Nestled beneath century-old Elm trees in Winnipeg’s Kildonan Park sits a cottage that looks plucked from the pages of a fairy tale – “Hansel and Gretel,” to be exact. Any seasoned Winnipegger worth their salmon 1999 Pan-Am Games jacket knows exactly the place I describe. A cherished local attraction, the Witch’s Hut has enchanted visitors of all ages for over 50 years. A volunteer named Jim Zacharkiw opens its doors each May. “It’s fun to watch the kids come in. Some are okay and brave. The younger ones can get very scared,” he said. And for good reason. ‘Next to a great forest there lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and two children’ The story comes to life inside the conical roofed, fieldstone-walled cottage adorned with faux gingerbread cookies. Visitors big and small step inside to find terra cotta panels lining the walls, illustrating the classic Brothers Grimm folk tale of starvation, survival, and sugar. From there, they pass a barred cell beneath a log staircase, where a little Hansel mannequin is trapped inside. They climb the stairs to find the evil mannequin Witch herself, perennially tending to a magical brew on her faux wood stove, as mannequin Gretel sweeps the floor, plotting her escape. “I used to take my daughter here when she was a kid. It looks exactly the same,” said a man named Bobby who visited the hut on a hot July day. “This has become a little tradition,” he said, gesturing to the little girl and boy clinging to him – his grandkids. Fittingly, the Witch’s Hut was built with just this tradition in mind. ‘Then all together they set forth into the woods’ The Witch’s Hut first opened its wooden doors in 1970. Built by the German-Manitoban community, the hut was a gift to the children of Winnipeg to celebrate the province’s centennial. “It was also a way to advise people that some of these Disney World fairy tales that they show are all based on the stories that came from Germany,” explained Carola Lange, a past president of the German-Canadian Congress. “Some of the fairy tales are a little bit scary from way back when, when they were first written.” ‘Who is nibbling at my house?’ That’s because folk tales like “Hansel and Gretel” were not exclusively written with children in mind, explained Pauline Greenhill, a professor in the University of Winnipeg’s women’s and gender studies department and an expert in folklore, folk tales and fairy tale depictions in media. It’s believed the German-born Brothers Grimm first popularized “Hansel and Gretel” in an 1812 book of collected folk tales, though the story can be traced back even further to many countries all around the world. Unlike some of the other Grimm tales, like “Snow White” and “Cinderella,” “Hansel and Gretel” never got the full Disney treatment, Greenhill notes. “Disney is not going to make a movie about a mother who sends her children out to starve in the woods,” she said. “The traditional tale is not nice and sweet.” Still, the story of babes lost in the woods has held a certain cultural fascination, Greenhill said, even without the almighty House of Mouse engine powering it. “People have definitely focused on the whole idea of it being a story about hunger and starvation historically. More recently, there have been quite a few horror films that are based on “Hansel and Gretel.” ‘She grabbed Hansel with her withered hand and carried him to a little stall’ Grim as the source material may be, the hut was designed by German-Manitoban architect Hans Peter Langes, who immigrated from Datteln to Winnipeg in 1951, encountering plenty of post-Second World War vitriol as he opened his own architecture firm. “In business, sure, it was difficult for him, and there were times where contractors would not want to do business with him because he was from Germany,” his daughter Jane Langes said. Still, he did not hesitate when asked to design the hut as a nod to his German heritage, she recalled. He remained equally steadfast when he presented his design for the earth-toned, rounded structure to the hut’s planning committee, one that expected a more rainbow, candy-coated cottage. More Hans Christian Andersen and less Grimm. Still, his vision won out and construction began in 1967. The $18,000 price tag was mainly bankrolled by donations, city records say. Jane, then five years old, shared the committee’s initial displeasure when her father took her and her siblings to see the finished cottage in 1970. “I was furious. I looked at it, and I said, ‘why is it round?’ Because in my mind, I was wanting to see what I saw in storybooks, right? Kind of that swooped roof with the icing icicles hanging off,” she recalled. “I was a critic.” ‘Hansel, stick out your finger, so I can feel if you are fat yet’ The structure has had some improvements in the decades since. The cedar shake roof was replaced by the city in 2014. Archival photos show a particularly menacing former version of the witch – a wart-nosed sorceress atop a broomstick, suspended from the ceiling with a cat on her back. Zacharkiw tells me the original faux gingerbread cookies, which were a grayish brown to match the roof, were traded in for more colourful, more durable ones that could stand up to Winnipeg’s notoriously wicked winters. “They take quite the beating from the hale,” he said. ‘Gretel gave her a shove, causing her to fall in the oven’ Meanwhile, there has been one constant at the hut over the last 19 years in its ever-devoted volunteer. After growing up blocks away from Kildonan Park, Zacharkiw went to work for the city in its arenas. The kids he saw every day, either inching shakily across the ice like Bambis on skates or zipping around with a hockey stick in hand, became the highlight. He then moved on to work at the very park where he spent his childhood, tending to the machinery and working as a foreman. He fell in love with the place, especially the Witch’s Hut. “I’m not a man of the world where I’ve seen lots of different things. From the building itself to the inside to the displays, - I like it all,” he said. When it came time to retire, he worried there wouldn’t be anyone around to care for the hut, so he volunteered to run it. Every May for the past 19 years, he has opened its doors. He’s there seven days a week, unless it’s raining, as he worries kids would slip on the split-log staircase. He closes up for the season in September. A caretaker through and through, Zacharkiw has painted the fading coloured glass windows on the roof, created new gingerbread ornaments to hang inside, and greeted the many families who come to visit. “I’m a big kid fan,” he said. “It’s fun to watch them come in and see the Witch. I just enjoy the reaction and the interaction with the kids.” A bench outside bears his name – the city’s recognition for his volunteer hours and dedication to the Witch’s Hut. ‘Hansel we are saved’ Over the years, the hut has played host to countless storybook hours, the Fairy Tales Festival, and plenty of photo shoots, as a favourite backdrop for shutterbugs, professional and aspiring. A 2015 estimate had over 1,000 people visiting the hut weekly during the summer months, the city report said. “I used to bring Tal (Bachman) here when he was about two years of age. Every day we rode here on our bikes,” Randy Bachman said in a 2021 Instagram video taken inside the Witch’s Hut. Standing next to him, son Tal takes the camera on a tour of the cottage, most of the figures covered by garbage bags as the facility was shut down at the time. “I haven’t been back since I was two or three years old. I still remember this place vividly,” Bachman said. ‘Now all their cares were at an end, and they lived happily together’ Back on that hot July day, Bobby and his grandkids make their way back down the staircase. Having had their fill of the spooky Witch, they set off to feed the ducks that swim in the stream outside. Zacharkiw waves goodbye to them, as more kids make their way inside, slightly hesitant to step into the story unfolding in front of them. “It’s been a bit smoky, so less busy, but they’re starting to come now, which is good,” he said. “It was built for kids but everyone loves coming.” It’s a sentiment echoed by scholar Donald Haase, Professor Greenhill tells me. “Fairy tales are for everyone,” she said, paraphrasing him. “We all make our own versions of fairy tales, sometimes from our recollections of fairy tales, and that is perfectly legitimate.” Despite her harsh initial criticism, Jane came to love her father’s version of the Witch’s Hut and the legacy it left behind. He passed away in 2008 of cancer. In his final days, he told Jane he would love her to recreate the design on a beach somewhere – her own summer abode. “There are these edifices of my dad sort of sprinkled throughout the province that are still there, but the claim to fame is really the Witch’s Hut,” she said. “It’s such a beautiful Winnipeg charm, and I think it brings a lot of happiness to a lot of people.” - With files from CTV’s Kayla Rosen Editor’s note: This is a corrected story. The original story stated the hut was created for the City of Winnipeg’s Centennial celebrations, when it was actually created for Manitoba’s Centennial.
