Did Winnipeg name any streets after Titanic victims?

Later this month, on April 15, is the 110th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland. It has often been said that several Winnipeg streets were named for local victims in the aftermath of the tragedy — but that does not appear to be the case.

Of the nearly 1,500 people who died that night, at least 10 had strong Manitoba connections. Another 16 were immigrants, in some cases entire families, who listed this province as their final destination but never set eyes on their new homeland.

Two streets are, indeed, named for people who went down on the Titanic, but they existed long before the tragedy.

Borebank Street, for instance, is named after John J. Borebank, a Toronto businessman who came to Winnipeg around 1902. He got into the lucrative real estate business and in 1904 began selling residential lots in Fort Rouge through his company, Howey and Borebank. It is around this time that Borebank Street was created.

The origin of Winnipeg’s metro route system

Some of Winnipeg’s longest streets don’t have names. They are the numbered routes created in the 1960s by Metro Winnipeg.

The Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg, Metro for short, was created by the province in 1960. It was a second tier of municipal government tasked with overseeing regional issues such as transportation, water and waste, and development for Winnipeg and its surrounding municipalities. It lasted until the implementation of Unicity in 1972.

A big challenge for Metro was moving traffic efficiently across numerous municipal boundaries. An American-style freeway system that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and tear neighbourhoods apart was not in the cards. It would have to use the existing street network to which it would add bridges and interchanges. The goal was, where possible, to start and end the routes at a provincial highway.

Municipalities had to give up jurisdiction over these stretches of road to Metro. In return, Metro was responsible for funding their maintenance and the cost of any new road infrastructure. Winnipeg’s chief streets engineer, W. H. Finnbogason, told a reporter in 1965 that it was a bold plan and that “no other city in Canada is doing this.”

Kildonan links hit 100

Kildonan Park Golf Course, the city’s first municipal links, celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. It is the remnant of a failed $2-million plan to turn the park into an entertainment supersite.

Calls for the City of Winnipeg to create a municipal golf course began in the early 1900s. By that time, communities such as Virden, Portage la Prairie and Brandon already operated their own. In the Winnipeg region, golf was strictly a private affair with the opening of the Winnipeg — now Southwood — Golf Club in 1893, the St. Charles Golf Club in 1905, and Pine Ridge Golf Club in 1912. In August 1912, the Winnipeg Free Press ran a story headlined, “Time is now ripe for municipal golf course for the city of Winnipeg.” It included an interview with Tom Bendelow of Spalding and Co. of Chicago who had a hand in designing Pine Ridge.

Bendelow extolled the virtues of municipal golf courses and noted that many cities in the U.S. had already established them to make the game affordable for the masses. “The municipal golf course is simply an evolution of the municipal playground and the success of the latter scheme is a criterion of the success that awaits the former when the authorities have awakened to a realization of the needs of the community,” Bendelow told the Free Press.

Winnipeg’s parks board was finally ready to wade into the matter at its Oct. 21, 1914 meeting when it requested the board of control, the city’s finance committee, investigate if there was enough land available at the “new exhibition site” at Kildonan Park to include a golf course. Much of the land for Kildonan Park was purchased in 1909 on the recommendation of George Champion, the city’s superintendent of Public Parks. He worried that if the city did not act soon, finding land for a park in the north part of the city would be lost forever due to its rapid urbanization.

Time, fire erase last visible ties to community builder

When contractor and lumber magnate John Hanbury died in 1928 the Brandon Sun wrote: “John Hanbury needs no memorial in Brandon to perpetuate his name. He lives in the memory of his old-time friends and all around are concrete evidences of his business career and successful achievements.”

Over time, of course, his old friends died off and the physical traces of Hanbury’s business empire fell victim to the wrecking ball. The last prominent reminder, the Hanbury Hardware building on Pacific Avenue, was razed in the devastating fire that struck Brandon’s downtown last month.

John Hanbury was born in Markdale, Ont., in 1855 and apprenticed in the building trades, eventually becoming a successful contractor in the region. He moved to Brandon in 1882, the year the city was incorporated, to seek greater challenges.

Hanbury oversaw the construction of many of the Wheat City’s earliest landmarks, including the Langham Hotel on 12th Street (1883), the First Merchants Bank building (1890), Brandon’s first combined post office and federal building (1891), and the original Brandon Hospital (1892). All have long since been demolished.

Catastrophic bridge collapse

The Birdtail Creek Train disaster of 1968 killed three men and shook the tightly knit railway community of two provinces. Fifty years later, the memories of those men are kept alive by the families they left behind.

On the evening of April 22, 1968, Canadian National Railways (CN) freight train number 409 departed Winnipeg for points west. It was 97 cars in length and powered by four diesel engines, which was considered an average-sized train at the time.

Around midnight, the train pulled into the CN station at Rivers, Man., for a crew change and was soon back on its way with a five-man crew from Saskatchewan.

In the lead engine was 36-year-old Herbert Degerstedt, the head-end brakeman. He joined CN soon after high school and already had 16 years of service to his name. Back home in Melville, Sask., were his wife Elaine and two young children.

The Flying Bandit: Ken Leishman became a folk hero following ill-fated 1966 gold heist

Ken Leishman was the unlikeliest of folk heroes. Despite numerous trips to, and escapes from, prison in the 1950s and ’60s, the “Flying Bandit” wasn’t considered a public enemy. Instead, he became a media celebrity and a respected community leader.

William Kenneth Leishman was born on a farm near Holland, Man., July 20, 1931, the middle child of Norman and Irene Leishman.

Throughout the Depression years, the family jumped from community to community in search of work.

In 1938, Ken’s parents separated, leaving Irene to raise their three children. She found work in a rural community as a live-in domestic for a widowed farmer who did not take kindly to young Ken.

Born in a remote community in northern Manitoba, Joe Keeper distinguished himself as an athlete and a soldier

Joseph Benjamin “Joe” Keeper’s life began in a remote hunting camp in northern Manitoba. Thanks to his talents as a middle-distance runner, he would go on to thrill audiences locally and on the international stage in a decade-long track and field career.

Keeper, a member of the Norway House Cree Nation, was born Jan. 21, 1886 at Walker Lake, about 130 kilometres north-west of Norway House. He was the youngest of ten children of Matilda and Walker Keeper, for whom Walker Lake is named.

At the age of 12, Keeper was sent to the Methodist Church-run Indian Industrial School in Brandon, about 1,000 kilometres away from his home. There, he trained to be a carpenter and played centre forward on the school’s soccer team.

Rev. Joseph Jones, the school’s carpentry teacher and soccer coach, was impressed by the teen’s stamina on the pitch. He suggested Keeper take up distance running and offered to be his coach.

Administrative and planning blunders delayed construction of city's oldest functioning traffic bridge

The Redwood Bridge, as most still refer to it despite it being renamed the Harry Lazarenko Bridge in 2014, is Winnipeg’s oldest functioning traffic bridge. It was meant to be a wedding gift, of sorts, to celebrate the union of two communities, but the sentiment was spoiled after an embarrassing administrative gaffe by the city saw the ten-month construction period drag on for two years.

On Feb. 16, 1906, the community of Elmwood voted overwhelmingly in favour of breaking away from the Rural Municipality of Kildonan to join the City of Winnipeg. Its residents were seeking the better police, fire and streetcar service the larger municipality could provide. Most Winnipeggers approved of the union as it would open up hundreds of acres of land near the city centre for suburban development.

Before either side got what it wanted, access between the two communities had to be improved.

The only crossing between Winnipeg and Elmwood was the original Louise Bridge in Point Douglas. Built in 1881 as a railway bridge, it was near the end of its functional life, but a new link had to be completed before the old one could be torn down and replaced.

Early Black settler Billy Beal was a ground breaker in many ways

William Sylvester Alpheus “Billy” Beal was one of rural Manitoba’s first black settlers, arriving in the Swan River region in 1906. After a life dedicated to building his community, Swan River has worked hard in recent years to ensure his legacy is never forgotten.

Beal was born in Chelsea, Mass., in 1874 and graduated from North Community High School in Minneapolis in 1898. He then apprenticed as a steam engineer.

At the time of his graduation, Canada was at the start of an aggressive immigration campaign led by Manitoba MP and federal immigration minister Clifford Sifton. The goal was to attract hundreds of thousands of homesteaders to farm the prairies.

Attracting peasant immigrants from far away lands was an expensive endeavour, so the government made special efforts to target those who had already settled in the United States. The enticement to move north was a generous homesteading arrangement of 160 acres of land for the bargain price of $10.

Rhodes’ road to success started in Winnipeg

Earlier this month, actor Donnelly Rhodes died in Maple Ridge, B.C., at the age of 81.

If the name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, his face should, as he was a fixture on television screens on both sides of the border for nearly sixty years. His acting roots, however, were firmly embedded in Manitoba’s theatre scene.

Donnelly Rhodes Henry was born in Winnipeg in 1936 to Ann Henry. Later in life, his mother would become a celebrated journalist and playwright, but after her husband left her with three small children to raise, she struggled to keep a roof over their heads.

Henry recounted years later to local entertainment columnist Frank Morriss that “I’ve slept in bus depots, railway stations and other places with my children. We lived in Immigration Hall for six weeks.”

Reign of the Ice Queen

In the 1930s and ’40s, Mary Rose Thacker was Winnipeg’s “Ice Queen”, a figure skating phenomenon who stood atop national and North American podiums. As with many athletes of her generation, international glory was dashed due to the Second World War.

Mary Rose was born in April 1922, the youngest of three children of Lillian and George Thacker of Grosvenor Avenue. Her father was a grain company president.

The Thackers were a sporting family, active in summer and winter activities. When Mary Rose was three-years-old she was enrolled in one of her mother’s favourite sports, figure skating, at the Winnipeg Skating Club and soon began turning heads due to her natural abilities.

