Historical Winnipeg discussion

[Roger Strong]

Originally Posted by Andy6

If it was prior to Unicity, I would be surprised if the obituary didn't specify that Bonner is in East Kildonan or North Kildonan, or whichever Kildonan it was. No one would have thought of that as "Winnipeg".

Unicity wasn't until 1972. But the process of renaming duplicate street names started long before that.

History of the City Council of St. Boniface 1950 – 1959 (PDF)

"January 1959 – The Metropolitan Planning Commission of Greater Winnipeg seeks to eliminate duplicate street names in Greater Winnipeg. The general policy is the street with the greatest number of buildings retains its name while the other street’s name is changed."

MHS Resources: History in Winnipeg Streets shows that a lot of that renaming happened in 1963. I could have sworn that there was a similar wave of renaming a decade before that - Tache Street vs. Tache Avenue for example - but I can't find a reference.

[Riverman]

I do know Collegiate Street in St. James used to be College St.

[Roger Strong]

Originally Posted by Riverman

I do know Collegiate Street in St. James used to be College St.

Yup. Renamed so that it wouldn't conflict with College Avenue in the North End.

It was still College Street when a B-25 crashed into houses there in 1957. Narrowly missing another College Street address hit by a de Havilland Vampire a few years earlier.

BTW, as I mention on the B-25 crash page, that incident led to expansion of Stevenson field, the building of the recently replaced terminal, and the creation of St. Andrews Airport for Winnipeg's civilian and small aircraft traffic.

(I hope to update that entire site one of these years.)

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Roger Strong

Yup. Renamed so that it wouldn't conflict with College Avenue in the North End.

It was still College Street when a B-25 crashed into houses there in 1957. Narrowly missing another College Street address hit by a de Havilland Vampire a few years earlier.

BTW, as I mention on the B-25 crash page, that incident led to expansion of Stevenson field, the building of the recently replaced terminal, and the creation of St. Andrews Airport for Winnipeg's civilian and small aircraft traffic.

(I hope to update that entire site one of these years.)

Your website is very interesting... in some ways it's reassuring too, considering how busy the airport is and how few incidents there have been over the years.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by Roger Strong

Unicity wasn't until 1972. But the process of renaming duplicate street names started long before that.

History of the City Council of St. Boniface 1950 – 1959 (PDF)

"January 1959 – The Metropolitan Planning Commission of Greater Winnipeg seeks to eliminate duplicate street names in Greater Winnipeg. The general policy is the street with the greatest number of buildings retains its name while the other street’s name is changed."

MHS Resources: History in Winnipeg Streets shows that a lot of that renaming happened in 1963. I could have sworn that there was a similar wave of renaming a decade before that - Tache Street vs. Tache Avenue for example - but I can't find a reference.

It probably was a priority with Metro, but there was a lot of renaming in the early decades of the century as well, as there were a lot of duplicated names resulting from what I assume must have been, initially, relatively minimal control over what names were attached to streets by the people filing plans of subdivision.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by esquire

Your website is very interesting... in some ways it's reassuring too, considering how busy the airport is and how few incidents there have been over the years.

I remember the 1987 one crashing into my dad's office. I was already at U of Toronto by then but I see from the date that it must have happened when I was back home during the summer.

[Roger Strong]

Originally Posted by esquire

Your website is very interesting... in some ways it's reassuring too, considering how busy the airport is and how few incidents there have been over the years.

Agreed. Most - and I know I'm missing a bunch of pre-1960 crashes even beyond what's "unsure of location" on the Master List page - are from the old military flight school. de Havilland DH.60 Moths used to be a form of precipitation here.

[The Unknown Poster]

Originally Posted by Roger Strong

It's just a guess, good only if the obit you have is scanned text rather than an image of the original.

There are web sites serving up old newspaper pages, and they're searchable. They're of course using optical character recognition (OCR) to read the text from the articles to make them searchable. And since there's a fair amount of guess work involved, the OCR software uses dictionary look-ups to increase accuracy. Governments are doing the same with their records.

