Shouldn't we get the party started ?

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   • Birthday party held for Portage and Main

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Winnipeg's iconic Portage and Main has been a gathering spot and the place where we party. Its birthday is June 2. (JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ARCHIVES) Photo Store

So where's the party for our Party Corner?

Where's the celebration for the intersection where we go to celebrate historic occasions, as we did a year ago today when the return of the NHL to Winnipeg was officially confirmed?

Portage and Main turns 150 years old on Saturday, which makes it more than a decade older than Winnipeg itself, but city hall isn't planning anything to commemorate the occasion.

The mayor's office, which seems ready to hand the key to the city to any famous face that passes through, hasn't even bothered to mention our most famous intersection, our signature intersection, is having a special anniversary.

In fact, it seems the only one who thought we should know Canada's legendary coldest and windiest corner was getting ready to blow out 150 candles is a local history fan who goes by the website handle West End Dumplings.

His name is Christian Cassidy, and he put the news on his website just over a week ago, where it was noticed by Free Press deputy editor Julie Carl.

"Let's blog a 150th birthday gift to Portage and Main," Cassidy urged his readers.

But what do you give the city's heart and soul, the place where everyone knows we can go, to tell the world we have something?

A place that has seen it all, and as Cassidy points out, has it all.

"Except pedestrians."

While you're pondering your idea of a birthday gift for Portage and Main, here's the backstory.

It was on June 2, 1862, that Henry McKenney and his half-brother, John Christian Schultz, purchased a parcel of property down the trail from Upper Fort Garry in which no one else saw the potential.

McKenney and Company, as it was known, paid Andrew McDermot 110 pounds sterling for the land where they would build a general store on the northwest corner of what would soon become Portage Avenue and Main Street.

Looking back, it seems a strange decision. McKenney -- who had arrived in the settlement just three years earlier -- had already established the frontier town's first hotel and was granted the first liquor licence in the future Winnipeg. But McKenney had another plan.

A vision just up a future street.

"If the appearance of the surrounding terrain is considered, it must be concluded that McKenney was very far-sighted indeed," observes George F. Reynolds in an article titled The Man Who Created The Corner Of Portage And Main, on the Manitoba Historical Society's website.

"The site was low and swampy, covered with scrub oak and poplar, and except for the fact that it was at the juncture of the western trail and the main north-south road, had little to recommend. In the eyes of the old settlers, the worst feature was the distance from the Red River. Nobody in their right mind, they said, would even think of building over one-quarter of a mile from the river, at that time the only source of water."

But all McKenney cared about was finding what home and business owners are supposed to look for: location, location, location.

"He wanted to build his new store where the north-south and east-west travelways crossed," the historical society article said. "The deal was closed on June 2, 1862, and although nobody realized it at the time, the future corner of Portage and Main was thereby determined."

Not that McKenney's little store on the Prairie appeared iconic.

Architecturally, the author of the historical society article pointed out, it was "a ghastly example of Red River primitive." At the time, it was described as looking like "Noah's ark without the boat." The better to float in a spring flood, the locals probably laughed.

But they weren't laughing for long.

McKenny's immediate success at what would become the city's crossroads of commerce soon had other entrepreneurs rushing to buy property on the other corners.

And so a legend was born.

So what birthday gift do you get for an intersection that has seen everything and has always been there for us when we needed a place to go?

Well, we could offer our fondest memories of the corner, or as Cassidy suggested, our birthday wishes.

And I invite you to do that, too.

Or we could simply give Portage and Main what Cassidy did, and city hall hasn't.

A little respect.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 31, 2012 B1