In 1929, the Winnipeg Winter Club was formed and created a skating club of its own. Mary Rose was a charter member and instantly became its star. Through the 1930s her solo performances were a main attraction at the club’s carnival, a gala event held at the Amphitheatre each March to celebrate the end of the skating season.

In the '50s, an indecency charge ended the political career of a closeted councillor

Charles Harold Spence was a rising public figure in Winnipeg in the 1950s and early 1960s with a high-profile job and a seat on city council. Spence also had a secret: he was gay. When this became public knowledge following an all all-night police surveillance operation, his public life came to an abrupt end.

Born in 1925 and raised in Poplar Point, Man., Spence settled in Winnipeg after serving with the Navy during the Second World War. He then worked a series of sales jobs, hawking everything from office stationery to life insurance.

During this time, Spence became politically active.

In 1952, he served two years as president of the Young Conservative Association of Greater Winnipeg and in the 1953 provincial election was the Progressive Conservative candidate for Lakehead, running against Premier Douglas Campbell. He lost, as expected, but the campaign gained him notoriety and political points within the party.

First female bus operator broke new ground in 1975

On the afternoon of Jan. 2, 1975, Winnipeg Transit bus number 647 rolled out of the North Main Street garage to begin service on the Main ­— Corydon route. It was a scene that had played out thousands of times before, but what made this trip front-page news was Mary Staub, Winnipeg Transit’s first female bus operator, was heading out on her debut run.

Staub, who was in her early forties at the time, already had a lifetime of hard work behind her.

Born during the Depression in East Kildonan, Staub was raised on a farm 25 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg. She returned to the city to attend United College and received her teaching certificate in 1949.

Staub chose to teach at a school in the primarily Aboriginal community of Barrows, Man., about one hour north of Swan River. That is where she married Fred Staub and they returned to Winnipeg to raise their family.

Sears’ lasting impact

After years of lagging sales and financial uncertainty, Sears Canada finally pulled the plug on its retail operations on Oct. 10, 2017. Though the store’s history is not as deeply entwined with Winnipeg’s as Eaton’s or The Bay, the once upstart retailer has certainly had an impact on the city’s development.

Sears’ bricks-and-mortar presence in Winnipeg can be traced back to 1948, when Toronto-based department store chain The Robert Simpson Company, or “Simpson’s”, opened a catalogue mail-order office on Portage Avenue at Vaughan Street kitty-corner from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s flagship store.

Simpson’s had been in the catalogue sales business since the 1890s and the following decade began promoting the publication in western cities. In 1929, it built a large warehouse in Regina to exclusively serve the western Canadian market.

The 3,000 square-foot Winnipeg mail-order office was the 169th in the retailer’s network. It allowed customers to browse through catalogues, place orders, pay bills and make returns. For those who couldn’t go in person, there were operators present to take telephone orders.

For more than a century, Gillis family instrumental in construction of iconic Manitoba buildings

It is a building material unique to Manitoba and so prevalent in the province’s architectural landscape we often don’t give it a second thought.

Tyndall stone is a type of limestone that formed 450 million years ago along the sea floor of a prehistoric inland lake that once covered Manitoba.

Buff or grey coloured, depending how far down you quarry, it is instantly recognizable by its distinctive dark, mottled pattern caused by prehistoric creatures burrowing their way through the forming rock. If you look closely, your patience will be rewarded with the fossilized remnants of sea life.

Long before there were commercial quarries for the stone, settlers were already familiar with the material. Its earliest known application is at Lower Fort Garry in 1832, used in the construction of some of its buildings and its massive stone walls.

West End boxer fought in 1928 Olympics and was among world's top welterweight boxers in 1930s

West End boxer Frankie Battaglia may not have won any professional championships during his stellar career, but for thousands of Depression weary Winnipeggers that didn’t matter. He thrilled them with his aggressive boxing style that took him from local theatre bouts to a title fight at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The Battaglia story begins in Manitoba after Frankie’s parents, Nunzio and Angela, came to Canada from their native Italy in 1903. Four years later, they owned a two-storey building on Ellice Avenue at Victor Street. The main floor was home to Battaglia’s Fruit and Confectionery store while upstairs was the living quarters where the couple raised their eleven children.

Francisco, or “Frankie”, was born in 1910 and his career path was set early in life thanks to a brief encounter with heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey.

Dempsey spent a week in Winnipeg in November 1921 as part of a touring sports show that performed at Pantages Theatre.

Small communities rising to the challenge of saving significant buildings

Summertime is when many Manitobans take to the highways on vacation or to visit loved ones. If you go off the beaten track into some of our smaller communities, you can still find a rich, though dwindling, collection of buildings that make up our province’s built history.

Maintaining and renovating these structures would be difficult in any setting, but in a community with small — in some cases, shrinking — tax base and limited pool of volunteers, the challenge is all the greater. Thankfully, small, but dedicated, groups of people in many communities have taken on the often decades-long commitment to preserve and restore some of these structures for future generations.

Three buildings that are in different stages of renovation are the Rivers Train Station, Rapid City Consolidated School and the Ninette Sanatorium. If you find yourself near one of these communities, be sure to stop in and check them out.

The fastest man on Earth

From an Aug. 23, 1944 Winnipeg Free Press editorial entitled Jesse Owens’ Legs:

These legs have carried Mr. Owens down cinder paths at a faster clip than any other pair of legs has travelled in athletic history… As we watched him Monday night trying to give a trio of local boys a head start and catch them in a hundred yards, our thoughts went back eight years to another setting.

This week, 4,000 athletes will begin competing at the 2017 Canada Summer Games and spectators will crowd venues to catch performances by future Olympians. More than 70 years ago, Winnipeggers also came out in droves to see an athletic performance, but by just one man: American Olympian Jesse Owens.

Owens began to make a name for himself in the world of track and field as a high school student in Cleveland after capturing a number of national records in his age category. He then moved on to Ohio State University where his star continued to rise.

Unique building screened films for decades before becoming bowling alley

Last month, Todd Britton, president of Academy Lanes, announced his bowling alley was unable to reach a new lease agreement with the building’s owner. It means the end of a 35-year-old institution at 394 Academy Rd. and puts the future of one of the city’s more unique buildings in doubt.

Though it has been home to a bowling alley for the last 57 years, the building spent its first three decades as a movie theatre.

The Uptown Theatre was financed by Jack Miles’ Allied Amusements Ltd., which amassed a chain of neighbourhood theatres starting with the Palace on Selkirk Avenue in 1912, then the Rose on Sargent Avenue, the Plaza on Marion Street and the Roxy on Henderson Highway.

Initially, the Academy Road theatre was to be similar in size — about 800 seats — and appearance to the others in the chain. Late in the planning stages, Allied was able to purchase an additional lot on Ash Street.

The history of Winnipeg's multi-level parkades

Like most North American cities, Winnipeg faced a downtown parking crisis in the decade following the Second World War. It caused architects and developers to look upward for solutions.

The root of the problem was while most people still worked and shopped downtown, tens of thousands had been moving to the sparsely populated suburbs where the car was king and the use of public transportation often impractical.

Wilbur Smith, a traffic engineer from New Haven, Conn., was hired by the Metropolitan Planning Commission of Greater Winnipeg in 1956 to study the parking problem.

Smith pointed out that between 1946 and 1956 the number of cars registered in the greater Winnipeg area had almost tripled. At the same time, public transportation rates plummeted.

Bank’s buildings were Prairie pioneers

If asked to imagine an iconic Prairie building, most would immediately think of the grain elevator and likely struggle to come up with others.

There is, however, another uniquely Prairie building that sprung up at a rate of dozens per year in the early 1900s: the Canadian Bank of Commerce’s “Prairie-type” bank branch.

The Canadian Bank of Commerce, now known as CIBC, is as old as Canada itself. Its first branch opened in Toronto on May 15, 1867, six weeks before Confederation. By the end of the century, its western footprint was sparse, with branches only in Winnipeg, Yukon and British Columbia.

The growing economic might of the Prairies and its impact on the Canadian economy could not be ignored by bank headquarters. In September 1902, a fact-finding delegation was sent to explore the region and its prospects. It returned with predictions for a bright future.

Brandon's streetcars were rolled out, then scrapped, within 20 years

Eighty-five years ago today, the City of Brandon shut down its short-lived street railway system.

At the time of its creation, many believed it was a sign of progress and the key to future prosperity, but it collapsed under mounting debt and helped push the city into third-party administration during the Great Depression.

The City of Brandon was incorporated on May 30, 1882 with the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Its initial population was 700, but the city grew rapidly. By 1891, Brandon boasted nearly 4,000 citizens, and by 1906 it had surpassed 10,000.

The city entered the 1910s on a high. It was in the midst of an unprecedented private and public sector building boom, and its population growth, then at 13,000, showed no signs of slowing.

Violent streetcar strike stunned Winnipeg

This city’s early labour history is dominated by the much-studied, much-written-about Winnipeg General Strike. Thirteen years earlier, the less-known, 10-day Winnipeg Street Railway Strike shocked the city with its violence, vandalism and the sight of troops in the street.

The city’s formal public transportation system dates back to 1882, when the privately owned Winnipeg Street Railway Company was given a charter to operate a streetcar service. A decade later, it was sold to another private entity called the Winnipeg Electric Railway Company.

The relationship between the city and streetcar company was often tense. City officials had to deal with constant complaints from the public about the frequency of cars or demands for routes to serve new streets and neighbourhoods.

The company, very conscious of its bottom line, often had to be ordered by the city to make necessary service improvements. (The strained relationship lasted until the 1953, when the company was bought by the provincial government, eventually becoming Winnipeg Transit.)

Converting Exchange District building into space for creativity was bold move

During the past decade, redevelopment in the Exchange District has become a common sight. Not a year has gone by without at least a few large projects on the go. Thirty years ago, though, when the Gault Brothers’ Warehouse was converted into what is now Artspace, it was a bold and risky venture.

