Make sure your beer’s delivered to the right address

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/07/2021 (1618 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The issue of renaming city streets is a hot topic today. It may come as a surprise to know that in the Winnipeg’s first century there were hundreds of street name changes, most often to eliminate duplication.

The naming of streets in the city’s earliest decades wasn’t very ceremonial. City employees or local developers had to submit a list of names – sometimes dozens at a time – to a city committee before a parcel of land was subdivided. Duplicate names were easy enough to avoid in a single city, but the Greater Winnipeg region was made up of 12 municipalities that didn’t always co-operate.

A regional committee was established in the 1930s to eliminate more than 50 duplicate names, as politicians were facing a growing number of complaints from residents that their mail and other deliveries were being sent to the wrong addresses. Some changes were made but the process was voluntary, and some municipalities wouldn’t budge when it came to names with strong local roots.

The problem grew worse during the post-war expansion of the suburbs. According to the Winnipeg Tribune there were more than 255 duplicate street names in the region by 1953. They included six Assiniboias, six Victors, and five Rivers, Queens and Royals. Some streets could be differentiated by their suffixes but that wasn’t the case with the five Ferry Roads.

Winnipeg had the most success at eliminating duplicate street names through amalgamation.

After Elmwood joined Winnipeg in 1906, around 20 street names were changed, with the Winnipeg versions the victors. There was little interest in who or what the Elmwood names commemorated, so its Robert Street became Rodent (later changed to Brazier), Chambers became Chalmers, Grove became Green, and Taylor became Talbot.

Winnipeg and its 11 neighbouring municipalities merged in 1972 which meant that long-standing duplicate names could finally be dealt with. Streets were evaluated to see which one was named first, which had the fewest addresses on it, and if the name had an historical attachment to the land it was on. Proposed changes were then sent to council for approval.

Not all name changes passed. Residents of River Road in St. Vital balked at becoming residents of Rambling River Road to avoid confusion with River Avenue in Fort Rouge. Both street names exist to this day.

Some names were changed because they looked too similar, as was the case of Home and Horne streets in Wolseley. When handwritten, the two street names were almost indistinguishable, which caused mail and deliveries to go to the wrong street.  

The matter came to a head in 1911 when a case of beer was mistakenly delivered to a woman on Home Street who also happened to be a prominent member of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, an organization that advocated for the prohibition of alcohol.

The Winnipeg Free Press noted, “The beer eventually reached its destination, but the amber fluid from Milwaukee innocently won a red-hot advocate for a change in the name of one or the other of the streets.”

Within weeks, Horne Street, home to the beer drinker, was changed to Evanson Street.