, just a generation ago, interest rates on mortgages hit 17 per cent, and there was no chance of anyone successfully carrying such large debts. In my family, those were the hamburger years. Why the hamburger years? Because when my parents were offered a mortgage at 17 per cent, they opted to take out a personal loan guaranteed by the equity they'd managed to build in their house, and pumped every cent they could into paying that loan off as fast as possible. That meant no vacations that weren't camping trips. No purchases of new vehicles. No extravagances. Mom reupholstered furniture that had been thrown out from a university faculty lounge for our living room. She made her own wine — not always good — long before it was a popular pastime. We picked fruit and vegetables at u-picks, and froze them for the winter in repurposed milk cartons. Mom made deals with Nova Scotian farmers, and could be found in the kitchen with her knives, breaking down a half a hog or a beef quarter for the freezer. She even made her own lard. Nothing went to waste. And we ate hamburger — the cheapest possible regular ground beef — at every meal, and in every form, that we possibly could. Hamburgers, of course. Fried meatballs with a core of utility cheddar cheese. Spaghetti sauce with ground meat. Roasted green peppers, filled with rice and hamburger. (There were other food-budgeting near misses, but I won't go into the horrors of sliced beef heart stir-fry, but it happened. More than once.) Eventually, the house was paid off, and hamburger made fewer appearances. All of this is to point out that I think hard times are clearly coming again. It's been a long time, and, as Canadians, I believe we're singularly unprepared for the coming version of the hamburger years. Whatever happens with U.S. tariffs and the mad 'economist' to the south, the one thing that's been injected into our current world is uncertainty. What will Donald Trump do next? What will he decree three months from now? Even if the tariffs were to magically disappear, why would we believe they couldn't reappear just as quickly? With that uncertainty, businesses are likely to retrench: it's hard to invest money into expansion or new plants if the apple cart is going to be overturned on a regular basis. It's probably fair to say a good number of companies are suggesting they'll do certain things just to placate Trump, but in reality will drag their feet on any actual investment for long enough to see if the risk level will diminish. I know I would. The increased costs of tariffs will cost jobs here and in the U.S., and the legitimate needs of the less fortunate will increase. Meanwhile, a block of Canadians will continue to clamour for lower taxes, arguing that the responsibility to pay for the government services and benefits we receive should somehow not fall to those who are actually able to pay. My parents did have some advantages. My father made a good living. House prices were far lower, for certain, but wages were far lower, too. Other things were a little more tangible. My mother's Kenmore washer was remarkably straightforward and ran for more than 25 years, needing only a replacement water pump at one point. The part was easy to find, and the repair was quick and inexpensive. My parents' large chest freezer was purchased when I was a kid, and moved to Victoria with them when they retired. It continued running — located outdoors under the deck in B.C. — until after both their deaths. Now, it's back to the store for new appliances that seem destined to fail before they reach their fifth anniversary. Don't get me started on the streaming service that suddenly declined to stream anything to our television, because the poor old TV wasn't up to the streaming service's picture-quality standard. During Elections Get campaign news, insight, analysis and commentary delivered to your inbox during Canada's 2025 election. The thing is, many of us have been living in a privileged world, made possible by cheap offshore-made products, low tariffs and most of all, easy and inexpensive debt. Common sense says that's not going to be the way things are for the next four years — or more. Oh, and back to the hamburger years for a sec. Things were hard, we didn't always get what we wanted, but we weren't unhappy. We simply didn't miss the things we didn't know about. And now, if we work together, buying Canadian, being careful about what things are needs and what things are luxuries, and most of all doing something that has become fleeting — becoming involved and sharing members of a Canadian community, rather than a loosely-connected group of small universes crying out 'me and my needs first' — I know we can move mountains. Broken things, after all, used to get fixed with ingenuity and care — not simply thrown away. Russell WangerskyPerspectives editor Russell Wangersky is Perspectives Editor for the Winnipeg Free Press, and also writes editorials and columns. He worked at newspapers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Saskatchewan before joining the Free Press in 2023. A seven-time National Newspaper Award finalist for opinion writing, he's also penned eight books. Read more about Russell. Russell oversees the team that publishes editorials, opinions and analysis — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
