October 2023
whatsupwinnipeg.ca
FAST
DENTURES
204-947-1807 John Einarson puts his prized record collection up for sale
Celebrate the harvest with a German apple cake
The awful fallout of the Covid-19 lockdowns
11
8
3
Experimental lakes are teaching the world thanks in part to our own Michael Paterson
Sumeep Bath, Editorial and Communications Manager, IISD Experimental Lakes Area
Editorial Opinion
Countdown to the vote Why I am voting for Heather Stefanson
O
ne thing I have discovered, since moving here fifteen years ago, is that Winnipeg is certainly a land of wholesome, dedicated and wonderfully earnest folks. Few encapsulate that genre better than Michael Paterson – a Winnipegger for almost five decades and one of driving forces behind IISD Experimental Lakes Area – a truly singular research station just a few hours east of the ‘Peg. Perhaps, first, a primer on IISD Experimental Lakes Area, or the world’s freshwater laboratory. Located in a sparsely populated region of Northwestern Ontario, IISD Experimental Lakes Area are a series of 58 small lakes and their watersheds. At about an hour from Kenora – the closest town – the lakes in that region are mostly unaffected by human impacts. That is why, at the end of the 1960s, when scientists were desperately trying to discover what was causing all those unsightly, and harmful, algal blooms that were plaguing lakes across the continent, some plucky Cau 6 ‘IISD’
Heather Stefanson.
Dorothy Dobbie
Michael Paterson. Photo courtesy of the IISD Experimental Lakes Area.
A century of beauty, love and laughter Muriel (Thickett) Carver turns 100
Dorothy Dobbie
E Muriel (Thickett) Carver.
ighteen months seems like a lifetime when you are 21 years old and in a strange town and a new province, but to Muriel Thickett and her sister Joan, it seemed like a great adventure. Plus, “The wages were good!” said Muriel on the eve of her 100th birthday. Coming from a job at the mental hospital in Portage La Prairie where the work was menial and the wages very
poor, the sisters ere excited to go to Fort William, Ontario, (now Thunder Bay) to work for Canadian Car which was manufacturing military aircraft. “Our job was to file metal very smooth,” said Muriel. “I think the parts were for wings. There was a man, then a woman, then a man on the line.” She and Joan were dedicated employees. They never missed a single day of work nor were they ever late. Their commitment throughout those last desperate days of the war effort was celu 7 ‘Muriel Carver’
I
t is time to make up you mind and vote for heather Stefanson and her team. Never has a decision been so critical and I will tell you why. No, it is not because I think Wab Kinew is a bad leader or an incompetent – we have no way of knowing either and I have heard he is smart, but what I do know is that Heather Stefanson is the right person for the time. For the first time in the last 50 years, I feel that we have a leader who sees the future clearly and understands what it will take for Manitoba to once again realize its potential. We need a reset. We need new blood, new ideas and new enterprise – all the things that made us once the leading province in the west, second and third only to Ontario and Quebec and behind them only because of their greater numbers and longer history. I believe it was the early mixing of heritages that contributed to our early success. The resilience of the local First Nations had so much to overcome living in the hard environment where only the toughest survived, and they passed those skills on to the newcomers. Then the Metis carved a unique way of life out of Manitoba, combining three cultures – First Nations, u 5 ‘Countdown to the vote’
Live the Garden Life all year long with Canada’s Local Gardener by subscribing today!
Check us out at localgardener.net Official English Language Magazine