People, profit intersect at Portage and Main

Since 1862, the intersection of Main Street and Portage Avenue in Winnipeg has been a space split between the competing forces of people and profit.

During the early years, there were fights about how to build roads large enough so people could travel through the area while accommodating the competitive interests of businesses moving in and blocking the thoroughfares.

In the end, the then-governor and council of Assiniboia chose a balance between the two, declaring the intersecting roads would follow the original oxcart paths, parallel to the rivers, and be “a full two chain (132 foot)” across.

The decree also stated that any business blocking the paths in and out of the intersection would have to make way by 1882.

This idea though, was not new; a balance between multiple interests has always been how Portage and Main works.

For centuries, the area was a stopping place along a north-south trading route traveled by Cree and Anishinaabe peoples and a west-east route journeyed by Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples — all of whom joined together to reside in a vast city the Cree called Nestawaya, or “Three Points.”

Here, Indigenous peoples lived, traded, and forged treaty — conducting business with one another for centuries.

Life in Nestawaya wasn’t perfect (Anishinaabe and Dakota peoples were well known for their wars, for example) but, at the best of times, the nations in what is now Portage and Main found ways to forge peace.

It’s no surprise, then, that balancing competing interests solved Portage and Main’s first conflict. Over a century, compromise, commitment, and inclusivity has been how Portage and Main has functioned the best.

The corner has witnessed bustling crowds, paths of streetcars and exponential economic growth — all of which inspired infrastructure and jobs that helped build a city.

In the decades after Winnipeg was founded in 1873, the area saw the building of nearby Union Station in 1911, Eaton’s department store in 1905, and the Hudson Bay building in 1926.

At Portage and Main, there came the Bank of Montreal building on the southeast corner (built in 1913), the 34-storey Richardson building on the northeast corner (1969), the Commodity Exchange Tower on the northwest corner (1979) and the five-storey Scotiabank building on the southwest corner (1979).

At the same time, the area was the meeting place where citizens celebrated the end of wars, met kings and princesses, and the Winnipeg Jets signed superstar hockey players.

Finding the balance between people and profit was always the way of Portage and Main — until one side was chosen over the other.

Starting in the 1960s, city planners sought to create a downtown economic hub, based on the idea that forcing foot traffic to travel underground into a warm, enclosed, commercial concourse would increase vehicle flow and support economic development.

That idea became real with the Circus, an underground circular facility that connected all four corners of Portage and Main. After the vision was passed in 1979, all overground movement in the intersection was closed, with barriers built to force citizens below.

Well, some of them.

There was no longer any place for the poor or racialized at Portage and Main.

Profit became the only language of the primary intersection of the city.

For decades, downtown became a transactional place.

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For the wealthy, it was a place for business, not a place to live, love, and foster relationships.

Those who did live there were met with a lifeless set of barriers, concrete, and freezing cold wind.

This was especially true of Portage and Main’s first inhabitants.

In the 1960s, Indigenous peoples began to return to the space after suffering for decades under brutal policies that controlled movement and commerce — instilling poverty and marginalization in their lives.

Unwelcome in the Circus, Indigenous peoples became the primary inhabitants of the overground, creating a stark divide between societies below and above.

This separation caused division and a deep sense of difference and denial — until the decay caused by both became too much.

Portage and Main became a symbol of what it means to choose one interest over another, money over relationships, and profit over people.

That is, until this unsustainable vision ended.

Now, the intersection has reopened, and, with it, new questions on how to balance people and profit.

A new path for an intersection in a very old centre; a place that has thrived by finding balance, not choosing one path over another.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Niigaan Sinclair
Columnist

Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe and is a columnist at the Winnipeg Free Press.

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