The building, located at 100 Arthur St., was constructed from 1899 to 1900 for dry goods wholesaler Gault Brothers of Montreal.

Architect George Creeford Browne designed the Richardsonian Romanesque four-storey warehouse.

Its two prominent entrances, one on each corner of Bannatyne Avenue, were created because the building was initially subdivided, with Clarke Brothers and Company, a stationery wholesaler, taking up almost half the block.

Writing her own ticket

Writer Ruth Jacobs was a woman of many names, but it was as Wilhelmina Stitch, a pen name created in Winnipeg, that she achieved fame in what was a family of overachievers.

Jacobs was the oldest of three children born in Cambridge, England, to a prominent Jewish family. Her grandfather was Hebrew composer Marcus Hast, who spent 40 years as cantor of the Great Synagogue in London. When she was a child, her family moved to London, where they ran a bookstore. She spent her evenings and weekends in the company of authors and scholars who came to talk about issues of the day with her parents.

Jacobs’ future husband was Elisha Arakie Cohen. Born at what is now Yangon, Myanmar in 1877, he was educated in what is now Kolkata, India, and worked as a lawyer in London. In 1906, he came to Winnipeg to take a job with the firm of Daly, Crichton and McClure, led by noted jurist and future judge Thomas Mayne Daly.

Arakie Cohen, he added Cohen to his last name when he moved to London to make it sound more Jewish, soon made a name for himself locally and nationally, arguing high-profile cases, including murder trials.

When war came to Winnipeg

If Day, the simulated Nazi invasion of Winnipeg, was a daring publicity stunt that involved weeks of planning, thousands of volunteers and garnered media attention across North America. Most importantly, it raised millions of dollars for Canada’s war effort.

The purpose of If Day was to drum up sales for Victory Bonds. Sold to businesses and individuals, often through payroll deduction plans, they were an essential tool for financing Canada’s war effort.

Dr. Jody Perrun has researched If Day and Winnipeg’s participation in Victory Bond campaigns for his book The Patriotic Consensus: Unity, Morale, and the Second World War in Winnipeg. He estimates that of the $22 billion the federal government spent fighting the war between 1939 and 1945, more than $12 billion was offset through the sale of Victory Bonds.

The promotion of the bonds was the responsibility of the National War Finance Committee in Ottawa. The short-term sales campaigns were initially quite centralized, with a national theme and propaganda products that were forwarded to provincial committees who used rallies, concerts and other tried-and-true public events to make up their portion of the national sales goal.

1952 Air Force crash and tower collapse claimed the lives of six

Sixty-five years ago, a pair of tragic accidents that happened 12 hours apart killed six people in a field outside Carman. Despite the initial headlines, the Carman Air Disaster was quickly forgotten by all but those who were there and the families of those who died.

The year was 1952, and though the Second World War was over, Manitoba continued to be an important pilot-training centre for air forces around the world.

In a massive postwar reorganization of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), No. 2 Air Training School was established at what was then called RCAF Station Winnipeg on the west side of Stevenson Field, now James Richardson International Airport. To become Canada’s largest military air-training school required a multimillion-dollar investment that included new hangars and other infrastructure — a welcome economic shot in the arm for the city.

One former wartime pilot who signed on to be an instructor was Charles Chow-Leong of Lethbridge.

Historic former theatre will live on, in some form

It may have come three days late, but Brandon’s historic Strand Theatre received a very welcome 100th-birthday present.

Late last year, Brandon University purchased the last remaining theatre building in the city’s downtown for $1 from its owners, Landmark Cinemas.

The university hasn’t decided what it will do with the building. Its vice-president academic and provost, Dr. Steve Robinson, said in a statement Dec. 12: “Brandon University is moving to expand our role in community-based research as well as co-op and experiential education. A presence downtown can allow us to strengthen these links, forge new ones and provide a full spectrum of study and research opportunities.”

Brandon University Students’ Union president Nick Brown said, “We already have some ideas, such as student residences and student family housing, which would be ideal given the location right across from Princess Park and recreational facilities.”

City-run 'comfort stations' widely used in early 1900s

Today, civic-infrastructure debates usually involve things such as roads, bridges, pools and libraries, but at one point in the city’s history, public washrooms — or “comfort stations,” as they came to be known — were a hot-button item.

In December 1887, a citizen by the name of Richard Harris summed up the position of many at the time in a letter to the Manitoba Free Press.

“I have been in many large cities and towns and was always able to find places of this kind pretty easily, but in Winnipeg I have not been able to find any, except… one at the (train) depot which the CPR have the usual monopoly by keeping same very secure under lock and key,” he wrote.

Despite the calls for public washrooms, they were near the bottom of a long list of infrastructure needs in a booming Prairie town.

City incinerator burned household garbage for decades until 1979

For more than a century, the city’s preferred method for disposing of household garbage was incineration.

In the earliest decades, property owners had to burn their own trash. Garbage that was poorly incinerated and improperly disposed of proved to be a breeding ground for rats, flies and disease.

The city’s health department intervened in 1907 to establish a more robust garbage collection system and open a central incinerator on Saskatchewan Avenue at what is now affectionately known as Garbage Hill. Later, a second, smaller incinerator was added on Nairn Avenue in Elmwood.

By the early 1940s, suburban development was encroaching on these sites. The aging incinerators and their adjacent dumps, or “nuisance grounds,” were described by some as a “disgrace,” emitting foul odours and teeming with rats.

Ship named for Winnipeg rescued refugees from two wars

The passenger liner SS Winnipeg spent most of her nautical life ferrying passengers through the Panama Canal and along the Pacific Coast of North and South America. Her final years, though, were marked by war, shuttling refugees to safety until a German U-boat sank her 74 years ago.

The 144-metre-long, 9,800-tonne ship was built in 1918 at Dunkirk, France as the SS Jacques Cartier for Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, known as the French Line in most of the English-speaking world. Created as a cargo line in the 1860s, the company put its efforts into the passenger industry after the First World War and become one of the largest cruise lines in the world.

Until 1929, the SS Jacques Cartier mostly sailed from Le Havre, France to New York, but in early 1930, the company announced she would become the flagship of a new Pacific coast service that would take her from Le Havre through the Panama Canal with stops at Cristobal, La Libertad, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver.

In February 1930, officials from the company’s Paris, New York and Montreal offices stopped in Winnipeg en route to Seattle, where the new service would be inaugurated that summer. While here, they met with political leaders, board of trade members and the archbishops of St. Boniface and Winnipeg.

Pioneer wholesale grocer helped start some of city's best-known businesses

Pioneering Winnipeg businessman Alexander Macdonald’s name might not be as well-known as some of his contemporaries, such as Alloway, Ashdown, Pollard or Higgins. Yet, he was involved in the formative years of some of Manitoba’s best-known companies and ran one of Western Canada’s largest business empires, which still bears his name.

Born in 1844 to a farming family at Pitlochry, County Perthshire, Scotland, Macdonald came to Canada in 1866 and first settled in Seaforth, Ont., where he worked at a dairy farm and general store. The lure of the West beckoned, and he arrived aboard the steamship Selkirk at the foot of Lombard Street July 1, 1871.

Macdonald’s first job was as a clerk at Palmer Clark, a general merchant. He then moved on to the venerable Higgins and Young, a dry goods company that became a full-fledged department store serving Manitoba and all points west. It is best-known today for selling the first bushel of Manitoba wheat to Ontario in 1876 — the official start of the West’s grain trade.

With a secure job under his belt, Macdonald returned to Ontario in 1877 to marry Annie Sullivan. They returned to the city and began a family that would eventually consist of four sons and a daughter.

Former child performer was rising star when she met tragic end

A century ago, the Winnipeg Kiddies vaudeville troupe began delighting audiences with their singing, dancing and comedic skits. One of its standout performers was Marjorie Guthrie, who eventually made it to Hollywood and the start of what could have been a promising career.

Marjorie Ann Guthrie was born in Winnipeg on July 22, 1904, the eldest of five children of Robert and Nettie Guthrie. The family’s life revolved around what we now call the Exchange District. Her father worked at, then took over, a small Princess Street feed mill. After bouncing around numerous residences, they purchased a large rooming house on Pacific Avenue in 1910.

The little girl had a knack for entertaining. At the age of four, she began dancing in local talent shows. When she attended Maple Leaf School on William Avenue, her energies were channelled into school recitals and plays.

By 1915, she was a regular on local stages as a singer, actress and dancer. A Winnipeg Tribune reviewer noted, “Little Marjorie is making a name for herself in Winnipeg... Mr. Edwards, (manager of) the Dominion, prophesises a brilliant future for this talented little Winnipegger.”

Alphabet group

Summer is the season many Manitobans take to the road for regular trips to the beach or cottage, maybe even that customary family road trip to Banff.

For some, the vast prairie spaces between point A and B are a necessary inconvenience, a void that must be travelled through as quickly as possible. Others, though, celebrate that space.

The ABC Railway Project is a group of four Ontario researchers — Dianne Brydon, Cheryl J. Hoffmann, Morina Reece and Judy Wiesinger — who have come to the Prairies for the month of July for a 1,577-kilometre road trip to explore the townsites along the former Grand Trunk Pacific Railway’s main line.

Winnipeg was the starting point for the railway, which began construction in 1905. Remnants of its past here include Union Station and the Fort Garry Hotel. The railway drove its last spike in Fort Fraser, B.C., in 1914 but soon ran into financial trouble. Within a decade, it was amalgamated into the Canadian National Railway Co.

With the historic Sherbrook Pool set to reopen, a look back at its history

On January 9, the much-delayed reopening of the Sherbrook Pool will take place after a multimillion-dollar renovation that will extend its life for another 25 years. It was a much-needed and much-deserved investment in a facility that has been a workhorse for the city’s recreation department for the past 85 years.

