The Ottawa Citizen
The Winnipeg Free Press / 'For us not to qualify for any money is just a
joke,' says NDP MP Pat Martin.
Fred Greenslade, The Ottawa Citizen / Artist Dwayne Ball's work represents a
pocket of optimism in Winnipeg's depressed inner city.
Fred Greenslade, The Ottawa Citizen / Darren Lezubski, the senior planner
at the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, has witnessed the deterioration of
his neighbourhood, where now it's even hard to sell a home at the low price of
$18,900.
· Overall crime rates are on the rise; a string of arson attacks in the inner city are unsolved; the number of street gangs is growing. Whether this area's reputation as a crime capital is real or perceived, it has scared people out of the downtown core.
· Just as the crime rates have shot up, so, too, has the jobless rate. With a population of 100,000, Winnipeg Centre's unemployment rate hovers near 13 per cent, double the provincial rate, and one of the highest in Canada. Within the large aboriginal community here, the numbers are even higher. As the once-thriving manufacturing sector dwindles, workers with specific skills are finding it difficult to land jobs elsewhere.
· In spite of the bleak job prospects, the federal government's Human Resources Department has deemed the riding of Winnipeg Centre ineligible for any assistance from its Canada Jobs Fund. In determining where to allocate job-creation grants, the government bases its decision, not on the needs of individual ridings, but the regions in which they sit. The fact that Winnipeg Centre suffers from one of the worst jobless rates in the country makes no difference, because the region as a whole doesn't meet the government's 12-per-cent unemployment threshold. That criterion enrages NDP MP Pat Martin, who represents the riding. "For us not to qualify for any money is just a joke," Mr. Martin says. "There's chronic long-term unemployment."
· According to statistics tabulated by the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, of the roughly 1,600 households in the neighbourhood, a staggering 77 per cent are living in poverty. One-third are aboriginal families.
· Winnipeg Centre is a community where most families are struggling to survive,
· In an interview, Mr. Jacques St. Goddard, a local businessman, said:- "Not everyone has money to start a business. There are lots of people with business ideas, but if the seed money is cut off, then, chances are, they become a statistic," referring to the federal government's denial of job-creation funds to the riding.
FULL STORY:-
The Ottawa Citizen
The Winnipeg Free Press / 'For us not to
qualify for any money is just a joke,' says NDP MP Pat Martin.
Fred Greenslade, The Ottawa Citizen / Artist Dwayne Ball's work represents a
pocket of optimism in Winnipeg's depressed inner city.
Fred Greenslade, The Ottawa Citizen / Darren
Lezubski, the senior planner at the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, has
witnessed the deterioration of his neighbourhood, where now it's even hard to
sell a home at the low price of $18,900.
WINNIPEG - It is Friday night, and downtown
Winnipeg is like a ghost town. A steady flow of traffic goes in and out of The
Times nightclub, but beyond that, Portage Avenue, one of downtown's major
thoroughfares, is eerily silent.
For inner-city police, though, it is a
different story. Just past midnight, a police cruiser pulls up to the detox
centre near Chinatown. A man in his 40s with long, straggly black hair is
brought in and patted down for weapons.
"He was bouncing off the walls out
there," an officer says, adding that the man's fingers nearly froze shut
because of the cold. "I just had four beers," the man mutters, his
slurred response barely audible against the screaming profanities emanating
from behind the detox centre's walls.
Daryl Preisentanz, duty inspector at the
Public Safety Building just down the street, says it has been a busy night for
the hundred or so officers on the street.
"Several minor robberies, couple of
large parties getting out of hand," he says, careful not to inflame
Winnipeg Centre's reputation as one of Canada's crime capitals.
It is easy to understand his reluctance:
Overall crime rates are on the rise; a string of arson attacks in the inner
city are unsolved; the number of street gangs is growing. Whether this area's
reputation as a crime capital is real or perceived, it has scared people out of
the downtown core.
Even downtown hotel clerks make it a habit to
warn guests of places in the city to avoid.
"Don't wear an expensive jacket if
you're going to The Times," a clerk tells a guest. Just west of downtown
on Portage Avenue at the Galaxy Skateland -- Canada's oldest and largest
roller-skating arena -- Andre Atkinson is closing up for the evening. A few
years ago, his arena may have drawn several hundred people on a Friday night.
These days, the number is closer to 150.
But he doesn't blame them. "It's a rough
part of town," he says. "I wouldn't live here. There's more empty
houses, more houses being boarded up, nothing is happening in this area."
Just as the crime rates have shot up, so,
too, has the jobless rate. With a population of 100,000, Winnipeg Centre's
unemployment rate hovers near 13 per cent, double the provincial rate, and one
of the highest in Canada.
Within the large aboriginal community here,
the numbers are even higher. As the once-thriving manufacturing sector
dwindles, workers with specific skills are finding it difficult to land jobs
elsewhere.
But in spite of the bleak job prospects, the
federal government's Human Resources Department has deemed the riding of
Winnipeg Centre ineligible for any assistance from its Canada Jobs Fund.
In determining where to allocate job-creation
grants, the government bases its decision, not on the needs of individual
ridings, but the regions in which they sit. The fact that Winnipeg Centre
suffers from one of the worst jobless rates in the country makes no difference,
because the region as a whole doesn't meet the government's 12-per-cent
unemployment threshold.
That criterion enrages NDP MP Pat Martin, who
represents the riding. "For us not to qualify for any money is just a
joke," Mr. Martin says. "There's chronic long-term
unemployment."
The signs are everywhere, from the Famous
Players theatre on Portage Avenue -- with its marquee that reads: "THANK
YOU FOR YOUR PATRONAGE CLOSED PERMANENTLY" -- to the vacant seven-storey
brick building that housed the Eaton's department store for 95 years.
