Seine river

By Kip Park

Running through the heart of Winnipeg is another river, besides the more prominent Red and Assiniboine Rivers. It’s the Seine, a river of history, which brought some of the earliest travelers into the Red River Valley some 200 years ago.

But during 90 of the last 100 years, the Seine has been used as a dump. Vandals would chuck stolen grocery carts and bicycles into the river, while industries piled huge blocks of concrete along some stretches. Junk and rotting garbage made the Seine an eye sore, and the river no longer flowed naturally.

In summer, in the early ‘90s, it wasn’t unusual to see pools of stagnating water and schools of flopping fish dying because there just wasn’t enough water being allowed to flow. “And you wouldn’t believe the smell!” said one local resident.

That’s all changed today, thanks to a citizens’ group, Save Our Seine, or SOS as they like to be known. The group was originally formed in 1980, but soon ran out of steam. It was revived in 1990 with the express purpose of cleaning up the river and restoring it, as closely as possible, to its original state.

It makes good sense, especially from a real estate perspective. Some very fine homes line both banks of the 28 kilometres of the Seine that flow through St. Vital and St. Boniface. But potential buyers get turned off when they see a polluted river in their back yards. 4

That doesn’t consider historical connections. Members of the des Meurons Regiment, who came to the Red River settlement in 18 17, settled along its banks. Louis Riel’s father had a grist mill which used the waters of the Seine, back in the 1860s. Some of the oldest houses in Manitoba are found near the riverbanks, both within Winnipeg city limits and out into the country.

But, of course, history and beauty are destroyed by pollution and garbage. That’s why some 250 local residents joined the SOS in the first year—and

membership has been growing ever since.