Other Writing
SCHOLARLY ARTICLES
Toews, Owen. 2022. “What’s Going on With Portage Place?” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives monograph, 48 pp.
ABSTRACT. The proposed sale of Portage Place to Starlight Acquisitions – requested in 2019 by the Forks North Portage Partnership (which owns the land under Portage Place) and opposed by the community – fell through in September of 2021. As the powers that be quietly scramble to find another developer to gentrify the mall, the door has opened for community leaders to make a counter proposal for Portage Place and seize the public conversation. This chapter aims to trace the broad outlines of the community vision for Portage Place that has been articulated by community leaders, educate people interested in fighting for a community-based Portage Place about the basic facts of the situation, including who has done what over the past two and a half years. It aims to build confidence in the possibility of a community-driven future for Portage Place and to document how ordinary people have already made progress toward it.
ABSTRACT. This article brings attention to the wider world of 20th-century Indigenous suburbs in Winnipeg, with special attention to Weak City, a Métis community in the St. Charles area from the 1820s-1950s.
ABSTRACT. There is a power struggle going on at City Hall in Winnipeg that may open an opportunity for everyday Winnipeggers – if we get organized – to transform structural factors that have long entrenched business-led corruption and austerity on Main Street. “Winnipeg Free for All” takes an historical look at the structures put in place over the years that continue to keep the levers of power out of reach for everyday people. When power over the entire community is structurally concentrated in the hands of a few – as it is in Winnipeg’s civic governance structure – democracy is inhibited. While civic governance in Winnipeg has never been very democratic, it has become even less so since 1997. The current desire for “transparency” and “accountability” in civic politics signals a rejection of the neoliberal landscape produced by Thompson and Filmon’s reforms.
ABSTRACT. We examine three major anti-poverty initiatives in Winnipeg: Urban Renewal in the 1960s, the Neighbourhood Improvement Program (NIP) in the 1970s, and the Core Area Initiatives (CAIs) of the 1980s. Each was limited by some combination of: an over-emphasis on investment in bricks and mortar; a top-down approach that did not promote citizen participation; an under-estimation of the scale and complexity of inner-city poverty; and spatial and temporal fragmentation. Nevertheless, these initiatives funded a large number of community-based organizations that now operate in Winnipeg’s inner city, and that are highly effective. These CBOs comprise an “infrastructure” that, with the knowledge gained from an analysis of the limitations of Urban Renewal, NIP and the CAIs, can be the basis of an effective long-term anti-poverty strategy.
ABSTRACT. This paper examines the controversy that emerged as the City of Winnipeg debated committing public funds to an evangelical Christian group seeking to build a youth centre in an urban neighborhood with a large Aboriginal population. It traces the emergence of a coordinated opposition to the project and demonstrates why many felt that municipal and federal support was not only inappropriate but also worked to recapitulate longstanding patterns of disregard for the needs and aspirations of Aboriginal peoples. In an era where it has become common for Canadian governments to speak of “reconciliation” we demonstrate how such ambitions continue to be impeded by pervasive logics of governance that work against genuine processes of decolonization. We argue that events in Winnipeg reveal the persistence of longstanding colonial dynamics and demonstrate how such dynamics are exacerbated by the regressive tendencies of the city’s neoliberal orientation. We insist that colonial practices and mentalities not only permeate the present but also that they interact with, and are shaped by, the exigencies of actually existing political economies. Ours is an attempt to show how insights about the form and content of urban neoliberalism can be productively engaged with insights about how colonial relations have been reproduced and transformed in the contemporary moment. It is also an effort to demonstrate how such mentalities and practices are being resisted and challenged in important ways in contemporary Canada. Our observations are based on a range of interviews with local activists, politicians and service providers as well as a close reading of a range of political documents available on the public record.
ABSTRACT. We use interview data from four Winnipeg inner-city neighbourhoods to illustrate the strengths and limits of neighbourhood-level responses to safety concerns. We view these local responses through the lens of collective efficacy. We find that in most cases, inner-city community-based organizations (CBOs) do not see safety and security problems simply through a “crime” lens, but rather acknowledge the complexity of issues called “crime” and respond to them as complex problems. They do so creatively and effectively, in ways that we identify. We find, however, that community-based responses to what are primarily poverty-related problems are limited. Neighbourhood-level responses to safety problems, even when they fit the definition of collective efficacy, are in some cases counterproductive and at best only mildly ameliorative. In the absence of outside intervention in support of neighbourhood-level efforts, in the form of public investment that addresses the roots of safety problems, collective efficacy is likely to be a sometimes significant but largely Sisyphean effort.
ABSTRACT. This is a look at the state of one neighbourhood, and how it is changing. It is about who has been responsible for this change, and what patterns have been set in motion. It is a study about who has the power to initiate change, what groups lack this power, and how they can achieve it. This is a study of who loses and who benefits from neighbourhood change, and how a more equitable future can be achieved for these groups. Equity and justice—in the sense of achieving fair outcomes for all social groups—are founding principles of this study. Neighbourhood and neighbourhood meaning are founding concepts. The importance of space, and neighbourhood, to the principle of social justice follows from these convictions. This study is a project of the Manitoba Research Alliance (MRA), which strives to assist in the transformation of inner-city and Aboriginal communities debilitated by persistent poverty and social exclusion. Focusing on the second of the MRA’s four major themes— justice, safety and security; neighbourhood revitalization and housing; skill- and capacity-building and employment; and community economic development—this study presents a critical perspective on neighbourhood revitalization and its tendency in practice to benefit some while penalizing others. In order to achieve socially just revitalization, inner-city communities must be transformed for existing low-income residents, rather than for property owners and incoming higher-income groups.
NEWSPAPER & MAGAZINE ARTICLES
Toews, Owen. 2022. “New Vision Needed for Portage Place.” Winnipeg Free Press, March 3, 2022.
Toews, Owen, Abby Stadnyk, and Serenity Joo. 2021. “‘Defund the Police’ means re-fund the community.” Canadian Dimension, March 7, 2021.
Wilson, Alex, Owen Toews, and Kevin Settee. 2021. “Against the Duck Factory.” Briarpatch March/April 2021.
Toews, Owen. 2020. “Great Manitoba.” Briarpatch May/June 2020.
Dobchuk-Land, Bronwyn and Owen Toews. 2020. “Dauphin jail closure: Manitoba NDP must abandon failed law and order politics.” Canadian Dimension, February 6, 2020.
Toews, Owen. 2019. “Red Flags: Reflections of Racism and Radicalism.” Canadian Dimension Vol. 53, Issue 1, Summer 2019.
Toews, Owen. 2019. “Portage Place: Let’s Take Back What’s Ours.” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Manitoba Office.
Toews, Owen, et al. 2012. “Responses to the Expansion of the Criminal Justice System in Manitoba”. Our Schools/Our Selves: Spring 2012, Brigette DePape (ed.). Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
SHORT FICTION
Toews, Owen. 2010. “The Imax Stories”. Geist 77, pp. 57-61.
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