Tourism in Winnipeg

Tourism is always hit and miss in this province. Travel Manitoba came up with a little buzzworthy four TV ads that emphasized the three things they thought were important. Those things were: Churchill, northern tours, fishing (especially with use of a guide) and Winnipeg.

These ads were set up to present Manitoba to others but they were also shown on TV within the province to present the province to itself. In other words, the biggest tourists are people in the province visiting one another. Show someone in Winnipeg what Churchill is like and they will be the number 1 source of tourists generally.

There is a limited budget each year and past efforts have been mediocre. The government realizes the importance and sets out to support key industries such as fly-in fishing and tours of Churchill. Winnipeg has always been more difficult to capture because cultural images show a world mosaic. It is hard to show the Winnipeg ID, the character of the city, who we are. The television ad shows dragon boat racing on the Red River. Don't know how that says: Winnipeg.

Tourism Winnipeg is obviously focused more on Winnipeg which you'd expect. The City  of Winnipeg tour book is as good as it gets. Top notch all the way. The request page though needed a correction. It said "chok full" rather than "chock full" and I hope it is corrected soon.

There is no doubt the city is trying to position itself a lot better with limited resources. Quite a bit of research is being done. And yet the city has suffered tourism-wise because in the grand scheme of things there has to be compelling attractions for people to want to visit the city.

The Canadian Tourism Commission turned its eyes to Manitoba and brought a hundred plus travel writers to the province for about $300,000. The first articles from that visit are starting to appear in newspapers like the Toronto Star.

Some journalists think travel writing is fluffy or dishonest. Perhaps that's because payment is often involved from the party being reviewed.

Given the cuts to newspaper and magazine budgets, few seem willing to send their reporters off each week to far flung destinations. Yet every major metropolitan newspaper has a travel section. Very willing to accept travel ads, not willing to assign hard news reporters?

I guess the same could be said of home and auto sections of the newspapers. Lots of ads but is there any hard news reporting in there? Is all we see softball in terms of reporting?

That is a debate for another time. Let's just say for now that travel writing is popular and if we can believe the tourism departments, it works.

In the aftermath of the tour of travel writers, we will have see if the articles that result from it see an uptick in the number of visitors.

The Journey Churchill at Winnipeg Zoo, the Human Rights Museum and swimming with belugas in Churchill are new to the province. Manitobans will visit them first in big numbers but their long term future depends on visitors from all over to survive.

Most of Winnipeg's greatest tourism attractions are cultural. The mountains and the ocean don't exist in a river valley. While the natural attraction Winnipeg does have can be emphasized, they don't hold a candle to the city's people and culture. That is hard to capture in pictures compared to Vancouver by the mountains and sea or Toronto by the lake.

Ultimately what becomes a national and international tourist attractions in Winnipeg are things the people in the city have done for themselves. The examples abound from Folklorama, the Folk Festival, Rainbow Stage and The Forks. As good as those are, it is hard to capture iconic pictures of it to sell the masses beyond Manitoba's borders.

The travel writers who recently visited our city now have the iconic pictures of people inside a tube watching polar bears above them. They have the distinctive Human Rights Museum that looks different from most buildings on the planet and further afield, they have pictures of people swimming with belugas.

They say a picture says a thousand words...those pictures from this past trip of travel writers are probably worth at least $300,000.

Let's see if those pictures result in millions more being in Winnipeg and beyond.

British Tourists in Winnipeg

Manitoba Legislature

Where does a British tourist go when they visit Winnipeg? A while back, we had a travel reporter from Australia arrive and he was taken with the Osborne Village. He didn't want to see places such as a museum. Not everyone does.

Still, there is no denying that people love to go to a place that defines the people, tells a story or is just plain fun.

I think it is fair to say we don't have a killer category for destination travel. By that I mean Winnipeg does not have places like West Edmonton Mall, Las Vegas casinos, Wisconsin Dells or a NFL or Major League Baseball team Like Minnesota Vikings and Minnesota Twins.

In truth, even if we wanted to make the Winnipeg Jets a major tourist attraction, it would be hobbled for large masses of travellers due to the fact that the team is sold out year after year.

Winnipeg's best tourist draw is usually families visiting family here, convention business and those travelling across Canada. That's okay. We are not building Disney here and a major attempt by government to try to replicate that would simply fail.

What the government can and should do is make sure that we satisfy the needs and wants of out our own people in the province and this in turn will likely be attractive to people visiting as well.

And so it goes with things like The Forks and the Manitoba Legislature. The attraction of both are obvious to us and it is something that draws tourists when they arrive. And now with the presence of tours of the Manitoba Legislature, we are appealing to those who love a little bit of mystery on their lives.

The Independent from Britain is a solid newspaper that is a serious newspaper with a flourish for good writing. They don;t do too many travel story from Canada but they did do this one on Winnipeg.

The writer finds the city to be filled with:

Winnipeg – is full of unusual temptations.

After taking in meal with a local flavour at Fude, the next place our intrepid travel writer from Britain went to was the Manitoba Museum.

