{"id":952383,"date":"2026-10-30T22:02:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T22:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/952383\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T22:02:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T22:02:18","slug":"the-woman-from-the-hole-winnipeggers-comical-quandary-becomes-halloween-costume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/952383\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The woman from the hole’: Winnipegger’s comical quandary becomes Halloween costume"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christine Keilback might just have the greatest sense of humour ever.<\/p>\n

She laughed off her misfortune after plunging shoulder-deep into a hole in the boulevard near her Winnipeg home in April \u2014 a predicament that brought out emergency crews and led to media coverage.<\/p>\n

Now she’s getting a howl out of a Halloween costume inspired by it all.<\/p>\n

“It’s so lighthearted and it’s such a good spoof on what happened. I mean, how could I not be happy to see that? It’s been fun,” Keilback said.<\/p>\n

On Thursday she met Vanessa Desorcy, who was dressed as a Keilback lookalike \u2014 from the jacket, hair and eyeglasses right down to a leaf-covered ring at her armpits filling the role as hole.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Keilback maintained her sense of humour even after the earth opened up beneath her. (Submitted by Lynda Regan)<\/p>\n

“I’m absolutely thrilled to meet Vanessa. I’m so glad to have this opportunity, because it made my day,” Keilback said outside her house after embracing Desorcy.<\/p>\n

“It was so funny. I laughed and laughed, and it was, it was the best. [Her] attention to detail on the costume, I mean \u2026 were we separated at birth? Maybe.”<\/p>\n

Keilback, 58, was out with friends in the evening of April 25. When they dropped her off at her Wolseley home, she dropped out of sight.<\/p>\n

Keilback had stepped into a small hole that suddenly widened and collapsed farther as she fell. She tried to boost herself out, but every foothold crumbled away.<\/p>\n

One of her friends ran for a broom and shovel to span the gap and give her a brace to hook her arms around.<\/p>\n

“In the beginning I was afraid \u2026 because the perimeter of the hole was falling away. So that scared me,” Keilback said, reflecting back.<\/p>\n

But once she realized she was safe and unhurt, and fire rescue folks were on the way, the absurdity of it all hit.<\/p>\n

\"Firefighters<\/p>\n

The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service’s technical rescue task force uses a frame and winch to rescue Keilback. (Submitted by Lynda Regan)<\/p>\n

Keilback posed for pics with her friends before the rescue task force used a frame and winch and straps to lift her out.<\/p>\n

In all, she was in the hole for about 40 minutes.<\/p>\n

Keilback’s sense of humour about it all radiated across interviews, from local media to international coverage by People.com and the BBC.<\/p>\n

The story popped back into Desorcy’s head a few days ago while brainstorming for a Halloween costume for her work party.<\/p>\n

“I remember reading the story when it happened, and it just brought me so much joy \u2014 of course, as soon as I knew that she was fine. It was amazing, and she had such a good outlook on it,” Desorcy said as Keilback stood by with a beaming smile.<\/p>\n

“And so in the last couple of days, it all just came together [as a costume].”<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Desorcy, left, shares a laugh with her costume influencer, Keilback. (Randall McKenzie\/CBC)<\/p>\n

One of her co-workers knew immediately who she was, but a couple others were confused initially, Desorcy said.<\/p>\n

“So I crouched down and did the smile and then they got it right away: ‘You’re the woman from the hole,'” she said.<\/p>\n

“I love stories like that. They just make hard days feel lighter and they make everything more fun.”<\/p>\n

That’s also why Keilback’s story was featured as #TheMoment on CBC’s The National with Adrienne Arsenault shortly after it happened.<\/p>\n

“I could not have been happier to have that happen, to have Adrienne Arsenault say your name out loud \u2014 and it was for falling in a hole. Like, not for any sort of contribution I made to the community or anything,” Keilback laughed. “I fell in a hole and I was a good sport about it.<\/p>\n

“But still, I’ll take it.” <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Keilback chats with emergency workers from a hole in front of her property on Lipton Street in Winnipeg in April. (Submitted by Lynda Regan)<\/p>\n

Desorcy wasn’t the only one who found inspiration in Keilback’s amusing misfortune.<\/p>\n

Keilback’s next-door neighbour created a Halloween display on the front lawn. It’s a skull and hands coming out of the ground, with broom handles and a sign reading “Help me.”<\/p>\n

“You gotta love neighbours. This is the best neighbourhood to live in,” Keilback said.<\/p>\n

That was the first tribute she saw, and she figured it would be the only one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“But Vanessa surprised me,” she said.<\/p>\n

After some more laughs and another hug, the women offered some advice for those traversing city boulevards and neighbourhoods this weekend.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Neighbours created this Halloween display in tribute to Christine Keilback. (Randall McKenzie\/CBC)<\/p>\n

“Have a good Halloween and watch out for holes,” Desorcy said.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, be safe. Stick to the sidewalk,” Keilback added.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the City of Winnipeg said the hole was due to a previously removed catch basin and lead<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A catch basin is a drainage structure that collects stormwater runoff and traps debris. The lead is the connecting pipe that transports water from the basin to a main line.<\/p>\n

Crews found a similar situation on the opposite side of the road, where a second catch basin would have been located, the spokesperson said at the time.<\/p>\n

WATCH | Christine Keilback tells The National about her situation:\"\"<\/p>\n

#TheMoment a woman fell into an undiscovered hole<\/p>\n

Christine Keilback tells The National about the moment she fell through the ground on her boulevard and got stuck in a previously undiscovered hole in Winnipeg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christine Keilback might just have the greatest sense of humour ever. She laughed off her misfortune after plunging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-952383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}