Historical Winnipeg discussion

[🌳🌱🌿🌴🍁]

You have deduced correctly. Caption on web site is: "Men and women seated on deck chairs at the Winnipeg Canoe Club, on the banks of the Red River". Also this card:


https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca

[Bdog]

Originally Posted by 🌳🌱🌿🌴🍁

You have deduced correctly. Caption on web site is: "Men and women seated on deck chairs at the Winnipeg Canoe Club, on the banks of the Red River". Also this card:


https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca

[🌳🌱🌿🌴🍁]

Aha yes did not notice that... Cross-Canada thread here: https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...postcount=3050


https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca

[cheswick]

Saw this one over at West End Dumplings. It's from a post a few years back but new to me. In 1891 Winnipeg changed their street names to numbered streets. It never caught on with the general public or businesses, where mail kept being addressed to the old names etc, so city reverted it back in 1893.

[bomberjet]

I'm going to start using the numbered scheme for fun haha

[BubberMiley]

Mid 60s teen music show hosted by Ray St Germain with Lenny Breau in the house band.
https://youtu.be/_3910F_tsug

[1ajs]

interesting i had no idea there was a refinry in that area
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ou...x2K8QCxi76HuY4

[Riverman]

Originally Posted by 1ajs

interesting i had no idea there was a refinry in that area
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ou...x2K8QCxi76HuY4

My grandfather worked at ROCO for many years, both at the refinery and at the filling stations repairing gas pumps.

Funny, I thought it was on the other side of Munroe.

[bomberjet]

Neat. Thanks for sharing!

The brick building on the right is still there and is an apartment building. Church is still there of course. Pretty sure the timber yard was still there in the 90's. ( Edit: google shows trees there as of 2002) I seem to remember it. No recollection of the oil plant. It was Willmar windows until Jeld-Wen bought it.

That's also likely the same pavement that's there now because it's horrendous.

East St Paul was to be chock full of oil plants. Gasoline Alley they called it. But the locals put a atop to it and only the Esso plant was built. Not sure if this was a relic of those times as well.

[trueviking]

twitter thread you might enjoy.

https://twitter.com/brent_bellamy/st...726156292?s=20

the Winnipeg Amphitheatre was actually located on the Great West Life parking lot on the east side of colony...the half that is closest to Osborne. Pretty amazing that they demolished two entire blocks of houses (Colony and Balmoral) to make the west half of the parking lot.

[esquire]

That is a brilliant twitter thread... thank you for sharing that. I've never seen the history of Winnipeg's arenas set out like that before.

[davequanbury]

Originally Posted by trueviking

twitter thread you might enjoy.

https://twitter.com/brent_bellamy/st...726156292?s=20

the Winnipeg Amphitheatre was actually located on the Great West Life parking lot on the east side of colony...the half that is closest to Osborne. Pretty amazing that they demolished two entire blocks of houses (Colony and Balmoral) to make the west half of the parking lot.

Here is a map I put together for a university project. Shows the original location of the sports facilities as well as the houses that were torn down. After making it, I realized that they punched Mostyn place through to Balmoral and demolished Whitehall Ave.

[esquire]

Looking back on it, the arena and curling club are about what I'd have expected to see for Winnipeg circa 1910. But the stadium was surprisingly small... according to Wikipedia, Osborne Stadium opened in 1932 (although I'm not sure how accurate that is) and in pictures, it looks very cramped and ramshackle.

Compare it to Memorial Stadium down the road in Grand Forks, which was basically a small town at that time... theirs had nearly double the seating capacity and was much more impressive looking.

Memorial Stadium:


It's strange to me that the main stadium right in the middle of a major Canadian downtown area was so minimal... it didn't even have room for a regulation football field. It looks like something you might have expected to see in a place like Brandon.

[cllew]

Originally Posted by bomberjet

Neat. Thanks for sharing!

The brick building on the right is still there and is an apartment building. Church is still there of course. Pretty sure the timber yard was still there in the 90's. ( Edit: google shows trees there as of 2002) I seem to remember it. No recollection of the oil plant. It was Willmar windows until Jeld-Wen bought it.

That's also likely the same pavement that's there now because it's horrendous.

East St Paul was to be chock full of oil plants. Gasoline Alley they called it. But the locals put a atop to it and only the Esso plant was built. Not sure if this was a relic of those times as well.

the land on the north side of Munroe sat for a long while some of it I believe due to the bankruptcy of the beaver board company and some due to the land being contaminated.

East St Paul was suppose to have a Texaco refinery to the east of the Imperial Esso one but as you said the locals put a stop to that.

[trueviking]

Originally Posted by esquire

Looking back on it, the arena and curling club are about what I'd have expected to see for Winnipeg circa 1910. But the stadium was surprisingly small... according to Wikipedia, Osborne Stadium opened in 1932 (although I'm not sure how accurate that is) and in pictures, it looks very cramped and ramshackle.

Compare it to Memorial Stadium down the road in Grand Forks, which was basically a small town at that time... theirs had nearly double the seating capacity and was much more impressive looking.

It's strange to me that the main stadium right in the middle of a major Canadian downtown area was so minimal... it didn't even have room for a regulation football field. It looks like something you might have expected to see in a place like Brandon.

I read in an old paper that it only had between 4 and 5,000 seats.

[trueviking]

@dave. That is awesome. Thank you. I’d love to see what the empty side of Balmoral looked like.

I wonder why they left that one house.

[rivercity]

^If you're talking about the Milner House, it was independently owned until the 90s, and then had been converted to commercial before GWL bought it. Its LEED Platinum since being converted and fully renovated into the day care. This article by Prairie Architects talks about the history and the extensive renos.

[trueviking]

I assume they were all privately owned at one point. Maybe they didn’t want to sell. Amazing that they bought 33 houses and a good sized apartment building to make a parking lot.

[rivercity]

Fair point. Maybe these parking lots will be the site of the next BellMTS place....

[peg]

That apartment block at Broadway and Colony (Waldron Courts) looks like it was quite handsome looking, a shame it was lost for parking and that triangular building.