To get a handle on this – and other complexities of Manitoba's history – the museum is definitely the place to start. And, with a diorama for every era, pride of place goes to a full-size replica of the Nonsuch, the impossibly tiny ketch that in 1668 made the first trading voyage into Hudson Bay. The 12 souls who braved this Arctic crossing were not after bison (or buffalo), however, but mink, muskrat, beaver and the other luxuriantly pelted creatures of the north whose fur fetched a pretty price back in Europe. It was on the fur trade that the Hudson Bay Company – and, ultimately, Canada itself – was founded.

 After learning more about the history, he heads to The Forks and St. Boniface.

Today, this spot is known as The Forks. "People have been meeting here for 6,000 years," says my guide Chris Thomas as, decked out in 19th-century settler threads and wicker shoulder basket, he leads me on Parks Canada's "6,000 years in 60 minutes" tour. Chris's colourful stories bring to life the ancient indigenous rituals and bloody settler skirmishes.

Today, however, the Forks is a more tranquil spot, all sunbathing picnickers and organic food stalls. A unique "Naked-Eye Observatory" celebrates indigenous cultures worldwide in towering wrought-iron sculptures around a huge sundial. Beyond, a busy construction site will become Canada's museum of human rights, due to open in 2013. A statue of Gandhi stands nearby, looking impatient.

A stroll across the Esplanade Riel bridge takes me into St Boniface. Louis Riel was the father of the Métis and founder of Manitoba. The battle for his people's rights eventually led to his execution in 1885 and makes him a folk hero. Today, St Boniface remains predominantly francophone and is home to most of the city's Métis community. Behind the monumental façade of the original basilica I find the modern cathedral, where stunning stained glass friezes depict biblical scenes in pop-art Modernism. Mary, I notice, is Métis.

And to cap it off, he visits the Manitoba Legislature.

I spend my final evening creeping through the corridors of the Manitoba Legislative Building. Built between 1913 and 1920 by British architect Frank Worthington Simon, this grand edifice is the ultimate monument to Winnipeg's good times. My guide is local author Frank Albo, whose bestselling Hermetic Code unlocks a world of occult mystery smuggled into the architecture. "Everything is hidden in plain view," he tells our wide-eyed tour group, as he reveals Masonic codes, hieroglyphic inscriptions and an intriguing hotchpotch of Christian and pagan symbolism.

All in all, a tourist hitting some of the most attractive things about the city. 

It is what I expect a lot of people from Winnipeg would think of when showing people around.

There are many times of tourists. There are those that come to the city for shopping, those for sports and those for culture. There are those here for conventions, others for family gatherings. 

What will be important in attracting people has to be attractive to us as well. The Forks is a case in point. It has evolved, grown, spread out and it is appealing to most people in the city. The place has become a destination.

It is hard to say if Winnipeg will ever have a destination that draws people globally. It is the strangest thing about how some areas grab attention. Prince Edward Island and the Anne of Green Gables story comes to mind as Japanese make the pilgrimage every year to see the home of Red Haired Anne.

It is best not to create something artificial. Always and forever, the litmus test for creating something ought to be: What will Winnipeggers want and what do they need?

To that end, let's have that discussion and see where it takes us.

More Spending on Human Rights Museum

I'm a bit surprised that this has gone by without notice by more people.

The NDP Premier Greg Selinger has indicated that the Human Rights Museum at The Forks may be in line for more provincial money. Well, of course it is. No one ever locked down the costs of this thing going up and it seems no matter what the cost, it will be covered.

Many in Manitoba have already been very generous in donating privately and everyone else in Manitoba has donated through their taxes. However, the costs always seem to be a moving target. Selinger has asked private donors to dig deeper but has acknowledged the government will have to pick up the slack.

There are so many of these critical spending projects that the NDP government has committed to, it is starting to look like they will never get a handle on the deficit.

The museum might one day be a very good place to visit but how long will it take Manitobans take to pay for this and other projects?

It seems something is lost in having a human rights museum of renown when the place that hosts it struggles to get a handle on the borrowing that took to build it.

The museum has faced a lot of criticism as of late but one of the biggest sticking points is that the costs seem to be in flux at all times. Ultimately, the museum is a federal institution but so much of the costs of the place are being borne by the Manitoba taxpayer.

Ikea

Well, it has finally happened.

Ikea is coming to Winnipeg.

It will be one of the largest stores in Canada at 350,000 square feet. It will anchor as major tenant in an even larger 1.5 million square foot development.

The site is where the former CN Intermodal Terminal once called home. It was the bane of my existence for many years as each time I came home from work, I would face a long line of trains.

We finally have an underpass after the Waverley one was cancelled by Mulroney in the 1980s.

I like Ikea. Unlike some of the snobbery I have heard in some quarters, I think their presence is a good one. They are a tourist attraction and offer unique furniture.

The location is big enough for them and will accelerate much needed work on Kenaston which needs work with the construction of Waverley West moving ahead quickly.

When the Kapyong Barracks gets redeveloped, we are going to see Kenaston is ill equipped to handle the flow. The work is needed now and more will be needed as traffic continues to increase.

Funny, how two of the biggest tourist attractions announce their plans in the same week. Harper will be in Winnipeg on Friday to put shovels in the ground for the Human Rights Museum.



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