WINNIPEG, Manitoba—At a book club meeting here recently, Angela Heck put aside the Canadian classic being discussed when someone suggested a new way to repel mosquitoes: Rub their carcasses into your body.

Never mind the book. A two-hour discussion of mosquito repellents ensued.

Winnipeg, after all, is home to more mosquitoes than any other city in North America has to deal with, some experts say, and the city is rethinking what to do about the bug people call the unofficial bird of Winnipeg.

For decades Winnipeg has waged an annual war with the flying insects, bombing them with pesticides and fogging them from a fleet of trucks. Now some Winnipeggers want change, and their fight is going organic. Sick of chemical compounds, they are resorting to lemon, witch hazel and the seeds of an evergreen tree indigenous to India. Others want to make the bug a tourist attraction as important to the city's landscape as the rolling prairie.

"Everyone had something to say about the mosquito…it's such a part of their experience of living in Winnipeg," Ms. Heck said about the book club, even though the group that had gathered to discuss "The Game," Ken Dryden's 1983 account of playing hockey in the 1970s.