I’ve done my research to figure out what city council candidate I should vote for in the upcoming election now it’s time to figure out which school trustee candidate I should support. It wasn’t really that easy to find out which of the nine Winnipeg wards I live in but thanks to the maps on the Winnipeg 1 school division site I figured out I live in Ward 6. Our former school trustee Cathy Collins isn’t running this time but thanks to the Open Democracy Manitoba website I was able to find out that Rey Sangalang and Jennifer Chen are both candidates.
Jennifer Chen is the mother of two young children who came to Canada in 2009. She wants the voices of all families to be heard at the school board table. Ms. Chen has a masters degree and her thesis focused on the health and well-being of communities. She is active in numerous community organizations. She has been campaigning since August and talking to as many people in our ward as she can to find out what their concerns and hopes and ideas are.
Ms. Chen knows parents would like better gang and drug abuse prevention resources, more support for newcomer and refugee children, safer walks to school, more help for children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and after school progamming to keep kids away from negative influences. Jennifer wants to help grow math, literacy and science knowledge for kids and improve their health through more robust physical education programming.
She recognizes the economic, cultural and ethnic diversity of Ward 6. It includes indigenous families whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years as well as refugee families who have just arrived in Canada. She would like to build bridges between the many diverse communities in our ward. She sees her role as a school trustee as an important and long term commitment and believes it is time for some changes in the way school boards operate. Julie takes the campaign seriously. She has a Facebook page and website that provide important information about her qualifications and policies.
Rey Sangalang is the other trustee candidate in Ward 6. As of my writing this he had not yet filled out the candidate questionairre on the Winnipeg Election website . He does not have a website of his own where one can easily access information about him. However when I sent a request for information to the e-mail address on his online poster he quickly responded.
Rey Sangalang immigrated to Canada from the Philippines in 1994 and has three children. He and his wife are very active in a Catholic Church program called Worldwide Marriage Encounter. They were the Asian coordinators for the program that offers support to couples to strengthen their marriages and family life. Currently Mr. Sangalang works as a consituency assistant for MLA Flor Marcelino. He is active in numerous community organizations.
Mr. Sangalang would like to see more collaboration between parents, students and teachers and advocates involving grandparents in the school community as well. He would like to see an aggressive cultural and physical education program in schools and hopes schools will be welcoming to refugees and immigrants and help them speedily integrate into Canadian culture. He thinks every school should offer early learning and child care services.
On Friday my friend Esther and I paid a visit to the Amsterdam Tea Room just beside Old Market Square at the heart of the Exchange District. I had been there before for tea but never for a meal. As the name of the restaurant indicates there is a distinctly Dutch flavor to the menu items. 
I had a vegetable sandwich with beet soup
and Esther had the endive, pear, grape salad with the pea, celery and leek soup. 
They have dozens and dozens of kinds of tea on offer at the Amersterdam Tea Room. I opted for the Pina Colada tea and Esther chose a chai blend. We had a lovely meal at a sunny window table and caught up on what had happened in each of our lives since we last got together. 
We had planned to sketch in one of the many art galleries in the Exchange but it was such a gorgeous day we sat at a picnic table in Old Market Square to work on some new pages in our sketch books. 
Winnipeg, we decided, is a beautiful place indeed on a fine fall afternoon!
As someone who bikes all over Winnipeg I am thrilled to see so many new designated bicycle lanes like this one on Sherbrooke being built. 
Another thing we need in the city however are more bike racks and stands where cyclists can lock their bikes as they shop or dine or visit public spaces and buildings. Last week we joined our children for dinner at The Grove restaurant on Stafford. There were no bike racks in sight and all the street signs around already had a couple of bikes locked up to them. We ended up walking a few blocks to find a street sign that we could use for locking up our bikes. 
On Saturday morning we went to Hildegard’s for coffee and right in front of the bakery and coffeeshop was a bike stand. Perfect! I am not sure who is responsible for putting up bike racks and stands- the city or businesses or community groups. But if we want to encourage more people to cycle it is important to give them places to lock and leave their bikes. 
It was neat to view the city from the river perspective especially all the grand homes along the banks. We saw deer and pelicans and herons and signs of beavers at work. People were so friendly- saying hello, reminding us to drink water, commenting on our paddling strokes, waving and shouting greetings to us from bridges. 
During the first half of our journey the river was very shallow and we went aground a couple of times on sandbars that extended on for quite a distance. 
At one point when Millie and I couldn’t seem to free ourselves from a sandbar a kindly gentleman who lived along the water donned his hip waders and came out to help us, showing us the channel of deeper water where we could get through. 
We stopped for lunch at Omands Creek Park. Millie had made delicious cheese and vegetable biscuits and brought along some of her homemade spicy pickles from this year’s batch. Mostly though we just drank and drank- plenty of water and a little beer. I hadn’t brought along a water bottle which was silly and I was actually a mite dizzy when we got out of the canoes at lunchtime. 
It was 36 degrees on Saturday but during most of our journey we had a little bit of a breeze to cool us. For the second half of our paddle the river was much deeper, but the current was a little harder to navigate and we encountered some larger boats that created waves for our canoes. 
The distance from Ed and Millie’s house to ours is 15 kilometers as the crow flies so I am thinking we probably paddled at least 20 or more kilometers along our winding river route. 
Once we reached the dock on Waterfront Drive we loaded up the canoes one by one and returned them and then we went back to Ed and Millie’s. 
Dave and Ed took a dip in the Assiniboine to refresh themselves. 
Then we had appetizers and drinks down by the river in Ed and Millie’s lush and lovely back yard. 
A marvelous meal of barbecued pork, kale salad and fresh garden vegetables followed and it was dark before we headed inside for a piece of Millie’s delicious homemade apple pie and ice-cream and a last glass of wine. 
From the mournful strains of The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond performed by a group of talented singers and fiddlers to the upbeat drumming and bag piping of the Transcona and District Pipe Band the show at Winnipeg’s Folkorama Scotland Pavilion was a delight.
I went to check out the display of different kinds of tartans. These are just a few of the many that were on show. My favourites? 
Was it the MacQueen or……….
I listened to the wool spinners describe their work and……..
watched a delightfully diverse group of craftspeople chatting while they knitted and purled. 
The polar bears in the Journey to Churchill exhibit at Assiniboine Park Zoo were swimming on Sunday. I have been to the exhibit on numerous occasions and have never yet been fortunate enough to view the polar bears from the clear tunnel that allows visitors to watch them as the paddle through the cool water. I’m glad they saved their show for my most recent visit because I was at the zoo with my two grandsons and they were as excited as I was, to watch the polar bears’ antics in the water. My daughter-in-law wondered how the polar bears came to be in the zoo and I wasn’t sure so I did a little research. 
A Global News
I also learned that all nine bears currently living at the Assinboine Zoo have names. Thank you Juno, Nanuq, Siku, York, Blizzard, Star, Kaska, Storm and Aurora for providing an exciting experience for zoo visitors. 
