Winnipeg through the eyes of DNTO host Sook-Yin Lee
The CBC Radio host reveals her favourite places in the 'Peg
Winnipeg is a city like no other. It's also the home base of DNTO.
To learn how to make radio, I moved from Toronto to Winnipeg where I lived for four months through a freezing prairie winter. I remember arriving and looking out the taxi window at old buildings and crooked electrical lines on a vast and flat terrain.
I could feel a mental space opening up here. It was simple and uncluttered and reminded me of one of my favourite black and white movies, Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise.
For me, Winnipeg exists in another time and place. It is the centre of the world where buildings remain ancient and spectacular, not out of an aesthetic choice, but because they're too expensive to tear down.
I grew to love Winnipeg and my peers and friends at DNTO. They are a straightforward people, as down to earth as the city itself. It can be an intense and difficult place, but it is also wonderful. It is full of survivors and optimists who work hard and excel. It's all reflected in the landscape.