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City COulCillOnS turned a pie ui reluse into an urban re luge when they covered a lormer dump with sod 10 male weswew park.The offal tr ithWinnipeg’s biggest hill is merely a cleverly disguised pile of garbageBy Barolin VflSfllyWinnipeg is a Siberia, a shag way, a i/aSi plain of ice.Its on ly hill is a noun lain of garbage — 50 years' worih of civilian refuse — which in the winter children use for toboggan sliding. But sledding can be dangerous, for from this hill the permafrost pushes up odd items buried by our ancestors: I was once impaled there by the very sante stag an t lers my fath er had thro wn Ou t two decades earlier.— frimmrter 6oy Medditi (71/3 VMigg Void. 2001)WINNIPEG'S geographic high point stands as a monument to one of city council's hi stork: low point s.Today, Westvisw Park i s not only the city's test lookout, itb an all ssa son recitation hot spot and longtime training ground for Olympic athlete sand marathon runners.But a s far back a s the 18S3 s, thi s area at Saskatchewan Avenue and Empress Street cau red a stink at city hall every time it showed up on the meeting agenda.That's tecau re the hill that ri res 20 5 tiKtre s above Winnipeg's otherwire flat terrain wa s cau ssd by neither glacier nor volcano, but decade s o f garbage.We stview Park — all 2S acres of it—u red to be the Saskatchewan Avenue dump.It’s more informally known a s Garbage Hill.It all started in the late 1S80 s, when the city purcha ssd 10 acres of land that became Winnipeg^ central dump.Raw tra sh piled up for years until, in 1907, an incinerator wa s built on the site.But by 1 lt;Ab, the pile wa s as high a s the site could fate. The city was forced to build a new incinerator elre where, and all burning and dumping cea red on Sa slate he wan Avenue.'They couldn't pit it any higher, so they sodded it and turned it into a recreational area, says Bernie Wol fe, former deputy mayor and city councillor during the '60 s.(But not without years of stalling and debate. Judging by old newspaper clippings, garbage was a mountainous problem forearly council s.)It was literally out on the bald-headed praire s in tho % days, Wol fe recalls. u red to call it lil's Hill.Lillian Hallonquist wa s an extremely capable aHerman and chairman of the committee charged with finding a rolutbn to a half-osntury of accumulated trash.It turned out to be a very rea sonabte way o f dealing with urban eri stence, Wol fe says o f the de velopnent pro ect that becane WestvewParkin 1961 — the year the new fptetro government took over responsibility. Sid cla sre s started there that winter.Apparently, smote would occasionally appear on the surface ofWc stview.1 Garbage Hill during tho re early years, due to the high temperatures — up to 150 F — deep inside it.A landscaping program was approved in 1965, and decades' worth of Winnipeg waste wa s eventually oompresred and converted into what is today a popular park for everyone from dog-walters to rave-goers.’7/e’ve been running the dump for 20 years, says Jaimie Dawson, a former badminton Olympian who sprints up the hil! to stay in shape. But not in winter. We’re fair-weather dump runners.The city ha sn't forgotten Vfe stview Park’s o f fal hi story. A few years ago, it instated a leachate collection system to ensure contaminants aren't being leached through the soil into nearby Omand's Creek.We put pipe s underneath the landfill, says Dan Mclnnis, the city’s solid waste manager, ’//hen rain falls and percolates through the garbage, it create s a black liquid cated leachate. In modern landfill s that leachate is dr atm o tf and hauled to a waste treatnent plant.
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