With the slightest uncertainty about "t" vs. "r", a dictionary look-up would choose "Bonnet" simply because it's in the dictionary.

(I used a lot of awful OCR software 20+ years ago.)

The obit is from an online site and reads: "354 Bonnet St., North Kildonan. "

Oh and is from April 1973.

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by The Unknown Poster

The obit is from an online site and reads: "354 Bonnet St., North Kildonan. "

Oh and is from April 1973.

Sounds like Roger got it right.

[The Unknown Poster]

Originally Posted by Andy6

Sounds like Roger got it right.

The only other question I'd have though, is that Bonner is Ave and the Obit was "street". Getting "r" and "t" wrong is understandable. Would they also confuse St and Ave?

Not a huge deal but very interesting!

[esquire]

Originally Posted by The Unknown Poster

The only other question I'd have though, is that Bonner is Ave and the Obit was "street". Getting "r" and "t" wrong is understandable. Would they also confuse St and Ave?

People often get those details wrong... you see references in writing every day to "Broadway Ave." when in fact it is just "Broadway", no "Ave." There's a good chance that whoever wrote the obituary may not have been familiar with the neighbourhood in question.

[Roger Strong]

Thank you.

I've been debugging software since the punch card era. When I look at problem - no computer involvement mentioned - and think "Here's how the software messed up", it warms my heart when someone responds with "And here's how a user made it worse."

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by The Unknown Poster

The only other question I'd have though, is that Bonner is Ave and the Obit was "street". Getting "r" and "t" wrong is understandable. Would they also confuse St and Ave?

Not a huge deal but very interesting!

I found what I assume is the actual obituary in the April 18, 1973 Free Press and it says 354 Bonner St., not Bonnet. Interestingly, in addition to the image of the page, it shows the OCR'd text and *that* says "Bonnet". So there's the source of the problem, most likely.

However, what is now 354 Bonner Avenue is a house built in 1980. http://www.winnipegassessment.com/As...eetName=bonner

[cllew]

Originally Posted by esquire

People often get those details wrong... you see references in writing every day to "Broadway Ave." when in fact it is just "Broadway", no "Ave." There's a good chance that whoever wrote the obituary may not have been familiar with the neighbourhood in question.

Even Google maps makes mistakes like that. My address shows up as both a street (correct) and a place. the "place" would be the 100 block on the west side of Henderson to the river. the 200 block going east to Golspie is the street.

[The Unknown Poster]

Originally Posted by Andy6

I found what I assume is the actual obituary in the April 18, 1973 Free Press and it says 354 Bonner St., not Bonnet. Interestingly, in addition to the image of the page, it shows the OCR'd text and *that* says "Bonnet". So there's the source of the problem, most likely.

However, what is now 354 Bonner Avenue is a house built in 1980. http://www.winnipegassessment.com/As...eetName=bonner

You guys rock. Thanks!

[bogdog]

"It's his building, he can choose to maintain it or not. Plus the entire outer facade is shot. It needs to go." Riverman, post# 7376 in (for some reason) Winnipeg Construction.
The "inner facade" of the fortune building has been inaccessible to the public for decades, but the brickwork is in remarkably good condition. I am not qualified to judge the economic value of restoration/renovation, but anyone with eyes can see that the 130 year old foundations of both the Fortune and Macdonald buildings are solid as the day they were finished in the early 1880's.
As with the lamented Confederation Building on King, ill-advised and tacky attempts at "modernization" serve only to obscure the true historic value of the structures.
Tear them down, don't tear them down, but please, let's not engage in another campaign of bald-faced lies to please a few plutocrats.

[rkspec]

Throw back to 1887

[Urban recluse]

To imagine that beautiful edifice still standing is to, where is my whiskey to make the pain disappear?

[Riverman]

.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Riverman

Whisky.

Unless it's American or Irish, in which case it actually is whiskey.