WINNIPEG -- An environmental non-profit is working to make Winnipeg’s Seine River more accessible.
Save Our Seine, a group that has been working for decades to restore the river, is building a dock so that people of all abilities can partake in activities at the Seine River.
“It’s really important to make our society more inclusive, and to allow for people with limited mobility to have access to a river, like the Seine River, for kayaking and canoeing, is a real step forward,” said Michele Kading, executive director of Save Our Seine.
The accessible dock is part of a larger project, which includes enhancements to trails at low-lying levels along the floodplains.
“They’re very popular trails for walkers and cyclists,” Kading said.
“But because it’s such a waterlogged area, it’s easy to damage the vegetation, so we’re doing some improvement to protect the vegetation and make the trails a little bit better for the users as well.”
Other parts of the enhancement project include putting an interpretive node at a location in Bois-des-Esprits, as well as upland restoration, where the non-profit is converting a patch of sod into native wildflowers and grasses.
“It’s a fairly large project, but the accessible dock is really the showpiece of the project,” Kading said.
Tenders for the accessible dock are going out Wednesday, Sept. 2.
Kading said at this point they don’t know the full cost of the dock, but they will find out in two weeks if they’ve estimated correctly and whether they’ve met their fundraising goal.
Save Our Seine will award the contract once the non-profit knows it has sufficient funds. Kading said they would then want construction on the dock to begin immediately, in hopes of completing it by November.
Anyone who would like to contribute to Save Our Seine’s accessible dock can do so on the organization’s website.
- With files from CTV’s Katherine Dow.
