It's been a year since we sold our West End house so I thought, given my 11 months of being in Transcona, that I'd share what my impression is.
1) No one knows where Transcona is.
Tell someone that you live in Transcona and watch their eyes glaze over. And it's not just Winnipeggers who think T-cona is that uncharted part of the map described in latin as "Here there be dragons", our utility companies think the same way. Case in point: MTS called us (at the old house) to tell us that they offer HD and PVR in the West End now. I said "Great, but we're moving to Transcona. Is it there?" Lonnnnnng pause, he comes back "No, we don't offer service outside of the city." What? After moving here and dealing with the mind-boggling ineptitude that is MTS, we discovered that we don't have call display or answering machine on our land line anymore. I call MTS to find out what happened and she said (and I quote) "Different parts of the province have access to different features. If you lived in Winnipeg, you could get call display." I called back the next day (once my jaw had been picked up off the floor) and got everything fixed by someone who knows geography better.
2) Regent Ave traffic is as busy as St James, but without the suicide lanes.
Driving in the area of Regent and Lagmodiere on the weekend is akin to Route 90 or St James. But, someone with a background in traffic flow patterns realized that left turn lights are a good thing and used them A LOT on Regent. Too bad the city can't rehire that company and fix the train wreck that is St James and Route 90. Instead, they're putting in *more* shopping in that end. Can't wait to see the parking lot on Sterling Lyon when Ikea final plunks down here.
3) Transcona is it's own city
Okay, this is the weirdest part of living here. Transcona has it's own downtown, complete with decorative arch! So when I tell someone I'm going "downtown", I have to specify if I mean "Downtown Winnipeg" (ie far away) or "downtown Transcona". I had lunch last week with a group of Transcona residents (transconians? transconites?) who admitted to me that they haven't left Transcona in months. She said "Anything past Nairn is too far away. Besides what do you need to see that you can't get here?" We have 3 chinese restaurants and a thai restaurant withint 1 block of each other. Does that qualify as our "chinatown"?
4) Transcona is a small town.
And just like Pinawa, everyone here knows each other. Or tries to find out if they know each other somehow.
Case in point: The woman and her daughter that deliver the weekly flyers were stuck in their dead car outside our house on a really cold day in December. We invited them inside to warm up while they waited for a tow truck and when they found out that Brendon and his brothers all went to TCI, they spent time trying to figure out if she (as TCI grad in the early 90s) went to school with anyone of Brendon's brothers. When her husband came to get them, turns out he (like most people in Transcona, including my mother-in-law) works at the Freshwater fish processing plant (did you know Winnipeg has a fish processing plant?? I sure didn't...), then we started the whole conversation over again trying to figure out if the husband remembers my mother-in-law. Thank goodness the daughter doesn't work at New Flyer or else we'd have to link her to our friends.
At the same lunch last week, a woman admitted to me that she's lived in Transcona and gone to the same T-cona church for 32 years but is still referred to as "new to the area", but her kids are "neighbours" because they're born/raised here, and yes, came back to raise their families. Yup, it's more like Pinawa than I'd like to admit.
5) Coffee shops.
We don't have one. Seriously. There's neighbourhoods elsewhere in the city that have 2 or 3 on a single corner but the closest Starbucks is Regent and Lag. Depending on how you draw the boundaries, it means Transcona doesn't have a Starbucks. And Timmy's? Only 2. There's a Timmy's inside the Safeway on Kildare (Transcon Proper) but no stand alone Tim's until you go down Regent, past the casino, where you find 2 within a block of each other.
6) Pink flamingos?
I don't know where this notion that T-cona is filled with tropical plastic birds but I've never seen one.
7) Jacked up chromed out trucks with swamp tires and growling engines?
Sadly, yes. We've got that in spades. I'm sure Princess Auto can't keep the "Calvin peeing on the Ford logo" sticker in stock because they're everywhere here! In T-cona's defense, there was a truck down the street in West End that was covered in chrome diamond plate so there are men with Freudian complexes throughout the city.
So in August, I painted the cabinets. In October, it was the walls.
Last step was the flooring and thanks to my fantastic incredible father-in-law, my ultrafantastic truly amazing husband and 6 hours of a Saturday we'll never get back, here's the final result!!
*BLISS*!!!!