On the way to Wehwehneh: What it takes to transform downtown Winnipeg's former Bay

There were only three floors open to the public when the former Bay department store in downtown Winnipeg was shuttered for good in November 2020.

The Hudson's Bay Company's Manitoba flagship had been withering for decades, floor closure after floor closure, by the time the COVID-19 pandemic delivered the final death blow.

Above the main floor elevators once stood a broad mural, The Pioneer at Fort Garry, 1861, depicting interactions between settlers and Indigenous people along the banks of the Assiniboine River. The bucolic and somewhat problematic scene was squirrelled away to the Manitoba Museum in 2014.

Now, the elevators themselves are slated to go, along with the Bay's escalators, a few thousand tonnes of steel and concrete, and several centuries of historical baggage at the heart of the former Bay, in order to make way for a six-storey atrium.

Demolition is set to begin this summer to make room for the indoor open space, which is slated to be the central feature of Wehwehneh Bahgahkinahgohn, a $130-million redevelopment expected to open in phases starting in 2026, when the former Bay building turns 100.

"It'll be a place that people love to be. A place for Indigenous peoples. It's their home, and it's a place they can feel welcome," said Grand Chief Jerry Daniels of the Southern Chiefs' Organization during a tour of the former Bay building on Friday.

A year ago this month, the Hudson's Bay Company — which facilitated the colonization of Western Canada more than 350 years ago — engaged in a ceremonial transfer of its 655,000-square-foot building at the corner of Portage Avenue and Memorial Boulevard to the SCO, which represents 34 Anishinaabe and Dakota communities in Manitoba.

The formal transfer of title, however, was not completed until this March. The Southern Chiefs' Organization has now spent six weeks poking around every corner of the building as it completes the designs for a reconstruction project that will take at least four years.

The plans include 300 affordable housing units, toward the south side of the building on floors three through six, for elders and university students who are members of southern First Nations.

A Hudson's Bay Co. museum is slated for the main floor. Two restaurants are planned, including a reopened Paddlewheel that may be moved from its former perch on the sixth floor to the second floor, near the entrance to the skywalk that crosses to Portage Place, Daniels said.

There are also plans for an art gallery, office space for Indigenous entrepreneurs, a health centre, a child-care facility, a seniors' centre, a new seat of government for the SCO and a memorial for residential school victims and survivors.

Precisely where all the components go on the first two floors remains in flux, said Daniels, as his organization prepares to select construction companies qualified to engage in the often difficult job of adapting an old building for new uses.

A request for proposals will be issued qualified firms in May.

"You only get one crack at building a building of this magnitude and as significant as the Hudson's Bay building, and we need to do it right," Daniels said.