Resident creates ‘mountains’ to spur cleanup action on Winnipeg’s rubble lots

Long-time resident Cheryl Martens creates 'mountains' in hopes of spurring cleanup efforts on Winnipeg's rubble lots.

Longime resident Cheryl Martens creates ‘mountains’ in hopes of spurring cleanup efforts on Winnipeg’s rubble lots.

Martens lives in the Spence neighbourhood and she is one of many residents of an inner-city neighbourhood looking for answers and action on abandoned properties.

They say that sometimes rubble from demolished buildings is left for months or, in some cases, years.

Martens has a cheeky way of calling attention to these properties around her neighbourhood by building mountains with the rubble.

“The ones on Furby are smaller so those are ski hills and the one on Sargent is only a house so it’s a bunny hill,” she said.

“You just get fed up at some point. At some point, it’s a new year, you think this year I am going to do something about this. It was just deciding I’ve had enough.”

She even names the mountains she creates. The one she made on Sherbrook Street she calls ‘Sherbrook Mountain’. The pile is from a former five-storey building that burned down almost two years ago.

And the lots on Furby Street and Sargent Avenue have looked disheveled for months. “We do care about it. It’s just that we are kind of at a loss on what to do,”  she said.