Where is it?

Every now and again I like to pretend that I am going to be healthy. This most recent time had me scouring the City webpage to find out where their fitness centers and pools are. That is the first problem - not easy at all to find on their homepage.

 Scrolling down, it seems like it might be under the "Activities and Recreation" section.

Nope.







So then I thought I would use their drop down menu that is probably there to make things easy... Well, I could get to it from there but it's not super clear as you can only get to it by selection "Community Centres" - which to me is not quite the same thing - but at least it takes me to a page with a menu in the left column that will take me where I want to go.

Once I finally found the page (also available after multiple clicks on the "Residents" tab) I started looking at my options.

One of them is the Eldon Ross Pool, which, according to the Homepage for this pool, it is located in the North End.

Nope. Not even a little bit. It is definitely on the wrong side of the tracks to even be remotely considered the North End. But, there is the helpful link to the "now" (Neighbourhoods of Winnipeg) tab! Ah yes, it is in the Brooklands Neighbourhood.

 I didn't bother to look at all of their listings, perhaps this is the only error. My guess would be that it's not, but last time I checked, this gig is a volunteer one (that occasionally gets me invites to events that have food. I like food). *EDIT* I went and looked, at least one other is wrong. It lists the North Centennial Pool as being in Point Douglas (and the "now" map says Dufferin).

But I guess I'm just curious as to how it ever got listed as being in the North End in the first place?? If the people doing our City website don't even know the boundaries of the common names given to the large areas of town perhaps it's no wonder that the media don't either. Haha, kidding, I totally expect them to know. For those of you not from Winnipeg, the North End has a very very very clear boundary to the south, a ginormous rail yard, this pool is most certainly to the south of that.

I've tried to figure it out, maybe they labeled it according to City Council wards? That could explain why North Centennial is listed as Point Douglas... oh wait, but Eldon Ross is still not in the North End (as there is no North End ward), nor does a Grant Park ward exist for the Pan Am pool as it is listed as being in. Maybe we are talking Provincial boundaries on the City website? Nope that doesn't fit either.

Basically, TL:DR - someone dropped the ball and the City of Winnipeg website needs some fine tuning!

Completely unrelated to anything

I have a fear of single toilet handicap-accessible bathrooms. Like the ones at Subway and the Timmies "downtown" in Portage La Prairie. Yes, I know this is a departure from my regular complaining about everyone blaming the North End for everything and other such Winnipeg things but I needed to get it out there.

My office renovated a few months ago and now we have a nice big wheelchair friendly bathroom. Now, obviously I'm not actually against toilets being functional for those with mobility issues but why oh why must they be designed in such a way that if the door doesn't lock properly that someone could very easily catch you doing your business??? They are purposely designed to have the toilet far away from the door - there is no way to thrust your arm out and stop the door from opening!

I think it should be mandatory for these bathrooms to have a secondary lock system like one of those little slidey thingies, basically something that goes into a slot that I can visually verify that the door is indeed secure. Why don't I just double check when I go into these types of bathrooms you ask? Well, first of all, they all have the simple push button type lock rather than a twisty one (I hope I'm not losing you readers with all my technical terms like slidey and twisty...) and this is so that folks who don't have good dexterity can easily use them. Which means that if you try to check it, you are basically going to unlock it.

The other problem is, and the Timmies in Portage referenced earlier has this problem, is that if for some reason the door doesn't close completely (even though it seems like it's closed, I mean, I know how to use a door!) then "locking" the door by pushing in the little button doesn't do a lick of good because the catch isn't engaged properly. Thankfully, my paranoia caused me to discover this flaw before someone discovered me.

So, I therefore call for a secondary lock system, completely optional to use, for those who want that extra bit of security. Or if someone can at least put one in on my work bathroom that would be appreciated :)

**********

A quick note related to my usual rants...Today a Winnipeg family has lost their home in a fire. I'm not sure yet what they might need but I hope Winnipeggers reach out to them once we find out. The CBC, like most of the media outlets in town covered this story.  I appreciate that they left "North End" out of the headline, because for those that get their news by only reading the headlines I'm sure the reaction would have been a typical one along the lines of "must be arson", "it's the North End, it's always on fire anyway, who cares" and so on. Now, of course, it did technically happen in the North End, so I couldn't have faulted them even if they had chosen to use the neighbourhood name in the headline, but I truly believe little things like this make a difference to how the rest of Winnipeg perceives us.

If this post seems familiar...

Update 21/5/13: Since CBC hasn't bothered to change their misleading headline I was still able to get a screenshot today and add it to this post. I know they have received several emails (mine included) alerting them to the confusing use of "north end".

It would be because I wrote virtually the same one the other day. Is there someone new over at the CBC? Someone who has no idea how Winnipeg refers to its neighbourhoods? CBC has a story about a dog poisoning on their website that they seem to have had trouble figuring out where exactly it happened and instead resorted to a not-so-generic neighbourhood section of the city  Global knew that it was West Kildonan.

Screen shot of the CBC story

Winnipeg has a neighbourhood that goes by the name "North End". Which means that if you would like to talk about something that happened in the north part of the city you either need to mention the specific neighbourhood (either one of the 236 unique neighbourhoods or one of the two dozen or so more commonly used names) or say something like "on the north side of Winnipeg". Not capitalizing "north end" although technically from what I recall about writing does make it not about the North End, the neighbourhood, no one is going to make that differentiation. Especially if you opt to only use it when you mention something negative.

The Winnipeg Free Press published a great piece by Kevin Chief over the weekend that was an excellent summation of how many of us choose to see the North End. Of course, most of the city doesn't see our potential and our triumphs. Many Winnipeggers, and even Canadians, associate the North End with only things that are negative, like poverty, crime, and despair. I would be foolish to try to pretend that these things don't exist here, perhaps even in slightly higher doses than other parts of the city, but it shouldn't define us.

So, in Winnipeg, whether you say north end or North End, people think of the same place. A quick glance of the CBC website shows me that they haven't adopted some new policy of simply breaking the city into 4 - north, south, east and west - other articles mention specific neighbourhoods. So why, whenenver (okay, current whenever is based on the sinkhole story and this one - I don't have the time to go back and search for more errors - one is too many!) it's a negative story are they just skipping the step of finding out where it actually happened and blaming it on the north end?

With the recent murders in Charleswood (notice the CBC didn't call it the south end) I read many articles and saw mentions on social media that found neighbours to talk about how "things like this shouldn't happen in a nice neighbourhood like Charleswood" and so on. Newsflash: murder shouldn't happen in ANY neighbourhood. People in inner-city neighbourhoods are still mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and friends. No one deserves to be killed, so stop acting so superior people.

As an aside, thank you to the many media folks who have taken the time to watch what you write by knowing your neighbourhoods and mentioning street names and addresses rather than SCREAMING NORTH END and in an indirect way, helping to tone down the hate for the North End.