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Portage and Main: How an iconic intersection shaped Winnipeg's history, politics, and urban life
FINALIST - Manitoba Day Awards, 2026
"For more than a generation, Winnipeg’s famous intersection was hidden behind concrete walls, its significance slowly fading from our collective memory. Just as the physical place is being reintroduced to our city, this timely and compelling book reintroduces us to the people and stories that shaped its legacy." ― Brent Bellamy, Creative Director at Number TEN Architectural Group and columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press
Portage and How an iconic intersection shaped Winnipeg's history, politics, and urban life explores stories of Portage and Main throughout Winnipeg’s history and the complicated relationship between the city’s oldest intersection and culture of the urban environment that grew around it.Fifty years ago, Portage and Main was closed to pedestrians as part of a downtown renewal project. This left an intersection void of pedestrians, and the promised vision of a revitalized city never came to fruition. In 2025, Portage and Main opened to pedestrians once again. With a city struggling to balance the demands of its sprawling suburbs with its need to invest in downtown, the future of this iconic crossroad is in flux once again. Winnipeg historians Alex Judge and Sabrina Janke, hosts of the One Great History podcast, describe how open, closed, or somewhere strange and in-between, the intersection’s history reflects the ideas of what Winnipeg is, could be, and has been. Whatever the case, one thing is Portage and Main is far more than just an intersection.
"For more than a generation, Winnipeg’s famous intersection was hidden behind concrete walls, its significance slowly fading from our collective memory. Just as the physical place is being reintroduced to our city, this timely and compelling book reintroduces us to the people and stories that shaped its legacy." ― Brent Bellamy, Creative Director at Number TEN Architectural Group and columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press
Portage and How an iconic intersection shaped Winnipeg's history, politics, and urban life explores stories of Portage and Main throughout Winnipeg’s history and the complicated relationship between the city’s oldest intersection and culture of the urban environment that grew around it.Fifty years ago, Portage and Main was closed to pedestrians as part of a downtown renewal project. This left an intersection void of pedestrians, and the promised vision of a revitalized city never came to fruition. In 2025, Portage and Main opened to pedestrians once again. With a city struggling to balance the demands of its sprawling suburbs with its need to invest in downtown, the future of this iconic crossroad is in flux once again. Winnipeg historians Alex Judge and Sabrina Janke, hosts of the One Great History podcast, describe how open, closed, or somewhere strange and in-between, the intersection’s history reflects the ideas of what Winnipeg is, could be, and has been. Whatever the case, one thing is Portage and Main is far more than just an intersection.
222 pages, Paperback
Published November 18, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 28, 2026
As a born-and-bred Winnipegger and history buff, I very much looked forward to reading this book when I put it on hold at the Winnipeg Public Library.
I’ve read many books about the history of Winnipeg and the Red River area, and I still learned new stories and facts from this book.
I enjoyed it so much, that after I return it to the library I plan on buying myself a copy.
I’ve read many books about the history of Winnipeg and the Red River area, and I still learned new stories and facts from this book.
I enjoyed it so much, that after I return it to the library I plan on buying myself a copy.
January 12, 2026
A really good overview of the story of the Portage and Main debacle from the start to the finish(haha). For anyone interested in Winnipeg history this book does cover a lot of information on Winnipegs downtown. A few typo’s/ typesetting errors but nothing to affect the enjoyment of the book.
January 2, 2026
A well-researched and generally (intermittently?) engaging read.
A reminder that much of North America's early history has been dictated and determined by the powerful and the wealthy, primarily if not entirely for their own benefit.
They claimed and squabbled over land, inventing specious reasons for their own entitlement while raising arbitrary objections to the ambitions of others.
They erected buildings and monuments to themselves, affixing their names to structures and streets, ensuring their names would be invoked by generations to come. Lost in time: why they did it, how they did it, what social costs they blithely incurred to achieve this posterity.
And yet, as the authors have done well to demonstrate, the will of the people cannot be quashed forever. In the end, Portage and Main is a single intersection in a small North American city, but it has been a potent symbol for the inevitable and unending tension between the individual and the community: who decides what are public spaces, and how they will be used.
The authors are almost too kind to the hypocrisy embedded in this ongoing debate: the same people who will claim a public space to celebrate a local sports team tend to be the first to denounce the use of these same spaces to raise awareness of systemic injustice and historical crimes.
(In the same vein: it is difficult not to find it deeply ironic that self-appointed traditionalists of later generations will also jump to the defense of long-dead profiteers by grafting false ideals and nonsensical aspirations onto them, often for the sake of superficial and lazy purposes such as *not* renaming a street or school.)
This book covers a lot of ground despite its relatively short length.
* The origin of Portage and Main as a commercial locus is covered in depth.
* Somehow, its gradual development and evolution is not always as interesting as one might expect or hope.
* The intersection's role in pivotal events is vividly illustrated, mostly obviously with the 1919 General Strike.
* At least one dogleg (whether or not it is truly the coldest or windiest place in Canada/North America) is amusing but feels like a sidebar to the book's overarching themes.
* The closing of the intersection to pedestrian traffic reads like a slow-motion tragedy. (The late 2025 re-opening could be an unexpected redemption, depending on the outcome of the next mayoral/municipal election.)
A worthwhile read, an object lesson, and an ongoing warning to people who care about their own city, who it serves, but also how it serves.
A reminder that much of North America's early history has been dictated and determined by the powerful and the wealthy, primarily if not entirely for their own benefit.
They claimed and squabbled over land, inventing specious reasons for their own entitlement while raising arbitrary objections to the ambitions of others.
They erected buildings and monuments to themselves, affixing their names to structures and streets, ensuring their names would be invoked by generations to come. Lost in time: why they did it, how they did it, what social costs they blithely incurred to achieve this posterity.
And yet, as the authors have done well to demonstrate, the will of the people cannot be quashed forever. In the end, Portage and Main is a single intersection in a small North American city, but it has been a potent symbol for the inevitable and unending tension between the individual and the community: who decides what are public spaces, and how they will be used.
The authors are almost too kind to the hypocrisy embedded in this ongoing debate: the same people who will claim a public space to celebrate a local sports team tend to be the first to denounce the use of these same spaces to raise awareness of systemic injustice and historical crimes.
(In the same vein: it is difficult not to find it deeply ironic that self-appointed traditionalists of later generations will also jump to the defense of long-dead profiteers by grafting false ideals and nonsensical aspirations onto them, often for the sake of superficial and lazy purposes such as *not* renaming a street or school.)
This book covers a lot of ground despite its relatively short length.
* The origin of Portage and Main as a commercial locus is covered in depth.
* Somehow, its gradual development and evolution is not always as interesting as one might expect or hope.
* The intersection's role in pivotal events is vividly illustrated, mostly obviously with the 1919 General Strike.
* At least one dogleg (whether or not it is truly the coldest or windiest place in Canada/North America) is amusing but feels like a sidebar to the book's overarching themes.
* The closing of the intersection to pedestrian traffic reads like a slow-motion tragedy. (The late 2025 re-opening could be an unexpected redemption, depending on the outcome of the next mayoral/municipal election.)
A worthwhile read, an object lesson, and an ongoing warning to people who care about their own city, who it serves, but also how it serves.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews