“I was just relieved,” said Michael Gillespie, who represents a company that owns a home on Winnipeg’s Centennial Avenue, across a back lane from where the 1990 Eagle Talon had sat since at least 2014. Gillespie had repeatedly tried to get the city of Winnipeg to declare the car abandoned, but officials said as recently as last month they were still trying to determine whether the vehicle met that definition under the city’s sustainability bylaw. On Wednesday, nearly two weeks after a CBC News story about the abandoned car, Gillespie drove by the scene and saw it was gone. “There’s just this big crater in the grass where the car has been sitting for the better part of 10 years,” he said. On Monday, Gillespie saw a “no unauthorized parking” sign displayed next to the car. Then on Tuesday, someone had taped a “sold” sign to the inside of the back window. The next day, the vehicle was gone, leaving an impression on the ground where it lay. Gillespie does not yet know who, or who, owns the vehicle. A “sold” sign was taped to the inside of the car’s back window Tuesday, Michael Gillespie says. By Wednesday, the car was gone, he says. (Submitted by Michael Gillespie) A spokesperson says the City of Winnipeg “was able to work with the owner of the vehicle to move it to an appropriate location.” A search of Google Street View images, dating back to 2014, showed the vehicle parked on the grass. The license plate sticker shows it was registered in 2012. As of late last month, the car’s tires were flat, its mirrors and lights were broken and its wheels sunk into the ground. The lawn — a former railway line — has been zoned for one family, a City of Winnipeg spokesperson said in an emailed statement. That zoning does not allow for “outside storage,” the city spokesman said.
‘Back to the drawing board’
Although he’s relieved the car is no longer there, Gillespie still doesn’t understand why the city took so long to remove it. “I am frankly disgusted with the administration of the city of Winnipeg,” he said. “I think this whole episode demonstrates the administration’s incompetence … when it comes to dealing with regulations that are either poorly designed or poorly thought out or just poorly administered.” He pointed out that the city’s parking ordinance prohibits parking a vehicle on any part of a property’s front or side yard that is not a street or parking lot. “So the same car for 10 years sits improperly on a lawn under a different law in the city of Winnipeg that the city chose to ignore,” he said. His experience trying to remove the vehicle has shown Gillespie that the city has “no interest in pursuing” violations of its own rules, he said. The car is shown in a July 28 photo. Google Street View searches show the 1990 Eagle Talon has been sitting in the same spot, on a patch of grass in a back lane in River Heights, since at least 2014. (Rudy Gauer/CBC) Waverley West Coun. Janice Lukes filed amendments to the abandoned vehicle bylaw earlier this year that she hoped would make it easier for the city to remove them. In discussions with city staff, however, Lukes was informed that a vehicle cannot be declared abandoned unless it meets all the criteria set forth in the neighborhood bylaw. Lukes said this situation shows that more changes are needed. “The statute needs further improvement because there are clearly scenarios that we see with the red car that need to be addressed,” he said. “That just tells me we need to get back to the plan.”
