“Hey now! There’s nothing boring about potholes!”
Julia-Simone Rutgers, our Manitoba reporter, has a new obsession that’s become an all-consuming topic of conversation at her dinner parties (yes, really). You see, it has been a record year (not the good kind) for potholes in Winnipeg, thanks to an onslaught of spring storms. Those storms, expected to become more frequent as the climate changes, sent the city’s pavement crumbling — forcing crews to fill in a whopping 211,500 potholes (!) and counting in 2022.
As she dug into the issue, Julia-Simone found out there’s an entire research team in Manitoba dedicated to the science of pavement. She joined them in the lab where they’re figuring out how to future-proof our roads to withstand the rigours of climate change.
It’s a problem that’s far from unique to Winnipeg: take B.C.’s Coquihalla Highway, which was torn apart by the impacts of last year’s atmospheric river.
Then there’s the whole matter of funding: infrastructure debt has reached somewhere in the range of $200 billion nationwide thanks to funding cuts, neglect and a growing number of extreme climate events. In Winnipeg alone, the figure sits at roughly $7 billion.
“Kudos to my partner for listening to me talk through the numbers out loud while she tried to nap,” Julia-Simone told me.
So what are cities doing about it? Winnipeg’s newly elected mayor, Scott Gillingham, wants to fix up the city’s roads and widen highways. But climate-focused solutions? They were largely absent from the election. Julia-Simone delved into what Canada’s coldest city should be up to — and how we can tackle the country’s growing road problems.
Take care and bring pothole preoccupations to potlucks,
Arik Ligeti
Director of audience
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It’s all fin and games
“How deep can narwhals dive?”
“Which two cities in the world had the audacity to keep narwhals captive?”
At our very first member event in Vancouver this week, mining reporter Francesca Fionda dug deep to ask questions that made a room full of Narwhals scratch their tusks.
As expected, they outsmarted us all, and had some good food and drinks while doing it. After a couple years of not seeing our growing group of Lower Mainland members, we were thrilled to come together to celebrate how far The Narwhal’s reader-funded journalism has come — and to dream about how much further it can go.
All that Narlovin’ warmed our hearts! Make sure to join our pod so you get the invite for our next fun-filled member event.
And in case you were wondering what the answers were: narwhals can dive as deep as 1,800 metres — just not the ones Vancouver and New York kept captive in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
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This week in The Narwhal
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B.C. is opening up old-growth spotted owl habitat to logging — again
By Sarah Cox (she's baaaaack!)
The NDP government is touting efforts to save the critically endangered bird. But it continues to sanction logging in spotted owl habitat, prompting environmental groups to demand the federal government step in to save the species from extinction in Canada.
READ MORE
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How oil and gas lobbyists build ‘very close relationships’ with politicians and governments
By Carl Meyer
READ MORE
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Federal government moving closer to funding Ring of Fire mining roads: document
By Emma McIntosh
READ MORE
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9 things that could have been done to prevent the Sunshine Coast’s state of emergency
By Stephanie Wood
READ MORE
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What we’re reading
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When you want to get out on the road but you’re afraid that road damage from climate change events might harsh your vibe. Don’t worry, our newsletters will let you and your friends know about any developments on that front — just tell them to sign up.
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