Southwestern Winnipeg homeowner burning mad about muddy berm
Dispute between neighbours latest land-use conflict in wealthy 'wild west' Wilkes South neighbourhood
Glen Hart's dream-home bungalow in southwestern Winnipeg has 2,544 square feet of living space, a fireplace, an attached garage and a unique view out his front window — a 10-metre-tall wall of earth.
A bitter dispute between Hart and the homeowner to the north has led to the muddy mother of all fences rising between two neighbours in the "wild west" of Winnipeg's Wilkes South neighbourhood, where residential homes assessed at more than $1 million coexist with large parcels of agricultural land, smaller acreages with horse stables and a handful of small industrial operations.
Hart's neighbour hired earth-moving equipment to build a berm that extends along the south side of her property, where it slopes steeply toward a drainage trench.
Although the unusual landscaping is perfectly legal, thanks to a permit issued in 2022, Hart is upset the City of Winnipeg has allowed the work to proceed. He says the ditch poses a drowning danger to his four-year-old daughter, and the wall of mud on the other side of that trench makes him embarrassed to invite company over.
"Anybody that comes here wants to know when the ski hill's opening up," Hart said last week, standing on his driveway, a spacious expanse of gravel.
"It's Brady landfill 2.0. It's a commercial dump site. They've allowed thousands and thousands of truckloads of fill in here."
Tensions between Hart and his neighbour began when he purchased his property, a parcel of land that has no direct connection to any formal road.
In order to get to his home, he has to drive along a private right-of-way once used by agricultural producers in Wilkes South. That private road first crosses land owned by Jags Development and then continues along the edge of Hart's neighbour's property.
"The road is a private access road. We all have the right to use it," said Andrew Fast, a neighbour to the east of both Hart and the woman living to the north.
"What had happened is when Glen started to build his house, she got kind of annoyed that he was using the access road to get to his property."
The woman's lawyer, Bruce King, said she was more than annoyed, after spending more than two decades on her plot of land, tending to several horses on her property with little in the way of interruption.
"It is completely fair to say that the development by Mr. Hart of his property imposed significant inconvenience, hardship and trouble on my client," said King, describing the construction of the berm at the edge of her property "as a defensive move" against an unruly neighbour.
"The landscaping is extensive, well-planned and frankly, rather ambitious," King said. "It does involve the erection of berms with the purpose of the berms being to shield her animals from interference from activities on adjoining properties — not just Mr. Hart's, but properties to the west."
King said Hart used to engage in stock-car racing on his property before he built his home, operates his roofing business from his property and has prevented workers from accessing his neighbour's property.
Hart denies this, saying he only had a go-kart, he works mostly offsite and his neighbour has prevented him from accessing his property.
Hart has filed two police complaints about his neighbour (one non-criminal, the other unfounded, the Winnipeg Police Service said) and twice went to city hall to complain about the landscaping work.
One complaint involved land drainage and the other was about weeds growing on the wall of mud. Both are now subject to compliance orders, City of Winnipeg spokesperson Kalen Qually said.
Hart said he wouldn't mind the berm facing his front window if the earth had a more gentle slope and was covered in grass or some other form of more pleasant vegetation.
"Some trees would have worked," Hart said. "She chose to build a 400-foot-wide, 30-foot-tall mud wall in between us, on the property line."
King said the work is not complete and eventually the berm will be sculpted and feature native vegetation.
"The end result should be a rather attractive, well-landscaped property," he said.
Coun. Evan Duncan, whose Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood ward includes the Wilkes South neighbourhood, said he could not believe what he saw the first time he visited Hart's property.
"This clearly is not built within any sort of parameters that are set or practised throughout the city of Winnipeg, and I want to remind people this is the city of Winnipeg. This isn't the wild, wild west," Duncan said.
"I get it that the land drainage might be compliant with an engineer's stamp, but come on: Does this make sense in a residential neighbourhood?"
The height of berms is not regulated by any Winnipeg bylaw, said Qually, the city spokesperson.
This has left Hart considering legal action against the city.
"There's nothing else left to do," he said.
No new homes
While Hart has only owned his property in Wilkes South for six years, his feud with his neighbour was sparked by events dating back to 2007, when the previous owner of his property sought permission from the city to build a home.
In order to get around a 1994 planning framework that forbids new residential construction in Wilkes South on parcels of land that don't have road, water and sewer access, the previous owner of Hart's property asked the city to make an exception to a zoning rule governing agricultural land instead.
This manoeuvre, City of Winnipeg planner James Veitch wrote at the time, was "clearly an attempt to get around these policies." He convinced the city to quash the application.
That decision did not stand. An appeals committee made up of three elected officials who no longer sit on city council allowed a residential home to proceed — with no time limit on when construction had to start.
Hart inherited this exception when he bought the land. Fast, the other neighbour, said it didn't take long after construction started before sparks flew with the neighbour to the north.
"I think that they were probably both at fault," he said. "One thing just escalated to the other, and you got two people that just could not get along."
Wealthy neighbourhood
The discord over the dirt pile sitting between Glen Hart and his neighbour is just the latest land-use conflict to emerge in Wilkes South, where most residential homes do not have water or sewer service and rely on cisterns and holding tanks instead.
In 2017, homeowners on McCreary Road, Loudoun Road and Liberty Street were incensed to learn a proposal to extend Sterling Lyon Parkway would have resulted in a new freeway running through or near their properties. The resulting uproar led the city to abandon the plan within weeks.
In 2024, Coun. Duncan was outraged when fellow city councillors approved the construction of a two-storey, 4,900-square-foot garage on Liberty Street, even though it was four times the size of what would normally be permitted on the property, and the owner did not obtain a development or building permit.
Wilkes South is vast and sparsely populated. It makes up nearly five per cent of Winnipeg by area but only has 815 residents.
The neighbourhood is also wealthy. Residents of Wilkes South include doctors, businesspeople and two members of the Winnipeg Jets. The mean household income in Wilkes South was $452,000 in 2020, or 4½ times that of Winnipeg overall, according to City of Winnipeg data based on the 2021 federal census.
"We have a lot of people with money around here, which has raised property values, so we all appreciate it," said Andrew Fast.
At the same time, he said, some of the people in the neighbourhood act as if rules do not apply to them.
"People think that they can do what they want, and that's part of the issue," said Fast, who gets along with both Glen Hart and the neighbour to the north, even though he finds the latter's berm "strictly disgusting."
Hazel Borys, Winnipeg's director of planning, property and development, declined CBC News requests for interviews about planning challenges facing Wilkes South. Through Qually, she said new developments in the neighbourhood are restricted to specific parcels of land on a total of four streets.
Bruce King, the berm builder's lawyer, maintains a more mundane view of the discord, unconnected to the nature of the neighbourhood.
"Sadly, conflict between neighbours has always existed and will likely continue to exist," he said. "I can think of numerous incidents and many examples where parties just couldn't get along. It's part of human nature, unfortunately."
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