1. Wolseley 

2. West Broadway 

3. Osborne Village 

 

You can always count on Wolseley to be Winnipeg’s favourite hippie hub. 

Other popular neighborhoods in Winnipeg consistently seem to shift around. For example, Osborne Village had its 15 minutes of fame in 2012 when the Canadian Institute of Planners voted it Canada’s best neighborhood, and in came the suits swooping down to get their piece. 

Yet Wolseley hasn’t seen much change since the Granola Belt years of the ’70s and ’80s, aside from a growing demand to move into the neighbourhood, and rising housing costs in the area. 

With the ubiquitous elms and character homes, Wolseley is unmistakably beautiful. 

“Especially in the fall, when you walk along the boulevards and the crunch underfoot might be that of dried leaves from the tall elms or just discarded granola,” Wolseley resident Daniel Guezen says. 

The neighbourhood is bounded on the south by the Assiniboine River, and it’s not hard to find a great green park to wander through. On weekends in the summer much of the neighbourhood is closed to automobiles (save for local traffic), which makes it one of the most bicycle and pedestrian friendly neighbourhoods in Winnipeg. 

Wolseley has always had a long history of tree-hugging enthusiasm, and it was once home to what Ripley’s Believe it or Not called the world’s smallest park: “The Wolseley Elm.” 

When a giant triple trunk in the center of Wolseley Avenue and Greenwood Street was set to be chopped down as a traffic hazard, a group of courageous Wolseley women circled the goliath to save it – until it was blown up with dynamite in the middle of the night. 

Wolseley is this city’s quaint and quiet tucked away little neighborhood, free from the ever present sirens and party shouts. Luckily for those who can afford to live there, the most noise you’ll hear in Wolseley is the ring of the Westminster United Church bell.

Published in Volume 70, Number 13 of The Uniter (December 3, 2015)