Winnipeg’s Portage and Main intersection is embedded in the story of Canada — the crossroads of the country and one of its windiest corners — and it’s held that lore despite being inaccessible to pedestrians for 46 years.
But all that changes today.
The barricades that forced pedestrians below ground and into a labyrinth of tunnels to get to the other side of the street have been torn down.
The shrouds over the walk signals are set to be removed after morning rush hour with the first “official” crossing at 10:30 a.m., said a city spokesperson. People have unofficially used it since crossing lines were painted last weekend.
So how did we finally get to this point, after years of public opposition to reopening?
Well, kind of like how the intersection started in the first place — against the odds.
For decades, everything in the area that’s now central Winnipeg was focused around Hudson’s Bay Company’s Upper Fort Garry near the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers.
“That was the centre of government. It was the centre of commerce. It was the centre of the centre of settlement,” said Gordon Goldsborough, head researcher of the Manitoba Historical Society.
Travellers from the west carved deep ruts into the prairie as they followed the Assiniboine to the fort. Near there, the trail crossed the main north-south Main Road that ran between the fort and the HBC’s Lower Fort Garry 30 kilometres north on the Red.
That was the main intersection closest to the fort, considered the birthplace of Winnipeg.
But a decision by Henry McKenney changed everything.
McKenney opened the city’s first hotel in an old building between Upper Fort Garry and Fort Douglas, which was in present-day Point Douglas. The Royal Hotel was between today’s McDermot and Bannatyne avenues.
It was so popular, a new branch of the east-west Portage trail emerged, heading to the Royal Hotel, crossing Main about a kilometre north of Upper Fort Garry.
Recognizing the growing importance of that junction, McKenney sold the hotel and bought land at the northwest corner of the Main and Portage trails, where he opened a general store in 1862.
He faced ridicule for the decision, as the site was considered undesirable — low lying, muddy and marshy, far from the populations around the forts and a half-kilometre from the river.
With the hotel closed, there were no other businesses along the Main Road between Upper Fort Garry and Point Douglas.
“At first it seemed just nuts, but in time, of course, it proved really fortunate,” Goldsborough said. “Within a few years, everybody realized the wisdom of that [move].”
The store became a massive success and others soon followed. By 1869, a total of 33 buildings clustered around the corner.
When the intersection was closed to pedestrian traffic in 1979, Winnipeg’s core was in the midst of several decades of decline in economic growth, stagnant development and a fading retail environment.
Suburban growth was drawing homeowners and shopping development from downtown.
There was a sense that something major had to happen, and in the mid-1970s, the Trizec Corporation made a pitch the city couldn’t refuse, said Jino Distasio, professor of urban geography at the University of Winnipeg.
Trizec promised to build two office towers and a hotel on the southwest corner of Portage and Main, along with an underground retail space that would double as a heated, sheltered crossing for pedestrians, saving them from Winnipeg’s winter winds.
It appealed not only on the development front but also the planning one.
The city, since the 1960s, had been studying its traffic movements and concluded that pedestrians and vehicles should no longer mix at that corner, according to the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation.
The deal was struck with Trizec in 1976 and construction started the following year.
The agreement included barricading the corner for 40 years once the project was complete in 1979, redirecting pedestrians into the Trizec-owned subterranean mall.
The barricades never completely stopped people from stepping foot in the intersection.
It’s been a gathering place for events both celebratory and solemn — including sports signings and championships, round dances for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and rallies to support a landfill search for the bodies of murdered Indigenous women.
Then-mayor Glen Murray held a design competition in 2004 in an effort to build support to reopen Portage and Main, but property owners around the intersection were not interested.
His successor, Sam Katz, balked at the idea, which then fell off the public radar until 2014, when Katz chose not to seek re-election.
That’s when mayoral hopeful Brian Bowman pledged to reopen the corner by 2019, if elected.
He was.
A year later, Bowman had a city committee direct administration to examine the feasibility of removing the walls. But a Probe Research poll suggested there was little support — 53 per cent of respondents opposed the idea.
Voices from both the for and against camps grew louder over the next two years, as the matter moved through the complexities involved — consulting property owners and studying traffic impacts and infrastructure needs.
The issue came to a head as the next civic election approached, prompting the addition of a plebiscite to the 2018 ballot.
A Vote Open campaign pushed the “Yes” vote, but another Probe poll showed 67 per cent of Winnipeggers opposed it, citing gridlock and longer commutes as the biggest roadblock, so to speak.
Unsurprisingly, 65 per cent of the votes in the plebiscite said “No,” and a re-elected Bowman said he would honour the result.
It all makes Distasio shake his head.
“It’s confounding. What’s the big deal if this one extra intersection opened or closed in relation to the entirety of the complex transportation system and network?” he said. Portage and Main isn’t even the city’s busiest traffic crossing.
“It’s no different than any other intersection you would find in any other city globally, where people cross the street.”
In spite of public opinion, Portage and Main had other plans, once again.
Decades of wear and tear led to the physical deterioration of barricades, sidewalks, staircases, entrances and other physical features both above and below the surface.
Access to the underground had also been criticized as too difficult for those with mobility issues and generally unsafe with its dark corners.
Even in 2018, when the plebiscite happened, it was publicly known that millions of dollars worth of repairs to the intersection were required.
But more surprises were to come.
In February 2024 — 45 years after the intersection was closed — council learned the bill to fix the issues plaguing the corner would be $73 million and create four to five years of traffic delays.
The membrane protecting the underground pedestrian concourse needed replacement, which also meant millions of dollars in related repairs. A new membrane would have a service life of approximately 40 years, meaning the work would need to be repeated in the future.
“It’s time to make the common-sense decision,” Mayor Scott Gillingham said at the time, leading a motion to reopen the intersection at much less expense, in the $20-million to $50-million range. Gillingham had not supported reopening in 2018.
In March 2024, without going to the public this time, council voted 11-3 to do it.
“I really think the barriers and the bunkers are just a leftover of a machine-car-driven era that wanted to see us be able to speed through downtown en route to burgeoning suburbs. I think we’ve come a long way to realize … this isn’t going to be much of anything other than just simply the right thing to do at the right time,” Distasio said.
“I really think it’s going to be the most interesting non-event event in Winnipeg’s downtown history.”
The cost to redo the intersection for pedestrians — remove barricades, redesign crossings and curbing and install lights — was just under $17 million, a November report said.
The cost to decommission the circus — the rounded concourse that connects the four corners of the intersection — remains to be determined.
Portage and Main to reopen to pedestrians Friday morning
