St. Vital hotel

My memories of this place were hanging around outside hoping someone would go in and buy beer for you.  They say Burton Cummings used to spend time here.

the Coffee House

Wayne tells me this was the place to be - north of the Junction, next to the hotel.  I guess it's seen better times.

Elm Park bridge

I love this old bridge.  I was only 16 when I left St. Vital and couldn't drive (safely!), so I never met the challenge of driving over the skinny structure when cars were still allowed on it.
I certainly remember the kids who would jump off the bridge into the river.  Gutsy! Crazy!

the firehall

What I remember best about the firehall is having to go there to get your bicycle licence.  When did that end?  Seems now like a good idea to licence bikes.

The BDI

How many hours did you spend walking to the BDI or hanging around enjoying the ice cream delights they sold there?  Do you remember certain boys dumping their ice cream on boaters going under the bridge?  Well, the BDI still exists!  Hard to believe in this fickle world that a small, non-franchised business would survive all the Dairy Queen competitors, but there it is. 
Photos by Wayne Johnson

Windsor Community Centre

If you haven't been by the old Community Centre in, say, 35 years, you will be quite surprised to see what it looks like now.  It appears to be a completely new building - which isn't terribly surprising.  What did surprise me is it's located on a hill, according to the photo at their website:  http://www.windsorcc.ca/index.html   My recollection of St. Vital does not include any hills.  Admittedly, I used to whine about having to ride my bike up Elm Park Rd to St. Mary's because it was uphill - but once I moved to Ontario, I realized I had been delusional as a child.  There was no hill on my street.  OK, there was a valley of sorts in Killarney Park, but that doesn't mean the sides of it were hills.  So is the "hill" in the photo a trick of the camera, or did they truck in fill to build the new building on top of?  Another reason to return to Winnipeg for the St. Vital Sixties Reunion - to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Winnipeg murals

I don't even remember graffiti when I lived in Winnipeg, but check out what's on the walls now:

http://www.themuralsofwinnipeg.com/

Venue settled!

It's settled - we are booked into the Windsor Community Centre for the event.  Thanks Wayne! 
How many of you remember slogging into the Community Centre with your skates on, then sitting on the benches and trying to untie your skates with frozen fingers?  Do you remember the hockey matches at the outdoor rink?  The banks of snow were so high that we were looking down on the ice surface.
I learned to smoke behind the Community Centre.  And my brother and I took square dancing lessons there.
Lots of memories!