Remembering North Point Douglas

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/03/2020 (2258 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In October 2019, Winnipeg’s first poet laureate, Di Brandt, had a column in the Winnipeg Free Press about an area I thought I knew —North Point Douglas, the oldest part of Winnipeg.

But I didn’t recognize her descriptions of the various commemorations or parks south of Euclid Avenue “hidden in plain sight.”

I decided to investigate. Preserved there in Zuken Park is Winnipeg’s oldest building and its first post office, now called the Ross House Museum. Hewn out of sturdy logs, it sits on a foundation of rocks cemented together like the cairn under poet Markian Shashkevich pictured in Brandt’s article.

I also discovered that Canada’s Second World War hero Sir William Stephenson, the distinguished spy known as Intrepid, was born and raised here — he attended Argyle School just south of the CPR tracks.

Thanks to Mayor Bill Norrie, Stephenson’s name and tribute were belatedly memorialized on a large plaque in this park dated Aug. 15, 1982. It says Stephenson distinguished himself in both world wars and was knighted in Britain after serving as spy as well as a go-between for Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt.

A Selkirk Settlers’ plaque and meticulous Indigenous/Métis wildlife carvings are among  other commemorative features worth seeing.  

Sixty years ago, my family and I lived for two months close by, on Disraeli Street. A kind, childless couple, former interlake neighbours, Bill and Maria Poworoznik, took us in while we awaited completion of our house on Glenlawn Avenue in St. Vital, where school superintendent Vic Wyatt had hired my husband Walter and me to teach at Windsor and Varennes schools.  

 
On Saturdays, Bill would proudly take our sons, then aged seven and nine, to the Starland Theatre on Main Street for movies — a double feature cost just 25 cent. But last October, when we drove down Main, all we saw was a sterile, shiny building in its place, stirring old diehard memories.

Also, in the 1940s and ’50s, my mother’s several siblings rented or owned homes on Grove or Edward Street and Euclid Avenue across from Shashkevich’s monument, as did our parents upon retiring.

The stop sign at Euclid Avenue and Grove Street still designates the area I used to visit 70-plus years ago, and Metro Meats still advertises kielbasa at that corner. But the friends and relatives are long gone — only fond memories now.

Thanks, Di, for bestowing dignity and humanity upon the area.    

Anne Yanchyshyn is a community correspondent for St. Vital. Email her at acy@mymts.net