New humbug sign of season steps in to keep tradition flowing By: Kevin Rollason Posted: 4:53 PM CST Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023

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This article was published 28/11/2023 (1034 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It may have been more of a bah, humbug Christmas this year, if not for a local brew pub.

Hundreds of square metres of white tarp covering construction renovations has encased the outside of Queen Street’s Ashbury Place apartments for months, meaning an annual tradition of Winnipeggers looking to its upper floor for the long-running, brightly lit H-U-M-B-U-G sign is on hiatus this holiday season.

However, before the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future could be summoned, the people behind nearby One Great City Brewing Co. stepped forward with their own version.

On the northeast corner of the Madison Square building (1596 Ness Ave.), a new humbug sign shines out its unique, Ebenezer Scrooge-inspired Christmas spirit, while patrons below indulge in other spirits.

“My dad would be extremely happy and really honoured. When he put (his sign) up, he would had no idea what he was doing for this city.”–Sid Farmer

“My dad would be extremely happy and really honoured,” Sid Farmer said Tuesday of someone continuing the near-50-year tradition. “When he put (his sign) up, he would had no idea what he was doing for this city.”

Shortly after Farmer’s dad, also named Sid, moved into the apartment building with his wife in 1974, the Second World War veteran decided to craft a sign displaying the Georgian-era word that still rings out today via the many movie and TV adaptations of Charles Dickens’s 1843 novel A Christmas Carol.

Made of wood with holes to stick lights through, the sign went up on the balcony of the couple’s east-facing apartment suite. It has been put up every year since, even though Sid moved out of the building in 2002.

“He got sick and he couldn’t manage the suite anymore,” his son said. “The caretaker came to see me and asked if he could keep the sign. I figured if I took it home no one would see it.

“The caretaker kept putting it up, and now it’s 2023.”

Recent construction has kept the apartment building under wraps, so the sign was going to stay in hibernation this year.

That’s when Tim Hudek and others at One Great City decided to step in.

“It’s not the original sign,” Hudek was quick to point out in an interview. “We had some plywood lying around and we have some handy people.

“We put it up on Monday, and we’ll have it out there through the holidays.”

Brewery brings back humbug beer

It’s not the first time One Great City has brought humbug out for the holidays.

Two years ago, it crafted a special beer called Humbug. This year, it brought it back but changed the recipe a bit, so it is now Humbug 2.0, “harder and grumpier.”

Weather will determine whether the new humbug sign will also become a Christmas tradition.

“I’m not sure yet,” Hudek said. “It is TBD. We’ll see how our sign survives the winter.”

As for Farmer, he’s hoping the renovations on his dad’s former apartment building are finished in 2024, and his dad’s old sign gets out of storage to light up the season again.

“It’s funny, because my dad was the farthest thing from humbug.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca