With 667,000 inhabitants,
WINNIPEG
accounts for roughly two-thirds of
the population of Manitoba, and lies
at the geographic centre of the
country, sandwiched between the
American frontier to the south and
the infertile Canadian Shield to the
north and east. The city has been
the gateway to the prairies since
1873, and became the transit point
for much of the country's
transcontinental traffic when the
railroad arrived twelve years later.
From the very beginning, Winnipeg
was described as the city where
"the West began", and its
polyglot population, drawn from
almost every country in Europe, was
attracted by the promise of the
fertile soils to the west. But this
was no classless pioneer town: as
early as the 1880s the city had
developed a clear pattern of
residential segregation, with leafy
prosperous suburbs to the south,
along the Assiniboine River, while
to the north lay "Shanty
Town". The long-term effects of
this division have proved hard to
erase, and today the dispossessed
still gather round the cheap dorms
just to the north of the business
district, a sad rather than
dangerous corner near the main
intersection at Portage Avenue and
Main Street. Winnipeg's skid row is
only a tiny part of the downtown
area, but its reputation has
hampered recent attempts to
reinvigorate the city centre as a
whole: successive administrations in
the last twenty years have
refurbished warehouses and built
walkways along the Red and
Assiniboine rivers, but the new
downtown apartment blocks remain
hard to sell, and most people stick
resolutely to the suburbs.
That apart, Winnipeg makes for an
enjoyable stopover, and all of the
main attractions are within easy
walking distance of each other. The Manitoba
Museum of Man and Nature has
excellent displays on the history of
the province and its various
geographic areas; the Exchange
District , recently declared a
National Historic Site, features
some good examples of Canada's early
twentieth-century architecture; the Winnipeg
Art Gallery has the world's
largest collection of Inuit art;
and, just across the Red River, the
suburb of St Boniface has a
delightful museum situated in the
house and chapel of the Grey Nuns,
who arrived here by canoe from Montréal
in 1844. Winnipeg is also noted for
the excellence and diversity of its restaurants
, while its flourishing
performing-arts scene features
everything from ballet and classical
music through to C&W and jazz.
Finally, the city makes a useful
base for exploring the area's
attractions, the most popular of
which - chiefly Lower Fort Garry
- are on the banks of the Red River
as it twists its way north to Lake
Winnipeg, 60km away. On the lake
itself, Grand Beach Park has
the province's finest stretches of
sandy beach, just two-hours' drive
from the city center.