Indeed, the last real "boom" to hit
this city was during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Back then, Winnipeg was
dubbed the "Chicago of the north" and the "gateway to the
West" because of its role as a rail transportation hub. Today, traces of
that vibrant past are visible in the many turn-of-the-century buildings still
standing, but they are slowly crumbling away.
A number of stock and commodity exchanges
built in that era have been preserved and recognized as national historic
sites, but they are surrounded by an equal number of dilapidated buildings --
targets of squatters and arsonists. "There's a sense of hopelessness, a
real struggle to survive," says Darren Lezubski, a social planner, who has
spent more than 30 years living in the poverty-stricken Spence neighbourhood, a
short distance west of downtown, surrounded by pawn shops and massage parlours.
Returning to Langside Street, where he grew
up, Mr. Lezubski points out how some homes selling for as little as $12,000
still can't find buyers.
"There are second and third generations
of people here dependent on social assistance," he says.
According to statistics tabulated by the
Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, of the roughly 1,600 households in the
neighbourhood, a staggering 77 per cent are living in poverty. One-third are
aboriginal families.
While the number-crunching is easy, the task
of identifying what is driving this rampant and persistent poverty is much more
difficult. What is clear is that there is no single, underlying cause: a
depressed economy, a declining manufacturing sector, lack of government
assistance, reforms to Unemployment Insurance in the mid-1980s.
At the Bell Hotel, on Winnipeg's skid row,
manager Donny Marshall pulls open a filing cabinet drawer full of typed and
hand-written letters to former Tory premier Gary Filmon, whose fiscally
conservative policies he blames for much of the hardship that walks through his
doors everyday.
For many of the city's down-and-out, the
four-storey Bell at the north end of Main Street is one of the few remaining
places of refuge these days. Mr. Marshall estimates that of the 50 tenants in
his building, only about a dozen have some form of employment, mostly doing
casual labour.
Many of them are recovering drug addicts and
alcoholics. Others suffer from a range of mental illnesses. Those without work
while away the hours in the ground-floor pub, living off $40-a-week welfare
cheques.
"These are the poorest of the
poor," says Mr. Marshall, who is not afraid to admit that he has to
administer tough love to his tenants once in a while. "I'm rough because
I've been treated rough," he says.
Robert Marks and his wife, Violet, are two of
Mr. Marshall's newer tenants. After being evicted from their St. James
apartment last year, Mr. Marks lost his $6.50-an-hour job as a security guard
at the St. Boniface General Hospital and suffered a nervous breakdown. He has
not worked since. Violet, who is partially blind, receives an old-age pension
cheque of $700 a month.
But Mr. Marshall does not know whether he can
keep helping people like the Marks. He is struggling to keep up with yearly
operating costs of $125,000, and worries that the Bell Hotel may face a similar
fate to the nearby Savoy Hotel, which closed recently.
The joint city-provincial-federal North Main
Development group, which formed several years ago to revitalize the Exchange
District and skid row, has all but evaporated, mired in political wrangling --
and with little to show for its efforts.
The problem with redevelopment and
revitalization schemes, community leaders say, is that many of the projects
lack the capital and human infrastructure required by developers to proceed.
Yet, all is not bleak in Winnipeg Centre.
There are pockets of optimism in the inner city -- you just have to know where
to look. Tucked away in the basement of the spacious Aboriginal Centre of
Winnipeg (formerly the CPR rail station) on Higgins Avenue, artist Dwayne Ball
chisels away at the bark of a 4.5-metre-long, golden Manitoba Elm, one of the
hardest woods around.
Carved in the West Coast style, this totem
consists of a thunderbird at the top, a warrior with walking stick in the
middle and a beaver at the bottom. Mr. Ball hopes to finish it in time for the
opening of the Neeginan roundhouse across the street, a spiritual gathering
place with a copper roof in the shape of an eagle -- one of the North Main
Development group's successes. Mr. Ball, who learned his craft while serving
time in jail, says he wants to start an apprenticeship program for aboriginal
youth in the community, many of whom, he says, lack a sense of direction. He
was also recently hired by the City of Winnipeg to paint murals for them.
Jacques St. Goddard is also a model of
entrepreneurial spirit. He owns the Canadian Plains Gallery upstairs, and he
chairs the trade committee of the Aboriginal Economic Development council that
is looking at different ways Manitoba can serve as a hub for the exchange of
goods and money between Nunavut and the United States.
"Not everyone has money to start a
business," Mr. St. Goddard says. "There are lots of people with
business ideas, but if the seed money is cut off, then, chances are, they
become a statistic," he says, referring to the federal government's denial
of job-creation funds to the riding.
Mr. St. Goddard, who is also a poet and
photographer, adds that government departments such as HRDC should do more than
just blindly hand out job-creation funds, and assist organization's plan the
best way to use those grants.
Despite their triumphs, Mr. Ball and Mr. St.
Goddard say it is still a "struggle" to make a living doing art.
Living in a community where most families are struggling to survive, it is
perhaps not so ironic that someone who exudes so much forward-thinking as Mr.
St. Goddard, writes poetry that deals with themes of alcoholism, drug addiction
and child abuse. Simply put, Mr. St. Goddard says, "it's about feeling
people's emotions."
Life is too hard and really fast
To live it all inside a cast
Strung right out, my needles hot
In such a world, I chose to rot
With a broken mirror on the floor
A thing of beauty, I am no more
All my dreams, they change on me
Red and black is all I see.
--Excerpt from Cocaine Addiction, Jacques St.
Goddard, 1998