Published: 24 February 2010

Most of the time, quietness and town or city do not go together. Either it is quiet and the town looks like a ghost town, or the town is lively but far from quiet. I like my relaxation in the weekend and just go far from the house and from the city. Ok, in Winnipeg there are enough quiet places to find, but a bit farther out is always good.

Every now and then we take a car to get out, and try to find some nature and calm down from the week’s hassles. Now if you find places like these in this picture, you can imagine that this is not a very hectic place.

The Winnipeg River

And once you find the place, you’ll want to stay for some time, well…

Read more: Wild quietness in town

Published: 22 February 2010

Holiday on Ice, Fish on ice, walking on ice, we can do it all in Winnipeg. In Holland, where I come from, we are happy if once in ten years we get 15cm of ice to hold the “elfstedentocht” a difficult but wonderful competition of skating on ice. Over 220km of natural ice must have these coveted 15cm, everywhere. Useless to say that that does not happen every year.

In Winnipeg, however, if there were only 15cm of ice in winter on any of the frozen water surfaces, we would call it a catastrophe. In Winnipeg, on the Red River we should be able to solve the (minor) parking problem of the city…

Parking on ice

Here we parked our rental car on the ice, in order to do some ice fishing. Didn’t catch anything, but it was a fun day. And the ice? Well if there is less than two feet (60cm) of it, you don’t try to park your car on it!

So, what else do we do on ice here?

Read more: On ice

Published: 19 February 2010

A daytime festival is nice. But some travellers will want to travel by day and have some fun by night. The Festival du Voyageur will also accommodate you for this. While Fort Gibraltar is closing its doors at 9pm and you are kindly asked to leave, the rest of Voyageur Park gets livelier by then.

Also, for the photographers, the lighting gets more interesting, the place is full of coloured lights and this year’s choice is warm and cold.

The entry sculpture in the Park now looks like this:

Entry sculpture at Voyageur Park

An eerie glow of red and blue, with the absence of all other colours, now there’s a challenge for your camera!

Read more: Winnipeg and the night travellers

Published: 17 February 2010

After a series of snow sculptures, perhaps now is the moment to look at some more lasting sculptures. Winnipeg has been the home of world renowned sculptor Leo Mol.

Leo Mol as he was known in Canada was born in 1915 as Leonid Molodozhanyn in Polonne, Ukraine. At that time Ukraine was still independent from the future Soviet Union, so we can drop the “The”. He studied sculpture at the Leningrad Academy of Arts from 1936 to 1940. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1940 he fled to Germany. In 1945 he went to Holland and three years after that he and his wife Margareth moved to Winnipeg.

Here in Winnipeg the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden is located in the Assiniboine Park. The sculpture garden contains more than 300 works of art by Leo Mol. More than 200 were donated to the city by Mr Mol himself. The rest comes from private collectors and donators. Sculptures of three different popes stand in the Vatican, in Winnipeg we can admire smaller versions of these sculptures.

Taras Shevchenko

One of his famous sculptures is of Ukraine’s poet Taras Shevchenko. In the Assiniboine Park we can admire the head of the poet’s sculpture, for the rest you’ll have to go to Washington DC, USA.

So, what else can we find in the Leo Mol sculpture garden?

Read more: Long lasting sculptures