New life being breathed into Winnipeg Hotel, oldest building in city's downtown
CBC
The oldest building in downtown Winnipeg could get a new lease on life, provided its bones are still strong.
Work has begun on a structural inspection of the Winnipeg Hotel, with heritage lovers tightly crossing their fingers it can be restored to a former glory and reopened as a boutique hotel.
"Absolutely elated," said Cindy Tugwell, executive director of Heritage Winnipeg. "The transformation, if that takes place, from what it is now to what it could be, I think it would be forever changing of Main Street."
Built in 1873, the two-storey structure at 214 Main St. was first called the Garry Saloon, likely named after the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Garry, from which the land had been purchased.
It has been there to witness the arrival of the railroads and electricity, the evolution of roads from dirt to asphalt and the population and economic booms — and busts — that marked the city's growth. In fact, it even witnessed the 1873 incorporation of the city, predating that by a few months.
"It was really the hotels on Main Street that had this city come alive and the history that can be told from that building," Tugwell said.
In September 1892 it was the site of the reorganization meeting of the 90th Battalion rugby football club into the Osborne Football Club, which became the founding member of the Manitoba Rugby Football Union, a forerunner to the CFL, according to local history blogger Christian Cassidy.
Its history is embedded in Winnipeg's DNA but a few years ago, the hotel was itself nearly history.
It saw numerous renovations and owners through the years and a change in its fortunes. Features like the wrought iron balcony above the main entrance were removed, the street-level picture windows replaced with glass blocks and the brick frontage covered in plywood and tiles.
Over the past several decades its care was neglected and it gained a seedier reputation, with the owner and nine women being arrested in the mid-1980s for running a bawdy house.
Tugwell described it as "an eyesore that everybody just hurries to walk by or drives by or feels unsafe around."
More recently, it continued to function as a hotel occupied primarily by long-term residents in need of housing. Similarly, the nearby Macdonald and Fortune blocks faced a similar decline and bleak future.
The owners of all the properties were approached in 2015 by developers who wanted to tear the buildings down to make way for a new 150-room extended-stay hotel. The owners agreed to the deal but the city had been contemplating adding the buildings to the historical resources list, thereby preventing them from being torn down.
Proponents of demolishing them estimated the cost of saving the Macdonald and Fortune blocks alone would exceed $17 million. They tried to convince the city that no one would spend that.
P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch is looking for 50 substitute bus drivers, and it'll be recruiting at three job fairs on Saturday, June 8. The job fairs are located at the Atlantic Superstore in Montague, Royalty Crossing in Charlottetown, and the bus parking lot of Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside. All three run from 9 a.m. until noon. Dave Gillis, the director of transportation and risk management for the Public Schools Branch, said the number of substitute drivers they're hiring isn't unusual. "We are always looking for more. Our drivers tend to have an older demographic," he said.