The Kelvin CC Comeback: How Do I Feel?

It’s good.

Yeah.

But it feels strange. We spent years fighting to keep Kelvin Community Centre open, and then the community spent a few more years after that trying to keep the land from being sold.

It was long and hard, and it always seemed like it was just a matter of time before the land was sold and the chance for a new Kelvin was dead.

Things look better now. Hopefully this will work out.

The fight to save Kelvin taught me and gave me a chance to try and help out my community, but it wore me out.

But I’m happy.

It’s good.

If the people of Elmwood hadn’t fought in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012, we wouldn’t have this today.

Congratulations, Elmwood. You deserve it.

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What? Vacation’s Over?

So I was looking at the calendar and realized that I’ve been gone for a month, not just from this blog but from politics in general.

I was expecting that after a week or so of rest and quiet, I’d feel re-energized and ready to get back to work on Kelvin, Disraeli, and a few new battles that have appeared in the past few months.  But after a week, then two weeks, then even three and four weeks, I didn’t feel that burst of new energy.  In general, I’m still pretty tired.

I think I’ve been looking at this the wrong way.  I won’t feel energized by taking time away from the work; I need to get back to work to start feeling renewed.

From what I can see, nothing has been accomplished by the provincial government for the Elmwood constituency since the election.  (The flood isn’t a good enough reason for nothing to be happening.)  All of the talk about “solving” Disraeli has evaporated into that familiar NDP status quo.  Meanwhile, the province is still silent on the other issues, and completely unresponsive to the ongoing crisis in healthcare.

But if I had expected the NDP and Mr. Blaikie to actually solve problems in Elmwood, I wouldn’t have ran against them in the by-election.  So in the absence of leadership from the provincial NDP, it’s up to all of us to get to work on the issues that matter.

Here are my plans for the month of May; if anyone would like to help out, please let me know.  More people not only makes the work easier, it also makes it much more fun.

1. Bring a hang-out night to Kelvin.  I don’t have details yet, but it would consist of one evening a week where we’d bring out whatever equipment we have, open up the long lost Kelvin canteen, and reconnect with all of the people who thought of Kelvin as their club.
2. Put together a new Disraeli traffic plan that meets the needs of Elmwood, River East, and Point Douglas.  This plan will improve on some of the ideas I’ve mentioned here and on betterdisraeli.com and will be formally brought before the City of Winnipeg.
3. Talk to Manitoba Housing about their complex on Watt Street near Chalmers, to see what it would take to get a playground installed.
4. Continue to work with the city to find a proper use for the Kelvin frontage on Henderson.
5. Get more details about the upcoming drop-in programs for summer, and see what assistance is needed to make them successful.

If anyone has information that can help me out on any of these, please e-mail me or post a comment.

And as an ongoing activity, I will of course remember to post about events in our city and province.  What kind of blog would this be if I didn’t do that?

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