Recently I had the opportunity to play visitor to the town of Virden, Manitoba, and as a visitor I thought to make some comparisons with our community.
Now, off the top, I know there is a size difference that has to be accounted for; at roughly 3,100 (which has to be out-of-date, as it's from the 2001 census), they are about a third of our size.
But with this in mind, some parallels can be made, such as how they're laid out, and what they have available in terms of amenities.
One thing that's of interest is that they call themselves the "Oil Capital of Manitoba", so they know about the industry that's been building and expanding our community here in the last few years.
They're not far from Cromer, which is a hub of the Enbridge pipeline.
Anyway, first impressions are often quite important, although sometimes they are wrong and promote misinformation. In this case, as my daughter and I were there so she could take in a karate tournament, we checked in at registration then went to go find some place to eat.
My first impression was the question, "Do these people eat? Where do they hide their restaurants?"
Sure, part of the problem was that I was a stranger to the community, and it took a little time to find what we needed. But, in my mind, it would seem to me that a community ought to be laid out in such a way as to be friendly to visitors, and there ought to be some way visitors can find what they need, such as places to eat or to stay overnight, or whatever else they need.
Even if Virden is bigger than the census indicates (like, say, 4 or 5,000), it still doesn't explain how I could end up downtown and still saw hardly any places to eat. We saw a Subway wrapper lying on a street and so had hopes of finding one, which we finally did after an exhaustive search, along the northeast edge of the town.
"This town is poorly laid out," commented the daughter
One other thing I noticed was that they have a book store, which rankled my daughter to no end: "They have a book store, and Weyburn doesn't? How come a city of our size doesn't have one and these people do?"
You know what? I can't answer that; I also find it difficult to believe this city has no book store. The "book aisle" at the local stuff-mart doesn't really qualify as a book store. It does make a limited selection of titles available, usually just the bestseller list - but for us readers, that's hardly adequate. I suppose that's where our library comes to the rescue, in providing good books for us to read.
