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Did I Ever Tell You About the Time We Started a Housing Co-op?
Coming Home to Bluestem
It was a sunny summer evening, and AJ and I were in our mid-twenties, both working downtown. We came home to our three-storey walk-up apartment in the Corydon neighbourhood — back when it was already lively, full of good food, great gelati, and the feeling that you were exactly where you wanted to be.
We headed in through the back, up the fire escape — which functioned less like an emergency exit and more like a multi-storey deck. On warm evenings, it was where life happened. Kids played. Parents shared snacks and a beverage.
We’d head up one flight, stop to chat. Go up another, stop again, sit down, play with kids. Conversations overlapped. Laughter drifted up and down the stairs. AJ used to joke, you know you’re living in a co-op when it takes you 90 minutes to get up two flights of stairs.
And he wasn’t wrong.
Bluestem Housing Co-op, Winnipeg, Canada
It wasn’t organized. It wasn’t forced. It was what happens when people choose a co-operative way of li...
