Jaywalking Portage & Main protester in 1979 unsure about removing barriers now

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This article was published 05/03/2024 (551 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipegger who made his feelings known about closing Portage and Main to pedestrians by climbing over the barricades and jaywalking across the intersection 45 years ago is concerned about the plan to reopen it to foot traffic and close the underground mall underneath it.

“I can’t see how you can just say, ‘No, we’re not going to have that anymore.’ It doesn’t make any sense,” Grant Wichenko said Tuesday, referring to Mayor Scott Gillingham’s announcement last Friday of his intention to decommission the city’s portion of the Winnipeg Square circus and take down the street-level concrete barriers at each corner.

Wichenko, 71, was part of a group led by then-city councillor Joe Zuken that walked across the intersection after council voted to close it to pedestrian access in 1979.

Walking across “Canada’s windiest corner” was prohibited after the city struck a 40-year deal — now expired — with a property developer who proposed construction of two office towers, a five-storey bank building and an underground mall. The catch, however, was that pedestrians would be forced to cross the iconic intersection underground, driving traffic into the retail space.

The city, in an effort to revitalize the economically struggling downtown, played ball despite fervent opposition from many residents.

Zuken, who opposed the closure from the outset, made good on his promise to defy the ban. On a windy day in March he led supporters on a trek that saw them complete a circuit, crossing the street at all four corners.

Wichenko remembers the demonstration as a vital act.

“People were concerned that this was a big mistake,” he said, noting the intersection was crucial to commuters in the hub-and-spoke city. “(Portage and Main) was an important place to be.”

A city staff report released Friday said it would cost $73 million to repair the leaking membrane under the concrete that protects the concourse beneath the intersection and construction would cause traffic disruptions for up to five years.

Nevertheless, Wichenko is concerned the mayor’s surprise announcement wasn’t accompanied by a proper plan. Gillingham said the hope is for the intersection to reopen in summer 2025 to coincide with the launch of the city’s new transit route network.

“Rather than just knocking down the concrete barriers and putting up lights, it needs more thought than that. I can’t see how you can abandon the underground and close off that spot completely,” he said, adding a design competition for the intersection could work to revitalize the downtown crossing.

“Rather than just knocking down the concrete barriers and putting up lights, it needs more thought than that. I can’t see how you can abandon the underground and close off that spot completely.”– Grant Wichenko

He pointed to the Get Together ’70 festival, during which Portage Avenue was closed from the intersection to the Hudson’s Bay store at Memorial Boulevard for a street party to celebrate Manitoba’s centennial, as the sort of event that could happen again with a well-thought-out intersection opening.

“People talked about Yonge and Bloor (in Toronto), Granville and Hastings (in Vancouver) and Portage and Main in the same sentence 40 or 50 years ago, it’s not like that today,” he said.

Doug Smith, a local author and historian who has written about the intersection’s history and the 1979 protest, said the mayor’s move to reopen didn’t surprise him.

“I won’t say I was pleased, because at the time of the (2018) referendum there was talk to the effect that it was going to be extremely costly to continue to bar pedestrian traffic,” he said.

Smith took a shot at former mayor Brian Bowman for putting the issue to voters in a non-binding plebiscite in the 2018 civic election.

“It was cowardly for (Bowman to have) run on a platform that he was gonna open up the intersection, only to have submitted to a referendum on a very complicated financial and traffic decision,” he said.

“Council should have made the decision based on the facts in front of it and not send an extraordinarily complicated issue to a referendum.”

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When the results were in, 65 per cent voted against restoring pedestrian access. Gillingham — who did not support reopening the intersection in 2018 — remained opposed to removing the barricades during his 2022 mayoral campaign, saying it would “disrespectful” to ignore the results of the public vote.

Wichenko said without adequate care put into its redesign, Portage and Main has no future.

“Crossing Portage and Main should be something memorable and worthwhile, otherwise the intersection will be closed off again and the city will be forced to spend more money to upgrade the underground solution,” he said.

Discussion about the intersection’s redesign will go before council’s property and development committee Thursday.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca

Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer

Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole.

Every piece of reporting Nicole produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.