The Forks in Winnipeg

Some people recently asked: John, why are you so angry at The Forks? This is likely in regards to my comments about Portage Place.

The truth is that I love The Forks. I go there often enough for dinners, entertainment, festivals and the like. But that is true for North Portage for me as well. Many a Jazz Fest performance just off Central Park.

Above picture from 1956 when CNR was very much a working railway with operations in the East yards downtown. Note the amount of cars parked on site. Today a good portion of the old yards is still surface parking as noted by the picture below from 2014. The parking lot has actually gotten bigger.

The CN East Yards at the The Forks had its start in 1888 when Winnipeggers began to tire of the powerful Canadian Pacific Railway controlling everything. Eventually, the province went into businesses with Northern Pacific & Manitoba Railway that had a line down to Emerson at the border and a cross line from Morris to Brandon. Railway building were built on empty Hudson's Bay Company lands near Water Street and stretched into what comprises what became the East Yards,

The new railway built the Manitoba Hotel along Main Street that was one of the grandest in the land in 1890.

The above picture is 1897 and the site if where the present Federal Building stands. Alas, the railway was losing money and the posh hotel burned down in 1899. However, the land, buildings and rolling stock were of such value that everything was sold to the Northern Railway which took control and built an extension of the line to Port Arthur (Thunder Bay) with provincial assistance.

By 1918, shorter non-national lines were hard pressed to keep up. The Panama Canal was also to change how things got to the west coast. And World War I took its toll on everyone. Canadian National Railway integrated everything into their nation-wide system and the East Yards became the first of a their expansion into Winnipeg. Fort Rouge Yards, Symington Yards and Tuxedo Yards all followed.

Symington was built in 1962 and this was the beginning of the end for East Yards as it was used after for freight storage and passengers. This was still a considerable amount of business but most investment went into Transcona.

The picture above in 1970s shows an active railyard and it was. However, railways began to reduce how many people were working. Intermodal was just starting to make inroads allowing railways to move cargo and do quick seaport and truck loading which required far few people loading boxcars.

The 1970s was still huge in terms of shipping grain so a lot of traffic headed out in all directions. But when you looked at the downtown as a whole, it looked like a one horse town with the Richardsons sitting at the top at Portage and Main as the picture from 1970 shows below.

Winnipeg's growth was slower than some of our western provincial counterparts but it wasn't completely dead. It was slow and steady and the one horse town became more diversified if not more spread out. That spreading out meant that the Symington Yards in Transcona became more important.

I have written a number of times that 1980 was Winnipeg's worst year economically. The Winnipeg General Strike was a body blow politically and economically in 1919 but the beginning of the 1980s was crushing for Winnipeg has the recession hit very hard and structural changes in the economy had businesses shutting down or moving.

By 1982 The East Yards were shut down and the discussion of what was to come next began. In truth there were fires all over the city, especially in the downtown. Things were deteriorating fast. Thankfully, an activist federal government was amenable to a tri-partite agreement called the Core Area Initiative. From that sprang North Portage Development Corporation and Forks Development Corporation. Picture below is 1984 and then rails are being pulled out of the site.

Since 1994 the Forks has used parkade money to fund its operations and expansion, The sale itself will put an additional $47 million into The Forks. The nearly $75 million already has helped fund massive building in The Forks while keeping free parking till very recently. The additional money will probably go a long way to getting the last surface parking lots developed although my concern is they will hold off as they use money earned from the lot to build up a reserve.

Meanwhile the talk in Portage Place will get a $300 million investment following its purchase. That may be but it only part of the North Portage mandate.

The Forks is likely going to continue to be a success but it seems the future of where it goes once the final surface parking lots are developed will have to be analyzed. Certainly some money could be used for debt payment and maintenance as well as programming. However, one look at the picture above from 2014 shows a lot of surface parking lots. Will they remain so for additional decades?

And what of North Portage? Beyond Portage Place there is Central Park and quite a lot of housing and public housing. What supports there? Is the mandate to support it over? Has it been over for a while?

I love The Forks and the years of it being an industrial yard are gone. We have been very protective its growth since 1989 and most have been pleased with the result. Think there is agreement that they last few areas should be carefully assessed for their fit with that area.

At the same time legitimate questions have to be asked about how the rest of the downtown is faring. The drug crisis make us assess our response to security as well as prosperity. The Forks is not an oasis surrounded by desert. The long term success of it requires the rest of the downtown does not fail.

One of the reasons The Forks has been successful is that we have been slow and methodical about getting it right. I'd hate to see continued hasty moves with deadlines we haven't seen before.