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The corner of Portage and Main in Winnipeg, Manitoba, known colloquially across Canada's as the nation's coldest intersection and the longitudinal centre of Canada, was once the scene of a bustling urban chaos not dissimilar to that found in Chicago or New York. Thanks in large part to the highly unusual simultaneous mixture of streetcars, trolley buses, and diesel buses, in addition to the usual assortment of automobiles and pedestrians that crowded Winnipeg's main arteries during the first few decades of the twentieth century, downtown Winnipeg was once a vibrant hive of activity. This edition of Once Upon a Tram will explore Winnipeg's fascinating 70-year history of street rail, one which saw every sort of transportation fathomable, survived the most violent labour riot in the nation's history, and even endured a full-scale mock Nazi invasion at the height of the Second World War.
Just one year after the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway to Winnipeg in 1881, Torontonian ex-pat Albert W. Austin anticipated the need for public transportation in the soon-to-be Prairie boomtown, and founded the Winnipeg Street Railway Company in 1882. Service began with a single horse-car-driven route along Main Street, which operated between the Upper Fort Gary site and new City Hall at William Avenue.
Electrification followed nearly a decade later, when the Winnipeg Street Railway Company began running its first electric streetcar along River Avenue in 1891. In 1892, the rivalling Winnipeg Electric Street Railway incorporated and began its own electric streetcar service in the city, trumping the efforts of Austin's Winnipeg Street Railway. The result was a temporary dual system of tracks running down Main Street: one for horse-cars, the other for the new electric streetcars. Thus began Winnipeg's more than half century of pioneering transit experimentation, an experience that would see rival technologies overlapping on city streets in a way virtually unheard of at the time.
By 1904, the Winnipeg Electric Railway had solidified its transit monopoly in the city. It merged with the Winnipeg General Power Company in that same year, becoming the Winnipeg Electric Railway Company. Over the next few years, the newly minted Winnipeg Electric Railway Company entered into a period of mass expansion, adding several kilometres of new track and an assortment of new routes to its downtown network, and eventually purchasing the Suburban Rapid Transit Company, along with the The Winnipeg, Selkirk, and Lake Winnipeg Railway Company in 1906, thus adding the ability to link suburban commuters directly to its own urban network and rail system.
Visible in the map above, an extensive street rail network already existed in Winnipeg by 1910. It expanded over the next few years to eventually include just over 100 kilometres of urban and interurban rail crisscrossing the city and surrounding areas, making Winnipeg's streetcar network easily equal to, if not more expansive than, those operating in other Canadian cities at the time. The City of Winnipeg was the third-largest city in Canada as reported on both the 1911 and 1921 Censuses. While this status did not last long — Winnipeg's central positioning on the rail corridor was hard hit by the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914, the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, and the arrival of the Great Depression in the 1930s — the city's boom-town heyday during the first decades of the twentieth century allowed for the city to punch far above its weight, building glorious downtown office towers and hotels that were supported by a bustling urban city and transportation network.
During the spring of 1919, more than 30,000 labourers across nearly every industry in Winnipeg, including public transit workers, took to the streets in what is still remembered as the biggest, most violent such event in Canadian history. Angered in large part by the desperately low wages and high levels of unemployment facing the thousands of returning soldiers coming home from Europe following the Armistice of 1918, tens of thousands of veterans and associated demonstrators took to the streets. The result was effectively a mass riot, complete with looting, destruction of public and private property, and general chaos. Seen in the image above, the city's fleet of large, relatively slow-moving streetcars became easy targets for violence, many were tipped over, and at least one was set on fire amid a series of so-called 'Bloody Saturdays,' during the strike's 40-day run from May 15th to June 25th, 1919.
In the years following the Winnipeg General Strike, the city returned to business as usual. The largely streetcar-based transit system was maintained through the 1920s and into the Depression Era, when a small fleet of six electric trolley buses was added to the system in 1938, marking the first such use of this technology in Western Canada. Having rebranded once again in 1924 as the Winnipeg Electric Company, the local transit agency was perhaps the most innovative public transportation system in Canada, after adding motor bus service in 1918 then trolley buses two decades later, all working to supplement the much larger streetcar network.