In the late 1920s, the city had two indoor pools (or public baths, as they were known). One was on Pritchard Avenue and the other, the Cornish Baths, was located on West Gate next to the Cornish Library.

The circa-1915 Cornish Baths were closed suddenly in October 1929 when a building inspector found the foundation was failing — one of its walls was creeping down the bank of the Assiniboine River. It was determined the cost of shoring up the facility, even enough to get one more summer of use out of it, was prohibitive.

There was great pressure on the city to get a new pool built, even after the economic uncertainty brought about by the stock-market crash just days after the building was closed.

First 'city gardener' chose elm trees that line boulevards

Summer is almost here, and thousands of Winnipeggers are taking advantage of the city’s parks and enjoying the shade provided by its canopy of elms.

We take for granted that these spaces have always been here for our enjoyment, but, of course, they have not. It took years of work by a man named David D. England and his dedicated crew of seasonal workers to bring them about.

From the time of its incorporation in November 1873, Winnipeg’s city council struggled to provide the most basic infrastructure needs of a booming metropolis. “Soft” services such as parks and libraries took decades to establish, and even then often grudgingly.

In 1892, a group of 300 residents presented a petition to city council demanding a public parks board be created. Because the request would have financial implications, the matter was put to a referendum during the civic election later that year. It passed, 1,129 to 185.

Building a big deal in Charleswood's early days

Last month, the Free Press reported the parents and guardians of all 51 students attending Chapman School have requested their children be transferred to nearby Royal School for the next school year. The move would effectively close the facility.

Today, Chapman School, located at 3707 Roblin Blvd., is the city’s smallest public school, nestled in a built-up suburb. For most of its 102-year history, though, it was a vibrant cornerstone of community life in a predominantly rural Charleswood.

The beginningsThe Rural Municipality of Charleswood was created in 1913, carved out of the vast RM of Assiniboia. At the time, the only school in the area was the single-room Charleswood School, which dated back to the late 1880s.

Charleswood’s municipal council first met March 29, 1913 and went about establishing itself by hiring staff, passing basic bylaws and carrying out infrastructure work such as road grading and the laying of culverts.

New HQ couldn’t come soon enough for cramped police

The 1960s was a decade of great change in the city hall district of Winnipeg.

Until that time, most of the city’s services were headquartered in a collection of turn-of-the-century buildings located within a couple of blocks of each other. There was the old city hall with the market building, which had been converted to civic offices in 1919, located behind it. The central fire hall was situated on what we now know as Old Market Square Park.

Few doubted a new headquarters was neededThe Central Police Station on Rupert Avenue was the newest of the civic buildings. It was built in 1908 and expanded in 1911 to house a projected police force of 180 officers. By the late 1950s, though, the department consisted of nearly 450 officers and about 100 civilian staff. The men’s jail, with a capacity of 40, regularly held between 65 and 90 prisoners. Technologies not thought of when the building was constructed — such as traffic-signal control, radio dispatch and a 999 emergency call centre — were shoehorned in whatever space could be found.

Police chief Robert Taft, the leading proponent for a new central police station, complained at one police commission meeting: “I’m getting frantic. The jail is overcrowded, and my help are sitting in each other’s lap. We may lose competent, well-trained help.”

Early cycling group sought to transform city

In the weeks to come, thousands of Winnipeggers will dust off their bicycles and take advantage of the city’s growing network of bike lanes and paths. Though such cycling infrastructure is still pretty novel in our city, if the Cycle Path Association of nearly 120 years ago had had its way, they would have been a long-standing feature of our urban landscape.

Mass-produced bicycles hit the market in the late 1880s, but they weren’t cheap. Entry-level models were advertised in local stores at between $65 and $80, a price well out of reach for most whose hourly wages were calculated in pennies.

Cycling was therefore a pastime for the rich, consisting mainly of leisurely rides in a park on weekends. For the men, it might have included a membership in one of the city’s two main competitive cycling clubs, the Winnipeg and the Rovers, which met throughout the summer at exhibition grounds and park tracks.

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Monster mansion: Massive home on Ruskin Row was city’s most extravagant

During Winnipeg’s great boom years leading up to the First World War, the city boasted it had nearly as many millionaires as Toronto.

Men such as George Galt, Chester Stovel and James Ashdown built fine new homes for themselves during this period, but none was larger or more opulent than Alexander Davidson’s 10 Ruskin Row.

Davidson, born and raised in Ontario, went to the United States to earn his first fortune. From Little Falls, Minn., he and his brother Andrew built up a chain of banks that operated throughout the U.S. Midwest.

In 1902, they purchased 1.3 million acres of land in Saskatchewan and sold it in smaller parcels to American investors and settlers. Their success at that venture led to a contract with Canadian National Railway as industrial agents, responsible for establishing and settling the hundreds of townsites that were being created adjacent to its rail lines. Their company, Davidson McRae, was headquartered in Winnipeg and had offices in Montreal, Toronto, London, Ont., and Vancouver.

Longtime porter became labour leader, pillar of black community

George Hutchinson Beckford seemed determined to avoid a career as a railway porter. In the end, though, he spent nearly 35 years with the CPR and became one of the city's most respected labour leaders of the 1940s and 50s.

Born in and raised in Spanish Town, Jamaica, Beckford apprenticed as a machinist before coming to Winnipeg in 1913. He quickly found his career options here were extremely limited, as the vast majority of black men worked as porters for one of the city's four main railways. For a small number of them, becoming an entrepreneur and opening a barbershop or restaurant was their way out. It was a path Beckford hoped to take.

The 24-year-old's first local job was as a porter with the Canadian Pacific Railway, but he lasted less than a year. By September 1914 he had obtained a chauffeur's licence, advertising himself in newspaper classified ads as "Chauffeur (colored), experienced, seeks position, private or commercial."

Beckford did get work as a private chauffeur and by 1916 was driving his own taxi.

Brandon’s deadliest blaze

A century ago, the residents of Brandon were bidding farewell to the darkest month in the city's history.

The year began with the First World War raging and hundreds of families dreading the arrival of a telegram informing them a loved one had become a casualty. At least one Brandon soldier was killed, and two were injured in the first few days of January.

The city was also experiencing one of its worst winters on record. By mid-January, Brandon had received more than 105 centimetres of snow, three times the amount that fell the year before, and the city was also in the midst of a cold snap.

The adverse weather shut down the city's streetcar system on numerous occasions. It was also considered a prime cause of the Brandon train disaster of Jan. 12, 1916, the city's deadliest day, when 19 rail-yard workers were killed when two trains collided in the heart of the city.

First lady of real estate: Gibson gained fame as city’s earliest female, full-time agent

During Winnipeg's earliest decades, the real estate business was not for the faint of heart. Known for its booms and busts, fortunes could be made or lost in a matter of days. Like most industries, it was strictly a man's world. That is, until Evelyn Bertie Gibson came on the scene in 1910.

Her parents, Henry and Fannie Gibson, were born in the Channel Islands but met and married in Cape Town, South Africa. They set off for Manitoba in the late 1880s with their first child, daughter Millicent.

It was believed the Gibsons came from a well-off background, given their extensive musical training and the fact they had a maid in tow. Evelyn Bertie, their second child, was born at Brokenhead in 1887 before the family settled on a farm at St. Ouens, near Beausejour.

Henry Gibson had a varied career. He had a large cattle barn built, farmed the land and became the area's first postmaster. (He suggested naming the office St. Ouen's after his wife's hometown.) He also dabbled in real estate, was an inventor and, thanks to his law degree, was appointed as the area's magistrate in 1905.

City’s heritage hero: McDowell considered founding father of historic-preservation movement

On Dec. 3, members of the city's heritage community gathered at the Millennium Centre on Main Street to celebrate David McDowell, considered by many to be the "father" of Winnipeg's heritage-conservation movement.

It was a fitting venue given that nearly four decades earlier, McDowell led the charge that saved the building from the wrecking ball and spurred public and political support in favour of protecting similar buildings for decades to come.

The decade between the late 1960s and 1970s were not kind to Winnipeg's building stock. In the greater downtown area, entire square blocks of houses, schools, churches and commercial buildings were being razed to make way for new megaprojects that were intended to turn around its sagging fortunes.

Some developments were realized, including Lakeview Square, the Centennial Corporation's concert hall/museum/planetarium complex and one of the three Trizec towers proposed for Portage and Main.

Gingerbread man

From the late 1870s to mid-1880s, there was no more prolific a Winnipeg architect than Charles Arnold Barber. His best-known work, the city's "gingerbread" city hall, should have been his crowning achievement. Instead, it caused his career to implode, and when he died 100 years ago, he didn't even get a mention in local newspapers.

The Ontario-born Barber came to Winnipeg in spring 1876 and established a home office on McWilliam Avenue (now Pacific Avenue). By September, he was advertising his services as a "Practical Architect, Superintendent and Valuator" on the front page of the Manitoba Free Press.

Some of Barber's professional qualifications have been questioned, but, fully qualified or not, it didn't matter much in a frontier boom town straining to keep up with the demand for residential, commercial and institutional buildings. Anyone who considered themselves part of the building trade was put to work.

Within weeks of setting up shop, Barber got his first big commissions, the North Ward School and Central School, thanks to the Winnipeg School Board. In the summer of 1877, he was awarded the contract for the new St. John's College Ladies' School. The building was a showcase of what would be Barber's trademark eclectic -- some call gaudy -- design. He described it to the school's board of governors as "a combination of Swiss, English and American gothic, with a mansard roof."

Tragic theatre

There is a powerful new development taking shape at the intersection of Adelaide Street and Notre Dame Avenue. Manitoba Hydro is driving the piles for its $62-million Adelaide substation, which will serve downtown for decades to come. During the excavation phase this summer, workers unearthed the remnants of an important building from the city's past: the Winnipeg Theatre, which was razed by a spectacular and deadly fire Dec. 23, 1926.

