Manitoba Museum Expansion

The Canadian Human Rights Museum has been getting all the glory, the budget and the capital investment from private donors and government but the Manitoba Museum has announced a $160 million plan as Manitoba's 150 birthday looms.

The first stage of the building is an expansion of Alloway Hall to just under 10,000 feet to bring in larger touring museum programs like the recently completed Real Pirates! The closure of the 20,000 square foot MTS Exhibition Hall showed Winnipeg just how many shows out there we could get with the right sized space. The space needed for a museum tour might be smaller though. Still can't help thinking it would have been better to go with an extra 10,000 square feet.

Five years ago, I practically begged for a new science museum for our 150 birthday. I looked longingly at the parking lot north of the museum and suggested a connecting tunnel. Now, it appears the major aspect of the museum expansion will be a $100 million science gallery on that very parking lot.

The $100 million pricetag is about right. The Science Museum of Minnesota was built in 1999 for $99 million. It is a gorgeous building but it was built with flaws and now requires $26 million of water damage repairs. Manitoba can't afford to have those type of mistakes. The exhibits the Minnesota Museum has are outstanding and one can imagine how successful such a gallery would in Winnipeg.

Science Gallery part of Museum Expansion

The $5.3 million Alloway Hall expansion will just be the first part of what we actually see of the museum work. So much else is in the planning stage and the sources of funding still not announced. The province announced $10 million for the the $16 million initial phase.

Close up of future Science Gallery

The timetable and other funds beyond 2020 are yet to be determined. Hopefully, it won't have to wait till Manitoba's 200th birthday.

The Manitoba Museum's yearly budget is just a fraction of what the Human Rights Museum. Ballpark is $4 million versus $20 million. Still, the provincial museum punches above its weight class. It is time for a big capital project to ensure the museum continues to do what it does best which is entertain, inform, preserve and educate.

Freeloading at City Hall

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

The empty civic parkade begged the question: Where did those displaced find parking spaces?

I had heard of some councillors getting rental space in the very tiny Centennial Centre indoor parking. Other councillors found space at the Bedford Parkade two blocks away on King Street. Many staff had to take a commuter bus from the Centennial Library even further away.

The Centennial Centre was renovated as recently as 2010. I can find no listing of how many spaces are there but I can't imagine it is more than a hundred. And most of the those spaces are allocated already to provincial employees of either the Museum or Concert Hall.

The mayor and a few councillors managed to get space there. The rest managed to find spots in the recently built five floor parkade at King Street (There is also a heated underground part of the lot).

I'll bet city councillors would have never bet they would need the Bedford Parkade this badly when they gave it $1.5 million three years ago. The parkade also got $500,000 for CentreVenture. This created 160 parking spaces in a building the city had allowed to fall apart in years previous.

The Civic Parkade was a 450 stall parkade. The Centennial Centre's possible 100 and Bedford's 160 stalls barely scratch the surface of what was lost.

The Grain Exchange Parkade has around 270 spaces but that has a lot of stalls spoken for by the Portage and Main crowd and it isn't exactly that close to City Hall. Nor would it be appropriate for city police cars.

The police and some city fleet vehicles have had to take over the space on James Avenue for the 134 cars they have lost space for. There is also an underground component to the Civic Parkade that is used for an undisclosed amount of police cars. I am still not sure what the structural integrity of that underground portion is.

How did we get here?

It was years of a tax freeze and taking money from the parking authority to balance budgets without fixing city owned infrastructure. The fire sale auction of the Winnipeg Square Parkade is directly related to the city's need for money and not wanting to invest in upgrading the lot.

And are we talking about what will happen next? No.

The budget is passed and I assume that what we are waiting for is the police to move to their new building on Graham Avenue. At that point, maybe some hard questions will come in regards to what to do with Public Safety Building and the Civic Parkade.

It has been pointed out the land must remain public and the city has no right to sell it off. Once the police go, the buildings are likely to be cost a lot to maintain as we have seen from the Kapyong Barracks debacle.

Ultimately, the decision to do something will have to come down to council.  If they were even more inconvenienced, that decision might be sooner. But how inconvenienced are they? A heated spot at Centennial and underground walkway to council is not bad. A little more inconvenient at Bedford Parkade but perhaps a little less bitter in the underground heated part.

A bus trip from Centennial Library daily would probably have resulted in an emergency meeting and a budget of tens of millions for a new parkade.

In some cases, free loaders have the best space in town.

JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

The Free Press picture of Phil Sheegl is the inevitable conclusion of the question of where are city officials parking now.

It is hard to believe that no one considered it. Or more likely they didn't care or figured it would not be important enough for people to care. How anyone thought parking permanently at a loading dock made good business sense, political sense or safety sense is beyond me.

I am sure the reaction from the top official is suck a lemon.

There are 450 parking spaces no longer in place for City Hall campus. If Joe or Jane Citizen need to do business with civic officials, they are fresh out of luck for spots close by. It isn't good enough telling people to use public transit. One day we might have that type of public transportation system but that day isn't here yet.

It is highly likely that if the Public Safety Building and Civic Parkade come down that we will see at least a $50 million structure.

The Tecumseh Parkade completed in 2009 cost $40 million at Health Science Centre.

Tecumseh Parkade at HSC

You can bet that we won't hear this bitter pill till after the next city election. However, a decision will have to made when people here it costs hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions to keep the decaying ruins of these buildings up.

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.

List Time - Arts, Culture and Entertainment

Here is a list of what I thought were major achievements in arts, culture and entertainment this year.

1. The Winnipeg Art Gallery announced a major expansion of their gallery. Not only is the art gallery an architectural treasure but it is the foremost exhibitors of Inuit art. It has been a good year for the gallery with an amazing painting donated, some great exhibits and now the expansion.

2. Le Cercle Molière’s new théâtre opened in October. Canada's oldest theatre on Provencher Boulevard gets the street presence that it richly deserves and the venue to continues presenting French plays and culture.

3. Plug-In Art Gallery and the University of Winnipeg get together for a major presence of a well know gallery onto Portage Avenue and and a continued expansion of the university eastward to downtown.

4. Astron 6, a moviemaking collective from Winnipeg markets itself in Toronto and lands a film deal for Father's Day, a horror film put together by famed studio Troma of Toxic Avenger fame. Look for these guys for more films over the years.

5. Manitoba Theatre Centre get a royal designation from Queen Elizabeth. The continued strong showing year after year for Canada's first regional theatre deserves a salute.

6. Manitoba Museum wins international award for Beneath the Seas and hosts a retrospective of Manitoba rock, country, folk and French language music in Alloway Hall.

7. The Great Canadian Talk Show is cancelled by Kick FM at the behest of Red River College. The timing after the civic election is suspect.

8. Oldies rock station is killed on CFRW and becomes 1290 Sports Radio, the second time in a number of years sports radio tries to make a go of it in Winnipeg. Not to be outdone, Curve 94 FM kills their alt-pop music format and goes oldies as Fab 94.

9. Bachman and Turner go back on the road. Randy Bachman and Fred Turner might not be in overdrive but they are back to making rock music on tour across Canada.

10. ITV Brandon goes off the air. After the death of CKX in Brandon, it looked like the only alternative to the print media was ITV Brandon. Now it too has gone off the air.

Manitoba 150 - Winnipeg 150

Science Museum of London, England

I just finished reading One Man Committee's idea of a city museum for Winnipeg's 150th birthday in 2024. I fully support the idea.

I'm glad he likes the idea I had for the Manitoba to have a dedicated science museum. I have been advocating it for a bit and I did notice in the last months that the Free Press mentioned it in passing as well.

The Manitoba Museum presently has the science gallery. I believe the province should have a full science museum rather than just the one gallery. The present science gallery's 6000 square feet was renovated in 2007 and is quite good but the merits of a full science museum cannot be denied. Just off the top of my head, there could be galleries on a variety of sciences and technologies that have been important to Manitoba historically.

I'd hate to lose the old science gallery but it certainly can be moved to a new building. The same cannot be said for the planetarium. If a new science museum is built with a connecting tunnel, the planetarium should be part its mandate. The 6000 square feet of the present science gallery could be used for other uses, not the least of which could be a full museum shop that replace the embarrassingly small shop in the lobby outside the Manitoba Museum.

The 4000 square foot Alloway Hall could be continued to be used for temporary exhibits of the Manitoba Museum.

As has been pointed out by the Free Press, the 22,000 square feet of MTS Exhibition Hall across from the MTS Centre is just the right size to attract big travelling science shows. However, it is temporary.

Any new science museum should have at least 20 to 25,000 feet of space to host these big touring events.

If Winnipeg is lucky, it might have a museum of the the same level that we see London or closer to home in Minneapolis.



Now, in terms of what we should see for a Winnipeg Museum, I open the hall to suggestions!