During the Second World War, the Winnipeg Electric Company hired more than 50 female drivers and maintenance workers. The pioneering women who took these positions did so for both employment purposes and to show support for the men who had volunteered their service overseas. While the sight of female streetcar operators may have been strange at the time, there can be no doubt whatsoever that this visual was more than trumped by what was likely the most outlandish display of public wartime propaganda in Canada's history: the event known as 'IF DAY,' which took place on February 19, 1942, at the height of the war in Europe. Organized as a wartime fundraiser and public awareness campaign, IF DAY was an elaborate demonstration with hyper-realistic combat simulations, including a series of staged firefights between Canadian Forces and Nazi shock troopers costumed in full uniform and equipped with rifles, machine guns, and mortars, along with jeeps, trucks, and tanks — all firing blanks, of course — resulting in the fall of Winnipeg to the Third Reich. In true Nazi fashion, demonstrators proceeded to burn books, smash shop windows, hold the Mayor and other public officials 'hostage,' and parade down a renamed Main Street ("Hitlerstrasse", the city itself was rebranded as "Himmlerstadt"). IF DAY proved a tough day for public transit as well, with staged check-points and random searches throughout the day, as well as the commandeering of several streetcars for the final victory parade along Portage and Main.
After the Second World War and surviving a Nazi invasion, the Winnipeg Electric Company entered into a period of decline. The effects of the postwar boom and the subsequent suburbanization and popularity of the automobile eventually took their toll on ridership, and the public desire to maintain a streetcar fleet waned amid a cityscape that was rapidly becoming less and less pedestrian. In 1953, the Manitoba Government took over the operation of the Winnipeg Electric Company, which became known for a time as the Greater Winnipeg Transit Commission. On September 19, 1955, one last procession of streetcars travelled down Main Street, the lead car decorated with a cartoon sad face on its front, paired with the slogan, "We've had it!," thus signifying the end of Winnipeg's 70+ years of street rail service.
Throughout the 1960s, the Greater Winnipeg Transit Commission was reorganized several times before becoming known as Metro Transit. The system's remaining trolley buses were gradually replaced by diesel buses as the decade wore on, and the last electric trolley bus retired on October 30, 1970, to a similar public fanfare as that witnessed on the last day of streetcar service in 1955. Over the last few years, however, a return to electric buses has occurred along certain routes in Winnipeg, including service to the airport, with battery-powered buses that are able to charge at dedicated charging stations placed at terminal stations and thus operate without the need for overhead catenary wires.
Today, like many other cities of its size, Winnipeg operates a modern fleet of diesel-powered buses that serve its downtown and surrounding suburbs. In 2012, service began on Phase One of Winnipeg's Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service, known as the Southwest Transitway, comprised of 3.6 kilometres of dedicated bus lanes serving Downtown Winnipeg and the University of Winnipeg. While current plans are in the works to expand the city's BRT network, there have been recent rumblings on City Council about what amounts to a proposal to someday convert the existing BRT network to LRT, a move which would include the conversion of all future BRT extensions and additional routing to LRT in an effort to truly revolutionize public transit in the city of 663,615 people. In yet another case of a growing city looking back to its streetcar past, Winnipeg could potentially join other Canadian cities such as London, Hamilton, Ottawa, and many others, in what has become something of a light rail renaissance across the country. While only time will tell if such a proposal will ever get off the ground, the mere fact that it has been raised at all can be viewed as a positive sign of things to come.
Once again, for bonus points, here is a great collection of restored archival footage of downtown Winnipeg, captured from the 1920s to 1960s, including many fascinating glimpses of the hustle and bustle that was once part and parcel of life in Canada's then third-largest city.
SkyriseCities will return soon with a new edition of Once Upon a Tram, which will take an in-depth look at the transit legacy of a city near you.
Feel free to join the conversation in the comments section below. Got an idea for this series? Let us know!
