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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Hotel not the problem: owner

Says havoc takes place outside of Merchants

By: Gabrielle Giroday

Posted: 11/23/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Jim Major, owner of the Merchants Hotel on Selkirk Avenue. (WAYNE.GLOWACKI@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)

Jim Major doesn't kid himself about the way most of Winnipeg sees the Merchants Hotel: ground zero of North End disaster.

On a balmy morning at 541 Selkirk Ave., there's a shattered glass bottle to step around as you walk in and inhale the skunky odour of old beer.

There's a dangerous-looking gentleman at a line of video lottery terminals and a woman pawing through crushed cans.

In the last few weeks, this area again made headlines for a violent beer theft near the hotel vendor.

Major said, however, the Merchants is getting a bad rap.

"Everything that goes on, goes on outside. You get kind of tired after a while, there's hundreds of other businesses on Selkirk Avenue, everything doesn't always happen at the Merchants Hotel," said Major, 66.

He said the hotel's 12 video cameras, outdoor and indoor, have helped police solve an estimated 25 to 30 crimes. He's had $12,000 worth of safety equipment installed since he took over in 2006.

He has a stack of Winnipeg Police Service video discs on hand for the last two years to copy hotel footage. A staff member estimates she's downloaded about 100 discs for police in the last year. While Major said crime plagues the blocks surrounding his 23-room establishment, he said his hotel is now dedicated to housing people 55 years and older.

"Have I had to call the police for anything, a stabbing, a shooting, a brawl? No," he said. "There's no reports."

A community grant helped purchase bright white lights to help illuminate the hotel's exterior, he said.

That being said, Major's not exactly your typical community pillar.

Today, he's donned a leather vest and an easy grin as he shows a visitor a murky hot tub he keeps on the hotel's second floor. He keeps a pair of purple lace underwear pinned to his wall alongside hand-painted signs with heartwarming messages and wolves.

A bulletin board is full of business cards of Winnipeg Police Service detectives, and Major said he had two sets of officers stop by Monday morning for help solving two unrelated assaults. One of those assaults involved three men who stabbed and robbed a 43-year-old man after he left the hotel. Solving crimes like these makes for strange friends and fans.

"(The police) do everything possible to keep it straight, to solve these things," said Major.

"Three weeks ago, we had to do 14 discs (for police) in one morning."

The corner of Selkirk and Andrews Street is notorious, but Major maintains happenings at the intersection pose no more threat than East Kildonan.

"There's trouble every place in Winnipeg," he said.

gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 23, 2009 B1

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