The theatre was built in 1883 as Victoria Hall. It was one of the city's first large-scale meeting places, featuring a number of commercial spaces on the main floor and an upstairs assembly hall that could seat up to 1,400. The project was financed by Thomas McCrossan, an established dry-goods merchant from Ontario who couldn't resist the lure of Winnipeg's land boom of the early 1880s.

From the time it opened, Victoria Hall played a more important role in the early history of the fledgling city than McCrossan could have imagined.

Deanna Durbin didn’t forget her Winnipeg roots after fame

Deanna Durbin’s film career took her to the pinnacle of Hollywood stardom in the 1930s and ’40s, with a string of box-office blockbusters, an Academy Award and a salary that made her Hollywood’s highest-paid actor. It was a far cry from her family’s humble beginnings in Winnipeg’s Weston neighbourhood.

Her parents grew up in industrial communities around Manchester, England. Her father, James, apprenticed as an ironworker in the railway town of Newton Heath, and her mother, Ada, was one of 12 siblings who grew up in the textile hub of Oldham.

In 1909, the Durbins — which now included daughter Edith — came to Canada, initially settling in Peterborough, Ont. In 1912, it was on to Winnipeg and a small home on Gallagher Avenue just across the street from Canadian Pacific Railway’s Weston Shops, where James found work as a blacksmith. Now known as the Weston neighbourhood, back then it was nicknamed “CPR Town,” brimming with new immigrants who came to work in the rail yards. Coal-fired locomotives, an on-site steel foundry and other industrial infrastructure of the day made it a noisy, dirty place to live.

On Dec. 4, 1921, the Durbins welcomed their second child, Edna Mae. The future Deanna was born at the old Grace Hospital, located at Arlington Street and Prescott Avenue in Wolseley.

Strike by servers was short-lived

For many, Labour Day is a time to reflect on past struggles and gains made by organized labour. This year marks the 100th anniversary of a strike by the small Cooks, Waiters and Waitresses' Union, which tried to make a difference for the hundreds of people working in the city's restaurant industry.

In the years leading up to 1912, Winnipeg's economy was booming like never before. People flocked from around the world to work in its factories, railway yards and grain offices and the surrounding farmlands. That all changed in 1913, when a sharp drop in wheat prices signalled the beginning of a recession that put thousands out of work.

"What is the result?" asked the Cooks, Waiters and Waitresses' Union's prospectus of January 1914.

"The person who has to follow this business for a livelihood has to compete with an overstocked labour market. Consequently, working for meagre wages and long hours, and under very poor conditions all around."

About time: City procrastinated before introducing first parking meters

When Carl C. Magee, a newspaper publisher from Oklahoma City, invented the parking meter in 1932, he probably didn't realize what a cash cow he had created for cities.

The guinea pig for Magee's invention was his hometown. Oklahoma City installed 174 parking meters on a trial basis in July 1934. By the end of September, they had already collected US$4,523 in revenue, exceeding the US$4,002 purchase price.

Other American cities took notice, and by the end of the decade, 155 of them were using Magee's invention.

Deadly day in Brandon

In a few months, it will be the centenary of Manitoba's second-deadliest rail disaster. Nineteen people were killed in the Brandon Train Wreck, as it was called, when two trains collided in the heart of the city.

The crash happened on the morning of Jan. 12, 1916. It was a brutally cold day, with a high temperature of just -36 C. In Brandon's Canadian Pacific Railway yard, ice fog mixed with smoke from locomotives and industrial facilities along the tracks to create near-zero visibility.

That morning, a "snow train" was working in the yard. It consisted of 10 cars plus a caboose and was manned by the train's crew, a gang supervisor and more than 20 temporary labourers hired by the CPR to shovel snowdrifts from the tracks. The labourers were referred to as "Austrians," although they were from modern-day Ukraine and Poland.

At around 10 a.m., the snow train began slowly making its way along a "Y track" to cross onto the mainline. At the same time, a livestock train destined for Winnipeg was departing the yard on the mainline. Both trains were travelling at a crawl, neither of them exceeding 10 km/h. At 10:05 a.m., enveloped in fog and smoke, the crew of the livestock train felt a strong jolt. It wasn't enough to knock them off their feet, but they knew they had struck something.

Bridging the past

In the next few months, the Canadian Pacific Railway yards-crossing study's project advisory committee will release a number of recommendations that could determine how Winnipeggers traverse the CPR yards in the decades to come.

The group was formed after a 2014 engineering report recommended the Arlington Street Bridge be decommissioned as a vehicular bridge by 2020. The study area, however, spans from the Slaw Rebchuk Bridge to the McPhillips Street Underpass.

It is likely some of the recommendations will stir up debate, which is nothing new. Controversy has dogged pretty much every crossing since the first CPR train arrived in Winnipeg in August 1882.

Here is a look back at the history of the first three major crossings: the Salter Street (now Slaw Rebchuk) Bridge (1898); the Main Street Subway (1904); and the Arlington Street Bridge (1912).

Physician prepared women’s volunteer unit for war

Dr. Margaret Ellen Douglass became a household name in Winnipeg during the First World War for her efforts to organize a group of local women who almost found themselves fighting on the front lines.

Born in Stanley, N.B., in 1878, Douglass graduated from the University of Toronto with a medical degree in 1905. After a couple of years of post-graduate studies in London, Baltimore and New York City, she returned to her home province to start her practice, but soon left for Winnipeg.

She set up her home and practice in a two-storey house at 136 Sherbrook St. near the Misericordia Hospital. Her first Manitoba Free Press classified ad appeared in July 1909, announcing: "Formerly of New York Infirmary for Women and Children, specialist -- obstetrics, diseases of women and children."

Douglass was a gifted public speaker sought after by many organizations, such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Women's Canadian Club, the University Women's Club and the St. John's Ambulance Association.

Airmen died in failed rescue attempt on Lake Winnipeg

Earlier this month, I went on a Jane's Walk tour of Elmwood Cemetery. Opened in 1902 in what was then the Rural Municipality of Kildonan, it was Manitoba's first non-denominational cemetery.

There are many notable figures from the city's past buried there, including photographer L.B. Foote, journalist E. Cora Hind and former mayor John Queen. It is also the final resting place of thousands of Manitobans who might not be mentioned in history books but did their part to help build this province.

There was one headstone in particular that drew my attention. It reads: "In memory of George O. Mackie, aged 22 years (pilot), and Leonard Blackwell, aged 19 years (engineer), who lost their lives in Lake Winnipeg while on a rescue flight, August 17, 1934. Greater love hath no man than this."

Old pumping station was once pretty on the inside

McPhillips Street can be called many things, but beautiful is not one of them.

Yet, tucked away behind an expansive lawn just northwest of the intersection with Logan Avenue, is the old McPhillips Street Pumping Station, referred to in the 1930s by one newspaper editor as "one of Winnipeg's most beautiful buildings," with a facade and grounds more suited to an art gallery than a pumping station.

This building is the second of three pumping stations that have stood on this site. Their story tells the history of Winnipeg's early waterworks system.

Despite incorporating in November 1873, the city did not get into the waterworks business until 1899. Prior to that, the provision of water to homes and businesses was contracted to a private firm called the Winnipeg Waterworks Company. The water, drawn from either the Red or Assiniboine rivers, was delivered by ox cart.

Hood coming down: Building believed to be Sargent Avenue’s oldest slated for demolition this week

If you've passed by the intersection of Sargent Avenue and Langside Street in the last eight months, you no doubt are familiar with the Hood block. The building, built around 1904, was undergoing extensive renovations when the sidewalk out front collapsed, taking down part of the building's façade with it.

What is likely the oldest building on Sargent Avenue is slated for demolition starting this week.

The building's owner -- Sal Infantino, who also owns the neighbouring X-Cues' Billiards and Café -- purchased the block in 2009 after it was vacated by a pawn shop. He intended to convert it back into a mixed-use building, with offices on the main floor and residential suites upstairs.

Such projects aren't new for Infantino. Over the years, he has purchased and renovated four homes around his café in an effort to revitalize the neighbourhood.

A different kind of firefight: Winnipeggers helped battle blazes in the Blitz

Firefighting can be a dangerous job at the best of times, but imagine doing it while bombs and missiles rain down around you.

This is what many British fire crews faced during the Second World War and what more than 400 Canadians volunteered to do with the Corps of (Civilian) Canadian Firefighters. Though national in scope, the idea for the organization was born in Winnipeg, and one local firefighter paid the ultimate price.

In the lead-up to the Second World War, the British government announced it would supplement its regular National Fire Service with the Auxiliary Fire Service, which trained 28,000 men and women to provide additional support. Both were put to the test starting on the afternoon of Sept. 7, 1940, when 300 German bombers appeared in the air over London. It was the first of 76 straight days of bombings and an eight-month campaign against numerous British cities that became known as the Blitz.

Recipe for success

Most people who are familiar with the name Percy Haynes likely remember him for Haynes Chicken Shack, the longtime restaurant and musical hot spot he and wife, Zena, operated on Lulu Street for more than 35 years.

That was just one chapter of his remarkable life, and Black History Month seems like a good time to re-examine it.

Piercy Augustus Haynes was born in what was then called British Guiana in 1911 and came to Winnipeg with his parents the following year. The family settled at 257 Lulu St., a small cottage-style house off Logan Avenue, where they raised sons Alan (Chick), Clifford, Piercy (Percy) and Abram. The site also doubled as a workshop for William Haynes, Percy's father, who was a carpenter.

Building BLOCK

In its 2014-16 business plan, CentreVenture Development Corporation identifies south Main Street, between Graham and Assiniboine avenues, as a "key opportunity for intensification and redevelopment," and is creating a redevelopment strategy that will soon be released to the public.

