Wel­come to Win­nipeg, Man­i­toba ! This week, I’ve been sent halfway across the coun­try for some teach­ing train­ing. Yep, my very first busi­ness trip… So I found myself in a plane won­der­ing what the hell I was doing there — pretty much the story of my life.

Okay, I did NOT lie about all my trav­els, but I have to be hon­est : except for vis­it­ing my fam­ily in France once a year, I hadn’t trav­elled much these last two years. The though of going almost 2 000 km from Ottawa was a bit scary since I didn’t know exactly where and why I was going.

On top of that, I landed in Win­nipeg Mon­day evening in the mid­dle of a storm :

Land­ing In Winnipeg

Arriv­ing in such bad weather was a bit creepy. And empty hotel rooms are creepy as well, espe­cially when trav­el­ing alone. I was in sur­vival mode. The city looked strange to me : wide roads but no free­ways, bunch of peo­ple hang­ing out out­side build­ings, drugs and no rock’n’roll. I had never real­ized how “clean” was Ottawa.

For­tu­nately, Tues­day was much bet­ter. I walked to The Forks, one of Winnipeg’s land­mark, by the Red River and The Assini­boine. From there I had a good view of Winnipeg’s sky­line (if it can be called a sky­line…) The city down­town is very spread out and some parts of the city almost look aban­doned. Hello, hello, is there any­body in there ? Did every­one run away from the cold winters ?

The Forks

Win­nipeg Skyline

From there, I crossed the foot­bridge over­look­ing the Red River to go to Saint Boni­face, the old French dis­trict. Nope, I didn’t hear any French.

When I first arrived for the train­ing, the staff totally freaked out when they learned I was French. “Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t have any­body speak­ing French here !” “Wait a sec­ond, I think Kelly took French in Junior High, let’s get her” “She’s out of town for the week, what are we gonna do ?”

Noth­ing. You won’t do any­thing cause I can speak Eng­lish. I felt like the lan­guage police from Ottawa vis­it­ing ! Yes, there’s a lan­guage bat­tle in Canada but I’m not part of it. If you speak French, we speak French. If you speak Eng­lish, we speak Eng­lish. Lan­guage is a mean of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to me, not a polit­i­cal battle.

And they relaxed. And so did I.

Bridge

[ Red River And Assiniboine

I spent a while at the Forks, where I grabbed some­thing to eat in the indoor mar­ket. “Friendly Man­i­toba” as the license plates say… well, peo­ple are friendly. Ottawa is all about pol­i­tics and secur­ing a good steady job in gov­ern­ment, but Win­nipeg is far more relaxed and casual.

The Forks Market

Man­i­toba Train

The next day, I walked to the Leg­isla­tive Build­ings, all the way down Broad­way Avenue. Gosh, I can never esti­mate dis­tances right on a map. Grow­ing up in Europe in a city I could cross in 30 min­utes top, I really never got used to the North Amer­i­can scale.

Leg­isla­tive Buildings

Leg­isla­tive Build­ings Grounds

And I explored the down­town, around Main & Portage. I loved the tall build­ings and the busy atmos­phere, the free­dom of walk­ing unknown streets, the anonymity. Every­thing was fresh and new to me. I’m sick of Ottawa. My spirit is cry­ing for leaving.

Down­town Winnipeg

Build­ing Reflection

I flew back to Ottawa a few days later… on my way to another trip, in Toronto.

Fly­ing Over Winnipeg

Related arti­cles:

1. Mod­ern Montréal
2. Ottawa At Dusk
3. Down­town Toronto
4. The 416 Escape
5. Woman On Top