Saint Boniface Cathedral - Photo by Jordon Cooper, Flickr

How do you like Winnipeg so far?” That’s the first question that always comes up in conversations with people I meet here. It’s already been almost four months since I settled into Winnipeg, Manitoba and I have the feeling that I’ll be asked that very same question all year long.

Judging by the immediate sighs of relief of the people I talk to, I get the impression that I’ve committed a good deed by revealing that I like it here. As if the fact that my being French combined with the fact that I came from Vancouver could prevent me from appreciating a city that seems to struggle with an inferiority complex.

According to my friends in Vancouver, if boredom was a country, Winnipeg would be its capital. I have to admit that I boarded the plane with a certain amount of apprehension, not knowing what I would find some 2300 km east of Vancouver. None of the people that had painted a rather unflattering portrait of Winnipeg had even set foot in Winnipeg. I feel good, which gives me a huge sense of satisfaction.

I won’t say that it was love at first sight with Winnipeg. But can you fall in love with this city at first sight? After all, this place is dusty, dirty, and down-trodden. These are the words that came to mind as I watched Winnipeg whizzing by me in the cab that drove me to what would become my home for the next few days.

I remember watching the empty streets with anxiety and wondering what it would look like during the summer. I’d always planned to spend my first Canadian summer in Vancouver, but in the end I ended up in the prairies. I don’t regret it but back then, I wouldn’t have guessed it.

Yet, with my first day of work behind me, my first order of real business was to get a bike. Little did I know it would be my true ticket to Winnipeg.

Right away, I liked downtown’s Exchange District. I still do. I love the feeling of getting lost at night among the buildings, vestiges of the 20’s, an era when the Chicago School was the urban model. As I headed further down, the abandoned buildings and the Provencher Bridge welcomed me back to Saint-Boniface, the “French quarter” where I found my first home.

I like this universe changing feeling when you see street names written in French and when you recognize your own language in a conversation overheard at a bus stop. It’s been four months since I first explored Winnipeg for the first time, and today, she appears to me in a completely different light.

I now have my favourite coffee shop, I know where to have the finest brunch or sushi in town, and if I want to see a Russian DVD movie from the 80s, I know that I can.

Recently, I moved to a new house…a new area. I’m now back in the English part of town, for the best, I think. It’s a nice house, she’s old. She is a distinguished lady that has seen over a hundred years of Winnipeg’s history.

I’m going to experience my first Canadian winter in a city that‘s nicknamed “Winterpeg” and I must say that having lived more than five years on a tropical island, this experience has an exotic perfume to it that I kind of like.

So yes, for all those reasons, and the ones I don’t even know yet, I like Winnipeg…so far.