As seen while walking along Portage Avenue on a brisk winter day.
A Little Taste of Winter
A Little Taste of Winter
Waiting for Spring, Munson Park, Winnipeg.
A little Taste of Winter
I call it my Assiniboine Park Loop, a good 10-kilometre walk from my Wolseley neighbourhood home, down the river trails lining the south bank of Assiniboine River, through Assiniboine Park, its English and Leo Mol Sculpture Gardens and then back home on the north side of the river, following the quiet residential streets of St.... Continue Reading →
CDMX: A First-Timer’s Travel Primer
I can’t claim to know Mexico City well—a single 8-day visit does not fully reveal the intricacies of a large city—but I can suggest some starting points for your own first time in this city. For reference, Gail and I were in Mexico City from October 31 to November 8, 2018. The Elephant in the... Continue Reading →
CDMX: Chapultepec and Paseo de la Reforma
If Chapultepec is the lungs of Mexico City then Paseo de la Reforma must be its pulmonary artery. The Bosque de Chapultepec is a very large park. One of the largest city parks in the Western Hemisphere. Much larger than New York’s Central Park. Big. And very busy with 15 million visitors each year, 250,000... Continue Reading →
CDMX: To Teotihuacán
It can be found just 40 kilometres out of Mexico City. Timewise, it is a much longer journey back in time, one measured in tens of centuries. Here is a city so ancient that even the Aztecs, who were busy constructing their own city, Tenochtitlan, drew inspiration from the deserted ruins of Teotihuacán. It was... Continue Reading →
CDMX: Coyoacán Walks
Place of coyotes. That’s the likely translation of Coyoacán, an apt image for a colonial era village that began life as a distinct and remote village not yet subsumed into the megalopolis of Mexico City. Cortés lived here from 1521 to 1522, waiting for the demolished Aztec city of Tenochtitlan to be rebuilt as colonial... Continue Reading →
CDMX: A Walk in Condesa
It started out as a hacienda and a vast swath of land covering much of western Mexico City, owned by the Countess (or condesa) of San Mateo de ValparaÃso, Maria de la Campa y Cos. By 1902, the land had evolved from her large estate to a colonia, or neighbourhood, for the middle and upper... Continue Reading →
CDMX: Three Homes
An architect, an artist, a revolutionary. Leon Trotsky. Born 1879. A staunch Marxist, he fought in the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and quickly rose to power in the Communist Party. After unsuccessfully opposing Stalin in the 1920s, he was rapidly demoted and ultimately dismissed from Stalin’s regime. By 1929, he and wife Natalia Sedova ... Continue Reading →
CDMX: A Zócalo Walkabout
Standing here, in the Zócalo, the heart of Mexico City, I can see the city’s entire cultural history laid out. Layers of history spanning thousands of years. I can see it and I can touch it, all from this vantage point. Physically, the Zócalo itself is nothing more than a large central plaza, a stone-paved... Continue Reading →