If you’re older than about 35 years and you come from Winnipeg, you will remember melodically singing “Halloween Apples!” at your neighbour’s door in hopes of receiving candy on Halloween night. A tradition that began in Winnipeg and spread across the prairies.
THREAD 1 of 7 Winnipeg’s two great department stores may have been the origin of the “Halloween Apples” tradition. Their earliest reference in the Winnipeg Free Press comes in 1904. A Hudson’s Bay advertisement selling “apples, fruits, nuts and confectionery” for holiday treats.
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Opinion piece written by “Ray Kohanik from Winnipeg” in response to my recent column about Winnipeg spending a billion dollars to widen a road. So many issues with it, I feel the need to reply back.
Ray, if you’re out there.
- THREAD -
winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analys… I’m glad we agree that we would be spending generational money to not reduce congestion, but I did write a paragraph on why the feds and province will likely not be cost sharing the project. It’s been rejected twice in 8 years. What’s different the third time around?

Had lunch at the Marlborough Hotel this week - a hidden gem in downtown Winnipeg. Its Gothic architecture built to the street looks like something you'd find in Chicago. A beautiful building with a colourful history. 

- A THREAD - 1/13 - The hotel’s story began with four Italian immigrants who ran a vegetable stand at Portage and Smith at the turn of the century. After a fire in 1912 cleared a block of buildings behind the shop, they pooled their money to buy the land and realize a dream of opening a hotel. 2/13

Downtown Winnipeg’s last commercial movie theatre is gone for good. For sale signs up on Towne 8 - the theatre I always went to. Was an important community node and a place for inner city kids and residents. Heartbreaking to see another piece of the downtown neighbourhood lost. A fun fact about the Towne Theatre. It was Canada’s first theatre with eight screens. It had 1,800 seats (which had just been replaced)

These are called ‘Strawberry box houses’. 50,000 of them were built across Canada by the federal government to provide affordable housing for workers and returning veterans after WWII. Small houses (900sf) on small lots. Could this be an affordable housing solution for today? In 1946 the Wartime Housing Corporation became CMHC and more than one million ‘Victory Houses’ were built across Canada between 1946 and 1960. The houses used prefabrication techniques, simple materials and consistent floor plans to make construction affordable.

65 years ago, the first A&W restaurant in Canada opened on Portage Avenue in Winnipeg, its first international outlet. A&W had been in operation since 1919 in the US, making it the oldest fast food chain in North America. - a thread - Capitalizing on a growing car culture, the first Canadian A&W opened in a Winnipeg suburb in 1956 as a Drive-in style restaurant with carhop service. It was the template for more than 200 locations that would open over the next 10 years in towns and suburbs across the country.

Enjoyed a few days wandering around Calgary this week.
A few thoughts….
First.
This is the best block in the city. Awesome Mid-century Modernist buildings on both sides. Elveden Centre is still my favourite building in Calgary. Love the old Ramada too.
Thread: 1/19 TELUS Sky Apartments, designed by @BjarkeIngels is a beautiful addition to Calgary’s skyline. It reveals itself from so many different places and has a unique expression from every vantage point. 2/19

Let’s talk about slip lanes, those right turn lanes that prioritize vehicle speed over safety. As drivers enter slip lanes their eyes are most often looking down the street, searching for an opening in traffic not straight ahead where pedestrians and cyclists may be crossing 1/12 Slip lanes put people into spots that are the hardest for drivers to see, and encourage drivers not to slow down when approaching a crosswalk—the precise moment they should be the most careful. Does this condition feel like it was designed to be safe for pedestrians? 2/12

Inspired by @WestEndCassidy's MUST READ blog, went on a treasure hunt bike ride this weekend to find the little old buildings that were once Safeway grocery stores, hidden on local streets across Winnipeg. A lost part of the city’s DNA. Thread 1/14
westenddumplings.blogspot.com/2010/03/safewa… Winnipeg was the first city in Canada to have Safeway grocery stores. The company built 8 identical stores that all opened on October 18, 1929.
Amazingly 5 of the buildings still exist. 2/14
110 Sherbrook (store #1)
247 Lilac
535 Osborne
719 St. Matthews
595 Broadway

Went out to see what types of retail businesses are being hurt the most by Winnipeg’s new Code Red ‘lockdown’ regulations.
The most striking image was Costco’s 730 stall parking lot almost completely full. No lineup to get inside. 1/8 The parking lot at Home Depot looked like it does on Boxing Day. 2/8

My column today. Four National Historic Sites that can fill a summer ‘staycation’ with lasting memories and bring a new appreciation for Manitoba’s varied and often under appreciated architectural history. @TravelManitoba
winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/column… Did you know there’s a building in northern Manitoba that began construction almost 300 years ago, making it the oldest building west of Montreal. Fort Prince of Wales.

Here’s a fun NFB Vignette about it.

Went for a bike ride to find Winnipeg’s oldest trees. McBeth Park in West Kildonan is the oldest remaining stand of native trees in the city. Riding through it is like entering a set from Lord of the Rings. Felt like some of the trees were going to start talking. This Cottonwood in McBeth Park is thought to be the largest tree in Winnipeg. It is 35 meters (115’) tall. It is as tall as a 12 storey apartment building currently being built on Broadway.

There’s a little known remnant of an important part of Winnipeg’s history still standing on Clare Avenue in the Riverview neighbourhood. This yellow house rising above its neighbours was once the superintendent’s building of River Park. The last standing piece of the park. 1/8 Winnipeg Street Railway Company wanted to run electric streetcars instead of horse drawn, but City Hall thought they would be dangerous and only allowed them outside of downtown. The Park Line running down Osborne Street became the first electric streetcar in Canada in 1891. 2/8

I took a look back through the @WinnipegNews archives to see what life was like in Winnipeg during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. So much of it is strikingly familiar and could be lifted off those old pages and reprinted today.
– a very long thread (I know you have time) 1/50 At first the local news was watching in disbelief as headlines from other places showed a devastating pandemic sweeping across the world. First on another continent and then to the eastern United States. Like today, New York was a hot spot reporting 25,000 cases in a few weeks.

Thread about vehicle emissions from the TV show NOVA:

If the carbon coming from the tailpipe of a car was a solid instead of a gas, it would create the equivalent of emptying a 5 pound bag of charcoal briquettes on the ground, every 25 miles, or one gallon of gas consumed. 1/6 The average car is driven a distance of 12,000 miles annually, releasing over one ton of carbon per year. The equivalent of emptying 400 five pound bags of charcoal briquettes on the ground. 2/6

A thread about an interesting theory called Marchetti’s Constant. I learned this from my friend @SwansonAnders - It is a great conversation starter for your next party. Marchetti’s Constant is the idea that the maximum time people are willing to commute is about 1 hour per day. Throughout history as our means of transportation have sped up, instead of traveling less each day we travel further, but the average time has stayed constant.