Today, this once-bustling section of Main Street is known more for its numerous surface parking lots, as many of its "anchor tenants," including the Hudson's Bay Co.'s original department store at York Avenue and the Empire Hotel at St. Mary Avenue, disappeared long ago.

Three buildings -- the Winnipeg Hotel, the McDonald Block and the Fortune Block -- have managed to stand the test of time and are among Winnipeg's oldest. Will they survive this new interest from developers?

The origins of this stretch of Main Street go back to the early days of the Hudson's Bay Co. Starting in the 1830s, it was a cart trail leading from Upper Fort Garry to Lower Fort Garry and beyond.

Queen of the arena has storied history

No matter the event, no matter the team's record, there was one constant at the Winnipeg Arena: that Queen Elizabeth II was keeping watch. Unveiled 35 years ago this month, the portrait most of us remember was actually the second giant portrait of the Queen to adorn the old barn, both painted by the same artist.

Gilbert Burch was one of triplets born on Feb. 25, 1927, to William and Margaret Burch of St. James. Growing up, Gilbert found he had a talent and passion for painting and sought work as a commercial artist.

In 1949, he began a lifelong career with the company Claude Neon/Ruddy Kester as a billboard painter. The firm was the local branch of the French multinational and created everything from posters and billboards to box signs and neon displays.

In 1955, Winnipeg Enterprises was putting the finishing touches on the interior of the Winnipeg Arena. As is practice, public buildings in Canada were -- and are -- expected to display a portrait of our head of state. For reasons that are unknown, the city-owned entity decided its Queen should be in the five-by-seven-metre range and hang on the south wall of the hall's interior. Enterprises gave the contract to Claude Neon/Ruddy Kester and they, in turn, tapped their 28-year-old billboard painter for what would be the most prominent -- and controversial -- work of his career.

The Christmas hero OF WESTMINSTER AVENUE’S EVELYN COURT

Evelyn Court is a three-storey walk-up apartment block at 951 Westminster Ave. at Aubrey Street. Constructed in 1914, the first "for rent" ads appeared that November in the Winnipeg Free Press.

On Dec.18, 1948, 10-year-old Douglass Hanson was staying over with his aunt, home economics teacher Vera Douglass, in suite 16. Douglass was a Winnipeg Tribune newspaper carrier and Grade 6 student at Greenway School who normally lived at 654 Sherburn Street.

Douglass was prowling the building's hallways around 10:30 p.m. when he smelled, then saw, smoke coming from under the door of a neighbouring suite. He ran back to inform his aunt and together they knocked on the doors of all 17 suites to make sure that everyone got out safely. It was a good thing they did, as minutes later the building's roof was ablaze.

By early next morning, the fire had destroyed the roof and upper-floor suites of the block, while smoke and water caused extensive damage throughout the rest of the building. The damage estimate was $75,000.

Statue an enduring icon

The Timothy Eaton statue located on the second level of the MTS Centre was unveiled 95 years ago this week and is one of the last public reminders of a company that once employed thousands of Winnipeggers in its retail, mail order and manufacturing operations.

It was part of a gift exchange of sorts commemorating the retail empire's golden jubilee in 1919, a time when the mutual fondness between staff and management was running at an all-time high.

The First World War had just ended, in which 3,327 Eaton's employees served, including 1,101 from the Winnipeg store. Of that number, 238 never returned. The company proved itself a model corporate citizen by not only guaranteeing soldiers' jobs would be waiting for them when they returned, it also paid married men their full salary while they were on active duty, while single men received half salary. It was a gesture that cost the company more than $2.2 million.

While serving overseas, Eaton's employees could visit any of its network of overseas buying offices to rest, write letters and read up on news from home. One Winnipeg employee wrote to head office: "It is an enviable state in the Canadian Army to be an employee of Eaton's. Certainly the generous arrangements made by the firm for the boys save them untold worry and makes the bright thoughts of peace, when it comes, brighter still. For this boon, we are all profoundly grateful."

Fallen but not forgotten

The Battle of Amiens began on Aug. 8, 1918. Led by Canadian and Australian forces, it is considered the last great battle of the Western Front, taking place in the final 100 days of the First World War.

The 78th Battalion (Winnipeg Grenadiers) made up part of the Canadian Corps. Created in July 1915, it was initially commanded by Maj. James Kirkaldy, who for 13 years had served as police chief for the City of Brandon. In charge of recruiting was J.B. Mitchell, who was a North West Mounted Police officer before becoming a prominent local architect, designing dozens of Winnipeg schools.

On Aug. 10, the Grenadiers were instructed to take the village of Hallu, France. They did, but at great cost. By the time the battle ended the next day they had suffered 46 fatalities, with another 54 men missing in action.

Many of the casualties came on Aug. 11, as the Grenadiers struggled to hold the town. Pte. Howard Esli Slater of Neepawa, who was on duty that morning with the Battalion's C Company, described it this way: "The enemy had been shelling the village from about 8 a.m., and there was a heavy barrage from 9:30 a.m. to 10 a.m., when we were told the enemy were coming over." He and two other soldiers were briefly taken captive and placed in a crater by German soldiers. A half hour later, a Canadian barrage opened up and, in the confusion, they were able to escape back to the Canadian lines. Slater and his comrades survived.

Political pioneer

Women have been able to vote in Manitoba municipal elections since the mid-1890s, provided they owned property.

It wasn't until 1916 that the rules were changed to allow women to seek civic office. The first woman to run for Winnipeg city council was Alice Holling in Elmwood in 1917, but Jessie Kirk became the first woman to win a seat in 1920.

Kirk was born in Chesterfield, England in 1877, one of 11 children. She trained as a teacher, eventually becoming principal of a school in Derbyshire. After the First World War, she came to Winnipeg with her husband, William, and daughter, Mary, and settled on Jessie Avenue. Kirk resumed her teaching career, first in Lockport, then in Winnipeg at Isaac Brock, Principal Sparling, Mulvey, Greenway and Brooklands schools.

During this time, Kirk became a prominent member of the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council. She sometimes appeared before city council and spoke at other public meetings about issues such as the need for a living minimum wage for female civic employees, better unemployment-relief schemes and for women to be citizen appointees on civic bodies such as the police commission and parks board. A matter of particular interest to Kirk was the dismal state of Winnipeg's housing stock. She openly called on "war profiteers" to donate some of their spoils to support new housing programs.

The story behind one of Winnipeg's favourite icons

THERE are few local characters as iconic as Transit Tom, the always-cheerful bus driver who has invited people to take transit and­move to the back of the bus please, since 1957. Despite the fact his heyday was 50 years ago, his name is still used interchangeably with Winnipeg Transit.

Tom was created in the late 1950s, a low point for public transportation in many North American cities.

The rolling stock of most systems was in poor shape due to wartime restrictions on the use of steel and the fact some vehicle manufacturers and related suppliers had been retooled for wartime manufacturing. The Winnipeg Electric Company (WECo), the citys privately owned transit provider, struggled to keep its fleet of aging streetcars and small buses on the road.

After the war came the development of vast new suburbs. Their sparse density was geared more toward car users than transit users, and the public began turning its back on public transportation. Still, transit was expected to provide service to these new areas even though they were money-losing routes.

The story behind the smiling soldier

On the northwest corner of the Manitoba legislature grounds stands a unique war memorial. Funded privately by the families of those who lost loved ones in the First World War, it features a smiling soldier and the names of more than 1,600 Winnipeggers.

The idea for such a monument came about in the autumn of 1920. At the time, calls for city council to get started on a permanent war memorial were getting louder but going nowhere. All Winnipeg had to show was a temporary structure at Portage and Main, a replica of a cenotaph that had recently been unveiled in London, England.

Frustrated, and perhaps anticipating what ended up being an eight-year run of infighting and indecision before the city's permanent cenotaph was finally unveiled, a group called the Winnipeg Soldiers' Relatives' Permanent Memorial Association was formed in October 1920 with the intention of creating its own monument.

The association's first general meeting took place on Nov. 3, 1920 at the offices of the Winnipeg Board of Trade on Main Street under the leadership of Thomas Russ Deacon, president of Manitoba Bridge and Iron Works and a former mayor. Deacon's son, Lester, was killed in action.

Spectacular blaze razed three buildings 60 years ago

The Time Building, located at the northwest corner of Portage Avenue and Hargrave Street, was built in 1909 and had a few different names during its life.

From 1909 to March 1924 it was known as the Builders' Exchange Building. It was then purchased by the Winnipeg Piano Co., and became known as the Winnipeg Piano Building. That company had a large showroom and repair facilities on the main floor, but the rest of the floors consisted of dozens of small offices.

In 1940, Winnipeg Piano sold up. The building was then renovated and rechristened the Time Building. What the "Time" referred to is unclear, as there was no business located there with Time in the name. Canadian National Telegraphs took up most of a floor, and in the former Winnipeg Piano space, another piano retailer, J.J.H. Maclean, moved in. The upper floors each contained 10 to a dozen small offices, ranging from insurance agents to furriers.

On June 8, 1954, just after 1 a.m., the first call came into the fire department about flames in the Time Building. The blaze began in the false ceiling above the main-floor retail level of the building, making it difficult to get at. Winds of up to 120 hm/h helped fuel the flames and spread embers throughout the building. By 6 a.m., it was a three-alarm fire with 207 firemen and 26 vehicles at the scene.

Winnipeg’s disappearing murals

The Bay's downtown store has lost a lot in the past couple of years. Most of its upper floors are now off limits to shoppers, the Paddlewheel sailed away in 2012, and the basement-level Zellers closed in 2013. This January, the store's largest work of art quietly slipped off the wall.

Pioneer Days at Fort Garry, 1861 is the name of the mural that hung over the main-floor elevator lobby, peering down on shoppers as they waited to be whisked away on their retail journey. The 16.5-metre by three-metre oil-on-canvas work had been a fixture in the store since September 1927, less than a year after it opened.

