Winnipeg then and now: See how city’s appearance has changed over 150 years
The year Winnipeg became a city, it was marked by a handful of clapboard buildings and wood-plank sidewalks that flanked mud roads.
When soaked by prairie rains, the roads morphed into a thick sludge that ravaged cart wheels and footwear.
Persistent rains carved gullies that drained into the Red and Assiniboine rivers, but also several creeks and coulees that no longer exist —including one that scuttled the first city hall.
When the Manitoba Legislature passed the act that officially made Winnipeg a city on Nov. 8, 1873, there were just 1,869 residents.
Few buildings reached as high as three storeys, leaving a vast landscape stretching unremittingly to where the horizon curved with the earth.
The new city looked more like the movie set for a Hollywood western than an urban centre.
The mud roads are why Portage Avenue and Main Street are so expansive today — carts pulled by animals had to continually bypass deep ruts, constantly widening the paths.
“That’s wild, man. That’s wild,” said pedestrian Emilio McLennon, when shown an 1874 image of Winnipeg while standing on the same spot in March 2024.
“Things have changed, man. Crazy.”
Winnipeg’s first civic election was held Jan. 5, 1874, establishing the inaugural city council.
Mayor Francis Evans Cornish and 12 councillors (called aldermen at the time) held their first meeting later that month, which is why the city has historically commemorated 1874 as its anniversary year.
That founding crew of councillors oversaw a city whose footprint was just five square kilometres.
The southern and eastern boundaries were marked by the Red and Assiniboine rivers. The western edge was Maryland Street, and Burrows Avenue defined the northern limit.
“If you could somehow bring somebody back from that time period to now, and standing on this spot, they would see almost nothing that they recognized,” Gordon Goldsborough, head researcher of the Manitoba Historical Society, said while standing on Main Street, midway between two spots cited as birthplaces of Winnipeg — Upper Fort Garry and the intersection of Portage and Main.
“They might see in the background here the gate of Upper Fort Garry, and that’s pretty much it. Nothing else would be the same. In that time, in the 150 years, everything has been built up.”
The stone and wood gate is a remnant of the vast Hudson’s Bay Company complex that once stretched across Main before it was gradually demolished between 1881 and 1888.
On July 1, 1886, the first CPR train arrived in the city, igniting the grain industry that made Winnipeg the wheat king and “Gateway to the West.”
Soon came speculators and many new residents. The city’s population exploded and by 1911 it was the third-largest in Canada, with 136,035 people.
The growth came at a heavy cost to some, though.
The area around The Forks was a meeting place for Indigenous people for thousands of years before European settlers arrived, claimed it as their own and displaced the First Nations and Métis people.
As Winnipeg became the fastest growing city in North America, many of the frontier structures were razed and the land reallocated for new development.
“That’s why I say somebody from that time [1874] would be hard-pressed to say they were even in Winnipeg now,” said Goldsborough, whose organization was founded in 1879, shortly after the city.
“They would be amazed at all the utility poles and the pavement and the sidewalks and the tall buildings. Nothing would seem familiar.”
That goes for traffic, too. A cluster of people in horse-drawn wagons was congestion in the 1870s. Still, there would have been some road noise, particularly from Red River carts, Goldsborough said.
“Oh heck, yeah. They didn’t use any grease in the bearings and so there would have been this loud screeching noise as they went down the street, but that would be about it,” he said, speaking above the clangour of engines and brakes on Main Street.
“You’d hear probably the occasional sound of animals, maybe people yelling and things. But it would have been a much quieter place than it is today.”
The first motorized car didn’t arrive in Winnipeg until 1901, as the population surpassed 52,000. It took another decade for the number of automobiles to overtake wagons.
As of 2021, the latest census data available, Winnipeg’s population was just shy of 750,000, and the city covered 462 square kilometres.
There are also more than 600,000 vehicles registered in the city now, according to Manitoba Public Insurance.
“It’s nice to look back and see what it used to look like,” said Amber Berg, a pedestrian on Main near city hall, when shown old photos of the city. “You can almost feel it, standing here,” she said.
“Oh my gosh, isn’t that unreal? “added Katie Desilets. “It looks almost residential.”
Evidence of Winnipeg’s earliest days hasn’t totally vanished.
In addition to the Fort Garry gate, the city boasts one of the country’s most dense collections of brick heritage buildings in the Exchange District national historic site.
“But most of it is from a later period,” said Goldsborough.
Though “we always look at it as sort of the most historic part of the city,” most Exchange District buildings date from the 1880s onwards, he said.
“There was a fire a few years back and it burned pretty much the very last building dating from the 1870s.”
The reason that area remains intact is largely due to two global events in the summer of 1914 — the start of the First World War and the opening of the Panama Canal.
Both put a squeeze on the local economy, with the new Central American shipping route making it more commercially feasible to ship goods by boat instead of rail and ending Winnipeg’s dominance as a transportation hub.
The city slipped into a recession and has never experienced growth like the pre-war period.
The biggest population jump in the past 100 years happened in 1971, when Winnipeg amalgamated with 11 surrounding municipalities, growing from 246,000 people to 560,000.
“In 100 years we went from horse and buggy to this,” said Natty Ayalew, looking at old photos at the corner of Portage and Main.
“And now the next 100 years, can you imagine what that’s gonna be? That’s gonna be nuts, too.”
In 1873, Winnipeg looked more like the movie set for a Hollywood western than an urban centre. Have a look, through archival images, at how it has changed in the 150 years since it became a city.
