A back-to-nature birchbark-basket warming hut to grace Winnipeg’s river trail

A back-to-nature birchbark-basket warming hut to grace Winnipeg’s river trail

Jaimie Isaac and Suzanne Morrissette’s work will soon grace the Nestaweya River Trail.

They are the invited artists for this year’s Warming Huts competition, the flagship annual event that attracted 140 submissions from designers and architects across the world this year.

Entitled Rosemary Skool, the pair’s hut, representing a birchbark basket, will take shape from snow and clay bricks sourced from the river. “The organic materials used to build the hut will return to the river with the spring melt,” says Morrissette. “An ephemeral evolution.”

Their hut is one of six that people will be able to enjoy by February. For the past 15 winters, ice skaters, couples and families sauntering on the frozen Red and Assiniboine rivers have stopped to warm and immerse themselves inside these compact architectural worlds.

“It was really a no-brainer in some respects,” says Zachary Peters, communications and marketing manager at The Forks North Portage, about the invitation to Morrissette and Isaac.

The two artists are curators of the Rosemary Gallery, whose recent Confluence exhibition — which featured such artists as Kent Monkman, Casey Koyczan, KC Adams and others — honoured The Forks’ enduring significance for Indigenous Peoples.

“They clearly, with their Confluence exhibition, were speaking … about geography, about the two rivers, about this community through a unique perspective.”

“The confluence of the rivers becomes a really great metaphor for the coming and going of people from this territory,” Morrissette told the Free Press in October.

The gallery is designed to rove, existing in different spaces for short periods of time. In this case, it’s relocated just a hop, skip and jump from its last spot at 226 Main St. Rosemary Skool continues the gallery’s mission to hold space for BIPOC artists and shed light on the history of its immediate surroundings.

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“We have a great list of arts-based projects, performances and public discussions, plus a community feast and other celebrations that will all take place in and around Rosemary Skool,” says Isaac.

Build week for Warming Huts v. 2025 takes place at the end of January. The Forks says this year’s huts, as well as offering fun and warmth, speak to issues “such as climate change and homelessness, with designs ranging from a colourful grain elevator, to a balled-up beaver, to a half sunken car, and from a single-person home, to a gift wrapped with a bow.”

Past designers participating in the prestigious Warming Huts event include Frank Gehry, Anish Kapoor and Étienne Gaboury. Works from the event’s first decade are documented in the book Warming Huts: A Decade + of Art and Architecture on Ice.

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Credit: A back-to-nature birchbark-basket warming hut to grace Winnipeg’s river trail