The work shows a trading day at Upper Fort Garry. On the left is an aboriginal village and on the right is the steamship Pioneer unloading passengers and cargo. The foreground shows the interaction of Métis and aboriginal people with a missionary and HBC employees.

There were actually two murals of the same size unveiled at the time. When the store first opened, it had two banks of elevators, which stood across from each other (if you look at the columns on the main floor opposite the current elevators you can see the outline of where the second bank was). The elevators were an attraction unto themselves, featuring the latest in passenger safety. One feature was an "automatic micro-levelling device," which made up for sloppy attendants by stopping the car precisely at floor level. The cars also featured side escape hatches, so if an elevator got stuck, customers could be transferred to an adjoining one and continue on with their shopping "without delay or much inconvenience."

Bluffing bandit no match for carving knife Blog of the week: West End Dumplings

Often I will see an old photo or ad and spend some time digging into the backstory. Sometimes I find a great story, sometimes not. Either way, I learn a few things about the city's history.

This photograph of Harry Spottiswood appeared in the Feb. 14, 1939 edition of the Winnipeg Tribune with the caption "Called Bandit's Bluff." He is holding up the carving knife he used to ward off an armed robber at his grocery store at 501 Ellice Ave.

Since 1950, the convenience store at Ellice Avenue and Spence Street has been called Y-Not Foods, but in the 1930s it was known simply as Ellice Grocery. From 1934 to about 1947, it was run by Harry and Phoebe Spottiswood, who lived in the suite at the back of the store. There, they raised their daughters, Margaret and Evelyn. (There were three other suites upstairs that were rented out to tenants.)

At 10:30 p.m. on Feb. 13, 1939, a man entered the store and asked for a nickel worth of apples. When Harry opened the till to make change for a quarter, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the money. Before he could come closer, Harry pulled out a carving knife and, according to one newspaper report, told the robber to "come and take it, then."

‘It was built to burn’

IN a lonely park on Ellice Avenue, across the street from the University of Winnipeg's Lockhart Hall, are a plaque and a tree that commemorate Winnipeg's second-deadliest fire, which happened 40 years ago this weekend.

The Haselmere Apartments was a 1910-era, four-storey walk-up at 559 Ellice Ave. at Furby Street. It contained 28 suites and 51 residents.

Just after 1:15 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 18, 1974, a passing motorist spotted flames in the main floor of the building and sped to a pay phone to call the fire department. He told the Winnipeg Free Press:

"By the time I got back, everything and everybody was in hysteria. Some people were still yelling from the windows and some people were jumping."

A behind-the-scenes hero

History remembers very few civil servants from a city's formative years. With the exception of perhaps a colourful fire or police chief, the accolades for city-building are reserved mainly for the politicians and businessmen of the day.

Today is the anniversary of the birth of an unsung hero of Winnipeg's early years. Henry "Harry" Kirk was born in Woodcote, Oxford, England on December 29, 1842. At the age of 30, he, along with wife Annie and their two sons, packed up and came to Red River via the Dawson Trail.

The Kirks settled on a homestead but within months suffered a terrible tragedy. In the winter of 1873, Kirk was stranded outside during a severe winter storm and lost all of his fingers and part of one hand to frostbite.

A pioneer family headed by someone who could not work with his hands should have expected to spend their lives relying on charity. For reasons or connections unknown, in July 1874 the relief committee of the fledgling City of Winnipeg recommended Kirk be hired as one of the city's first 10 civil servants. He became the "city messenger," which would have been a hectic position as Winnipeg's first city hall had not yet been constructed and offices were scattered around town.

Perfect gift for someone on the nice list

Here's a late addition to my 2013 Local History Buff's Christmas Gift Guide: stained glass windows from Winnipeg's St. Matthew's Anglican Church. How does a sheaf of prairie wheat or a 1.5-metre-tall St. Paul rank in terms of a unique gift?

St. Matthew's Church has been part of the West End since 1896 and has been at St. Matthews Avenue and Maryland Street since 1913. A fire destroyed the 1913 building and the church was rebuilt in 1946-47. (You can read more about the history of St. Matthew's Church on my website: http://westenddumplings.blogspot.ca/ ).

At present, the church is in the final stages of becoming the West End Commons, a 26-unit apartment block that is being constructed inside the shell of the church. Many of the community services currently offered and a smaller St. Matthew's Church chapel will remain.

In order to reconfigure the building for its new use, a lot of the building's wonderful stained glass had to be removed and it is being sold off to help raise money for the conversion.

Soldier’s long, lonely duty

If you find yourself at Portage and Main, be sure to give the soldier there a salute. He's been standing vigil for 90 years. The nine-foot-tall bronze statue has no name. It is simply known as the First World War Soldier or the Bank of Montreal memorial. It was unveiled by the Bank of Montreal on Dec. 5, 1923 to commemorate the 230 bank employees -- nine of them from Winnipeg -- who were killed in action during the First World War.

In all, 1,409 employees of the bank served, and 230 never returned. In Winnipeg, 53 answered the call and nine were killed.

The bank held an international competition for the creation of two memorials -- one for its Montreal headquarters, the other for Winnipeg. Some histories say the statue was originally envisioned for Montreal until the artist saw the interior of that bank and designed Victory in white marble to contrast its dark columns.

The spot chosen for the memorial was in front of the bank's imposing Winnipeg headquarters at Portage and Main. To prepare the space, the stairs and sidewalk needed to be rebuilt and Winnipeg's temporary cenotaph was removed.

Historical doesn’t have to mean ugly Blog of the week: West End Dumplings

Murray McNeill wrote in the Free Press recently about the multi-million dollar renovation coming soon to Cityplace shopping centre, now owned by Manitoba Public Insurance. This is great news.

Despite trouble in recent years filling some of its larger spaces, the mall has always been an important retail fixture for downtown. Its collection of fast food outlets, Liquor Mart, national-chain drugstore and postal office serve thousands of residents living south of Portage Avenue.

It's only recently Cityplace has found a way to benefit from being connected to the arena with the addition of Boston Pizza, one of the few family restaurants downtown, and most recently the Shark Club for the macho young men to congregate before a game.

One line in McNeill's story struck me: because of "historical designation," MPI is limited as to what it can do to the exterior, so the renovations will be on the inside.

Apathy: It’s a Winnipeg thing

w"Apathy is the record of the past in our city and if we need one thing more than another today it is a revival of our civic consciousness, a better understanding of what our business is in regard to civic administration."

I spend a lot of time reading through old newspapers, and something I learned long ago is that many of the "hot-button" issues the public and media rail about today are usually old news -- very old news.

One example of this is voter apathy in civic elections. The above quote is from a speech to a Kiwanis Club luncheon way back in November 1923 by Winnipeg businessman William Douglas, who also served on council in 1921 and 1922, (civic elections were an annual event back then).

The Fox and the Fermor

Despite the fact that he was born in Winnipeg and lived here until Grade 3, we're one of the few major Canadian cities not to have something named for Terry Fox.

Earlier this summer, blogger the Purple Rod began a petition to have the Perimeter Highway renamed after the national hero. Cherenkov at Anybody Want a Peanut? added to the conversation by suggesting Fermor Avenue, part of the Trans-Canada Highway, be named for him instead. He reasoned if Fox had made it to his birthplace, he would have run through town rather than around it.

Renaming a street that has already been named for someone is tacky and something I have sounded off about in previous posts. I felt that it was important to investigate who, or what, Fermor was.

The short answer is: I still don't know.

The best Bomber you’ve never heard of Blog of the Week: West End Dumplings

Between 1931 and 1941 it would have been difficult to flip through the local sports pages without reading about Jeff Nicklin.

He was born Dec. 10, 1914 in Fort William, Ont. His family moved to Winnipeg when he was 10. He attended Mulvey and Gordon Bell schools, graduating from Kelvin in 1930.

Despite the many sports he excelled in growing up, Nicklin chose to pursue football as an adult.

In 1932 he became a member of the Winnipeg Junior Rugby Football League's Winnipegs and in 1933 joined the Deer Lodge Juniors. They won the 1933 Manitoba-Saskatchewan league and the 1934 Western Canadian championship.

The pressure is on Blog of the Week: West End Dumplings

On Aug. 6, an open house was held to present a new (and likely the last) development idea for the James Avenue Pumping Station.

I say "the last" because since it has been shuttered since 1986, a number of potential buyers have come looking, but the high cost to renovate the building, clean the machinery and remediate the land (all in return for a small amount of usable space) have driven them away. CentreVenture, the building's owners, have let it be known they want this piece of land developed soon, with or without the building.

The plan involves driving piles through the floor and adding a mixed-use, 14-storey (minimum) tower on top. It would have a restaurant and market on the first two floors, three floors of office space and the rest would be rental apartments.

Here is a brief history of the historic building.

Old sign reminder of city shop owner who survived Japanese PoW camp

They are an overlooked part of Winnipeg's urban history: old, painted signs. Some of them could be considered works of art in themselves, though many are disappearing due to graffiti, new development or just a lack of interest in the stories they tell.

This is the story behind one sign that was recently painted over.

For more than 60 years, the Norris Block at 274 Garry St., (most recently Aqua Books), sported a plain white-on-black sign that read: "J. Norris -- Tailor." The Norris Tailor shop was created in 1921 by John Norris. In 1932, his son, John Norris Jr., joined him in the enterprise and took it over when his father died.

When the Second World War broke out, Norris Jr. went overseas with the Winnipeg Grenadiers. In 1941, they were dispatched to Hong Kong, expecting to perform garrison duties for the Commonwealth colony. Then the Japanese invaded. Nearly 300 Canadians were killed in the Battle of Hong Kong before the city fell on Christmas Day, 1941. Hundreds of Canadian soldiers were interned in Japanese PoW camps.

