| After the Southglen Bridge: A Personal View by Dave Watson |
| After the Riel Community meeting of December 17th, 2002 the Southglen Bridge became a reality. Soon it will be commonplace to cross the Seine River at Southglen. Few will ever question its existence. City councillors made the decision to allow the bridge to be built while at the same time supporting Save Our Seine's efforts to save the Bois-des-esprits forest. An unreported decison also made on December 17th was rezoning 13 acres of the supposedly saved Bois-des-esprits forest from PR1 (parkland) to RM2, a zoning suitable for condo development. (MAP) Save Our Seine has until December 31, 2003 to raise the money to save the 13 acres of aspen trees or they will be clearcut and become high-end condos. This decison was made without public debate of any sort. What we also didn't know last December was that less than a month later the Grandin Park partners (the Province and Ladco) and the City of Winnipeg would be jointly announcing a mega development project in South Winnipeg that dwarfs Royalwood. The Grandin Park partners and the City, supposedly unable to come to a consensus regarding Royalwood's forest, are designing the suburb of the future in Waverley West. Developing a suburb is a very complex business. My personal website, Waverley West, documents my attempt to make sense of the relationship between politics, jobs, taxes, growth and urban development. To read more about SOS's fight to save the BDE forest, come back and check out this page, After the Southglen Bridge. For the history of the decade long fight to save a forest, read Chronology. |
| January 20, 2003- WFP: Build neighbourhoods for people, not cars: city. Why were pedestrian bridges and bicycle trails not worth defending a month ago? |
| The December 19 editorial New Bridge a Boon in the Winnipeg Sun must go down as the most boosterish opinion piece published in 2002. Check it out. |
| A Winnipeg Sun reader didn't let the previous editorial go unchallenged. Winnipeg Sun,December 22, 2002 |
| Nancy Allan, MLA: Mr. Speaker, the Seine River is one of Winnipeg's most beautiful but also most threatened natural areas... |
| Flashback 1996 (Ladco) Manager of land development, Ken Oblik, said that the natural park area in the incomplete development is its largest selling feature. �Overall, when the development is complete, the linear park system is going to be the big feature,� he said, adding that the bush will be left entirely untouched so as not to disturb the wildlife in the area...Oblik stressed that the natural habitat of the area will not be touched throughout the development process, providing an awesome view. �The banks along the Seine have never been disturbed. You can basically take a walk into history. (Ladco) wants to keep it as pristine and natural as they can,� he said. He said that this preservation of wildlife sets the subdivision apart from others in the city, creating a unique selling point. �Other communities have parks, but theirs are man made. Mother Nature made this one,� he said. (full story) |
| The Lance: March 26, 2003 : Members of the Save Our Seine River Environment Inc. group have raised $110,000 toward the $1 million they need to purchase and preserve a section of the Seine River Forest. (full story) |
| Winnipeg Free Press articles written on SOS during March, 2003 (full stories) |
| Groups team up to clean up Seine River Winnipeg Free Press Wednesday, June 04, 2003 |
| Manitoba's Provincial Sustainable Development Code of Practice and Manitoba's Sustainable Development Financial Management Guidelines. Were they followed at all when Grandin Park, a partly Provincially owned organization, decided to rezone 13 acres of the Bois-des-esprits from forest to condos? |