Portage Place of old an oasis for music-loving rez girl

As the structure surrounding the iconic clocktower at Portage Place came down on Wednesday as part of True North’s plans to redevelop the property, I saw a flurry of social media posts from Indigenous friends honouring their memories of the downtown mall.

I’ve heard a lot of comments regarding Portage Place throughout my life.

Facebook Groups have always called it Portage Place First Nation, owing to the omnipresent Indigenous community that was connecting there, or just trying to survive. When I was in my 20s, I hated hearing people comment on the visibility of Indigenous people at Portage Place as if it was a bad thing.

I grew up on the Misipawstik Cree Nation next to Grand Rapids in northern Manitoba. Grand Rapids only had a nursing station, so if you required specialist medical care, you took the bus to Winnipeg for appointments.

The trip could be hellish, jostling for space on the always cramped buses. How did Greyhound turn a four-hour road trip into an eight-hour nightmare? I missed the days when tiny Sonya had the ability to lie flat across two seats like a little bed.

But once in Winnipeg, Portage Place was my oasis.

From the Greyhound bus depot — located where the University of Winnipeg AnX is now — the bus from Winnipeg to Thompson would leave at 10 p.m.

This was great for teenage me because my favourite Portage Place stores closed at 9 p.m. and I cherished wasting time at the mall before the scheduled return bus.

It was there I discovered McNally Robinson Booksellers. The tiny offshoot location had more books than my school library’s back home. And the coffee shop at the back of the store looked as if it had been cut from some beautiful New York locale and pasted in downtown Winnipeg.

I would save my money for these trips to Portage Place before we went back to Grand Rapids. I had an empty bag I would bring just to stash my new books.

HMV was on the main floor, at the corner next to the escalators. One fall, I came to Winnipeg often for medical appointments; on every visit I would go to the record store to make sure nothing new from my favourite artists had slipped past me in the week since I had been away.

I thought HMV was the coolest place I’d ever seen. I wanted to dress like the girls behind the counter and wear my makeup like them. The time I bought Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, I checked to see if the guy at the counter thought I was cool.

Best-of compilations were Creator-sent to a teenage rez girl on a limited income. My whole entry into the band U2 began by buying their first compilation album from HMV. It was like a map I’d use to search for the albums with my favourite songs. I found my favourite U2 track, All I Want Is You, on Rattle and Hum and I recall blissfully listening to it (on a Walkman with an “a” carved after the Sony imprint) on the bus home over and over again the night I bought it

There was never enough time to explore, as my parents gave me a time limit. They never felt accepted in stores like McNally’s. (Neither did I, but I never felt accepted anywhere.)

The time limit vanished when I attended the University of Manitoba and found Portage Place even more of a cultural mecca.

When the Globe Theatre was still there, you could see cool indie movies that bypassed Cinematheque and would never turn up at the mainstream theatre chains.

Sure, Portage Place was always a place where security would follow around a rez girl as she tried to sneak-read novels before buying them. But I felt like I grew up there — or at least found every book or CD that ended up meaning a lot to me.

It felt sacred to me.

Sonya Ballantyne is a Swampy Cree writer, filmmaker and speaker originally from Misipawistik Cree Nation. The Unbeatable Sonya Ballantyne, her graphic novel memoir, will be released by Highwater Press March 2026.