Blog of the week: West End Dumplings The Colish Block shows some skin

A number of Main Street buildings have undergone exterior renovations of late that have given us a glimpse at their early 1900s exteriors. There was the Yale Hotel, Green Brier Inn and now the Colish Block at 1969/1973 Main, known to many as the home of Blondie's restaurant.

The early years of this building are associated with a well-liked pillar of the West Kildonan community named Isaac Colish. He was born in Lithuania in 1878 and came to Winnipeg via London, England in 1907. Along with wife, Anne and their children Hugh, Janey and Sheila, they settled in West Kildonan.

Isaac soon opened the municipality's first grocery store at the corner of Newton Avenue and Main Street, (at the time it was next to a stream that crossed Main Street.) The family lived in a suite upstairs. The store soon became the focal point of West Kildonan's community life.

In a Oct. 22, 1989 Winnipeg Free Press column headlined: Immigrant Isaac Colish lived to see the city prosper, Vince Leah wrote:

An architectural history of Safeway

Another longtime retail giant is disappearing from Winnipeg's retail landscape. Last year it was Zellers after a 79-year run in the city. Today, it is Safeway's turn after 84 years.

Canada Safeway Limited set up shop in Winnipeg in May 1929. Their first round of construction consisted of a commercial bakery and eight stores that opened in October. With further construction and the acquisition of other chains, within six months it had 30 stores in Winnipeg and a distribution network that stretched across the West.

One thing Safeway leaves behind is a rich architectural footprint. The chain custom-built their stores to fit its needs and many of these buildings are still in use, and recognizable as former Safeways, today.

A cold blast from the past Blog of the week: West End Dumplings

Here's a test to see how old you are: Do you remember car-window frost shields?

For those who don't, they were squares of plastic -- slightly raised -- with an adhesive strip around the edge. You stuck them to the inside of your car windows and the vacuum created in the space between the plastic and the glass kept the inside of the window from fogging or frosting up in the cold. (The Ashdown's ad markets a more expensive version consisting of a sheet of glass with a rubber gasket.)

Frost shields burst onto the automotive scene in the winter of 1926-27, long before front- and rear-window defrosters were a gleam in the eye of an automotive engineer. They were soon a standard part of a basic winter tune-up, along with radiator grill covers and winter anti-freeze.

In 1937, it became law your windshield, rear window and front-row side windows had to be fitted with frost shields from Dec. 1 to March 31. When spring came, the car owner then had the unenviable task of trying to remove what was left of the shield and its adhesive residue.

Taking the Long view Blog of the week: West End Dumplings

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the death of artist Victor Arthur Long.

I first came across his name while researching the Carnegie portrait that hangs in the Millennium Library. He was one of Winnipeg's most prolific painters and said to be the first artist in town to earn a living solely from his work. In a career that spanned 50 years he left a body of work that included portraits of many of the West's first public officials.

Victor Arthur Long was born in 1866 in Fort Erie Ont. Long's interest in art took him briefly to New York before a four-year stint in Europe (Dublin, Munich and Paris.) A Vancouver newspaper later said "He was there at the Beaux Arts and the Julien Schools under Cabanel, Jerome, and Tony Robert Fleury."

In 1887, Long returned to Canada and opened a studio on Main Street. He specialized in oil portraits and would paint for anyone, regardless of status, and soon found he was able to live on his income as an artist, one of the first in Winnipeg to do so.

Blogs of the week

Stop the autobin insanity

I was just listening to CJOB. The topic was overfilling dumpsters on the 700 block of College. The resident said his new fancy garbage container just got emptied, but the hugely overflowing BFI autobin was still there, overflowing, in all its smelly glory.

Now, I am no expert on the current conditions of Winnipeg back lanes, and I have no desire to drive down my old back lane, or any other back lane in the North End for that matter. But from what I hear, there seems to be a problem in waste management at city hall.

Pumping station still feeling the pressure

PRIOR to 1919, Winnipeg’s water system was made up of a series of wells and low-pressure pumping stations, such as the McPhillips Street Station, that distributed it around the city.

For fire suppression, there was a network of hundreds of fire hydrants but they were fed with the same pressure as household taps. It was up to fire wagons of the day to provide the necessary pressure. Some large buildings constructed after 1900, such as Eaton’s and the Kemp Manufacturing Building, included their own water reservoirs and pump systems.

Newspapers often reported about large, devastating fires that razed entire blocks in other cities. Winnipeg had its own close call in 1904 when the Bullman Block at Bannatyne Avenue and Albert Street caught fire. It destroyed the Bullman Block, Ashdown’s store and the upper stories of the Duffin and Baker (Birt Saddlery) Block before firefighters got it under control.

If it had continued a few doors north, it would have burned the newly opened Union Bank Tower, Winnipeg’s first skyscraper.

How the Warwick changed Winnipeg

The push to get people living downtown has gained a lot of momentum lately, but this process has been going on ever since there was a downtown.

Take the Warwick Apartments on Qu'Appelle Avenue.

It's hard to imagine this old block changed the way Winnipeggers lived, but after the building opened in May 1909, that's exactly what happened.

Prior to the Warwick, apartment blocks in Winnipeg were small, walk-up tenements meant to warehouse the working class. As Winnipeg experienced a population explosion, from 42,000 souls in 1901 to 118,000 in 1908, new housing solutions were needed for the growing middle and upper classes.

Buildings that may soon go boom

I'm often asked what I think are Winnipeg's most endangered buildings. Here's my top five list.

Fortune Block

232 Main St.

Central Park — ‘Peg-style

Central Park has always fascinated me. In my early teens, off downtown on a Saturday afternoon to buy records and see a movie, I would sometimes head over to the other side of Ellice just to stroll around. To me, it was a place from another city, a big city that you saw on TV shows set in Toronto or New York: the urban green with the Gothic fountain and historic church surrounded by highrise apartments.

As I developed a greater appreciation for architecture and history, I continued to visit Central Park. You can sit in one place and take in a panorama of over a century of Winnipeg's residential development. From stately turn-of-the-century homes and Winnipeg's first upscale apartment block right up to 1960s highrises and 1980s "milk carton" blocks.

By the time I discovered the park, it already had a sketchy reputation that just got worse over time. It became a haven for drug dealers and intoxicated persons. The decay was probably best exemplified by the condition of the Waddell Fountain as bits began to fall away and eventually the water had to be turned off.

From 2004 to 2011, I worked a block away from the park and was able to see its revitalization take place first-hand. With a growing African refugee population in the area, it became common to see families picnicking, enjoying a stroll or children playing soccer on the grass. Eventually, there was an African-themed sidewalk market and weekend entertainment.

135 years up in smoke

It's sad that the Albert Street Business Block at 44 Albert St. went up in flames (April 19), taking two businesses with it. You may remember that it was part of an on again/off again demolition debate between 2005 and 2008 when the owner of the derelict St. Charles Hotel wanted to tear it down to create a surface parking lot.

Despite its low density and humble appearance, 44 Albert managed to stick around for 135 years while the city grew up around it.

According to the city's historic building report, the house portion was built in 1877 for John LeCappellain at 8 Albert St. He was a one-time senior employee of Ashdown's Hardware, but that year went into business for himself when he bought out McKenney's Hardware Store.

It's likely that he bought Henry McKenney's business from his son John. Henry is considered the founder of Portage and Main as he chose to establish his business off the beaten track at the intersection of two cart trails that would soon become Winnipeg's most famous intersection.

Monument easy to miss

He founded the Red River Settlement in 1812 with his own money, but is there a monument to him in the city that grew out of that settlement?

There is, but chances are, you have never stumbled upon it.

Winnipeg's Lord Selkirk Monument, tucked away on a tiny sliver of land at Memorial Boulevard and Colony Street, was over a decade in the making.

The Manitoba Historical Society and Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada began planning for a monument in the early 1940s to coincide with Lord Selkirk being named a person of national historical significance in 1943. The war, however, put the fundraising campaign on hold and it wasn't until 1953 that things got back on track.

No denial of the Nile

The Arlington Bridge opened on February 5, 1912 with little fanfare. The only elected official in attendance was former alderman Archibald McArthur, the man who proposed the link six years earlier.

In 1906, the only streetcar route to the North End was via the subway at Main Street and Higgins Avenue, but more were needed to keep up with the growing population. McArthur proposed connecting Brown and Brant streets with an overpass, but it received a lukewarm response from colleagues. As chairman of council's bridge committee he ensured that it stayed on the city's agenda. In June 1909 the project finally won a money referendum, the two streets were rechristened Arlington Street and the project got underway.

Despite running over-budget and seven months behind schedule, there was a more serious issue at hand. Streetcar drivers considered it "suicide" to take a streetcar down such a steep grade into a major intersection. Offers to outfit streetcars with disc brakes and to post marshals at the foot of the bridge did not appease them. Legal wrangling continued for a decade before the city finally gave up. No streetcar ever ran over the city's new, $250,000 streetcar link to the North End.

Soon after, the Arlington Bridge began its long history of unexpected and expensive repairs.

Blog of the Week: West End Dumplings

It's going to be a lavish Christmas in the Imrie household as 2011 is finishing off with a 'bang' for a number of large buildings. Here are a few of the goners, or soon to be goners, and a little information about each of them before they slip from our memories forever.

Former Orpheum Billiards

292 - 294 Fort Street

Blog of the week: Tearing down skywalks and malls

WEST END DUMPLINGS

http://westenddumplings.blogspot.com/

There was an interesting MinnPost.com post back in 2007 about Minneapolis's skywalk system.

In 2007, Minneapolis hosted the International Vital Winter Cities conference and a couple of world-renowned architects were invited to take a tour of downtown Minneapolis and give their impressions. One thing they both agreed on? Get rid of the skywalks! An excerpt: