Winnipeg dancers put dreams on hold after financial setback of Birchwood Terrace evacuation

Nearly three months after being driven out of their Winnipeg apartment building at risk of collapse, tenants are still working to rebuild their lives.

For Shyanne Carriere and her mother Mala, the evacuation from their home at the Birchwood Terrace apartments on Portage Avenue in May – and the time elapsed since then – has forced them to make difficult personal decisions.

“I thought it would be just like, a month, we would be able to go back in, grab our belongings and then have it all be done with,” Shyanne said.

Shyanne, a professional world-champion Latin dancer of salsa and bachata, is forced to skip an entire dance season as the family attempts to recover financially.

“It’s difficult because it’s not just like, a couple months of preparation for competition,” she explained. “It’s years. You train for years in order to compete. So to say no to it is very difficult.”

The decision to put dancing on hold for financial reasons was also difficult for Mala, who dances as well. The mother-daughter duo competed together for the first time at the Calgary International Salsa Congress in April, winning first prize.

“It was amazing. Like a dream come true to me,” Mala described.

“I wanted to take it to the next level, and that’s the Canada (International) Salsa Congress. You get a Canada title if you win first there, so that was really hard for us.”

Now that dream is on hold until further notice.

“We’d have to save every cent,” Mala explained. “We would have to eat meagrely, it’s hard. We don’t have a bank account. We don’t have that extra money.”

“We don’t have enough money to buy things that we need every day,” Shyanne added. “To add that on that expense, to go somewhere, travel, costumes, competition, registration fees, hotel, food… It was not doable for us at this moment.”

Some 250 residents were evacuated from Birchwood Terrace on May 10 – with just a few hours of notice – after an inspection uncovered severe deterioration in different areas of the building, including most of the complex’s basement column supports.

The company that owns the building, Ladco Company Limited, declined to comment when CityNews asked for an update on the building.

In the immediate aftermath of the evacuation, Mala and Shyanne moved in with Mala’s oldest daughter; they were five people in a two-bedroom apartment. Mala and Shyanne later moved out on their own and resorted to buy “throwaway” furniture until they could have access to their Birchwood home.

Nearly 13 weeks after being rushed out, the mother and daughter are allowed back into Birchwood. They’re spending this week packing up the apartment – small things first, followed by big furniture on Friday.

Mala said it was emotional being back at their former home.

“It’s hard,” she said. “We were talking, my daughter and I, and I said, ‘oh I’m just gonna take all of this to home.’ But technically, this still felt like home because we’ve been here for a few years already.”

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Shyanne didn’t know if they would ever be allowed to re-enter.

“There was consistent communication of, ‘we’re not sure when it’s gonna be completed,’” she said. ‘We’re not sure. We don’t know when the building will be able to be safe to go back in. We don’t know if it will be safe to go back in.’ So we weren’t sure if we would ever get our things back.”

Support from the dance community

The mother and daughter say professional moving expenses are simply too high, so they’ve been relying on people’s help, including members of the dance community.

It’s something Mala and Shyanne are more than grateful for, but it’s also difficult to accept, as they’re usually the ones in a position to be helping others.

“It feels selfish and greedy,” Shyanne said. “And we know it’s not, because we need the help. But when you’re always someone that gives, to get and receive, it feels really greedy because you’re not used to it, right? But it’s something that helped us tremendously and I don’t think we would have been able to do this without all that support.”

“Eventually there’ll be something good in the long run,” added Mala. “Our good is that we’ve found a beautiful place to live in. We just want to be able to carry on our life after this.”

And while getting their old belongings allows them to start a new chapter of their lives, they’re also reflecting on the dance career on hold – and the first place they likely won’t be able to defend.

“We’re just gonna train really hard and hopefully go back to Calgary in April next year, 2025,” said Shyanne, who has been dancing since she was two years old.

“I don’t know what it’s like not to dance.”