Walking, Talking, and Remembering Jane Jacobs

"Volunteer tour guide Len Kaminski explained to 20 people taking part in Jane's Walk through the Seven Oaks neighbourhood Sunday how Chief Peguis granted settlers a strip of land along the Red River "as far as you can see under the belly of a horse" and what they did with it.

A dozen Jane's Walk tours took place in Winnipeg and 16 other North America cities this weekend. The series of free, guided neighbourhood walks aims to put people in touch with their city by bridging social and geographic gaps. In Winnipeg, more than 500 people were expected to take part.

The walks honour urban activist and writer Jane Jacobs, who championed the interests of local residents and pedestrians over a car-centered approach to planning.

Almost 50 people met to walk some of the city's oldest streets in Point Douglas. The tour of Winnipeg's "first neighbourhood" began at Ross House Museum on Meade Street, and took an eclectic crowd from the site of Vulcan Iron Works (where the 1919 strike began), to the Syndicate Street house of Sir William Stephenson (1897-1989, a much-honoured intelligence operative during the Second World War who legend has it was the real-life model for James Bond)."