by Serena Keshavjee
University of Winnipeg
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Sheila Grover and Greg Thomas, The Forks: A Meeting Place Transformed. Winnipeg: Winnipeg Architecture Foundation, 2016, 110 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9916865-3-7, $25.00 (paperback)
The Forks: A Meeting Place Transformed, researched and written by historians Sheila Grover and Greg Thomas, is one of ten architectural guide books commissioned and published by the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation (WAF), under the direction of Susan Algie. The mandate of WAF is to research, publish, and promote Winnipeg’s high quality and well preserved built environment from the 19th to the 21st centuries. This series of architectural booklets are consistently well researched and easy to read. Published in a handy, portable format, some of them are intended as self-guided tours, containing pertinent information on individual buildings. With original research carried out by specially appointed local historians and architectural spe-cialists, these books, in some cases, are the only published information on aspects of Winnipeg’s architecture.
The successful WAF format is continued with The Forks: A Meeting Place Transformed, with its broad introductory essay in three chapters contextualizing the buildings from historical, urban planning, and preservationist points of view. Grover and Thomas focus on one of Winnipeg’s most popular attractions: the site around the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, the symbolic centre of Winnipeg, which itself is at the geographical centre of the continent. Archaeological digs from the last thirty years have added information to our knowledge about the flow of people in and out of these watersheds. Indigenous peoples have been traveling to the Forks from far distances for about 6000 years. Pottery shards from 2000 years ago have been excavated, suggesting patterns of increasing settlement (pp. 7–8). Chapters 1 and 2 offer a condensed retelling of the history of Winnipeg in Treaty One Territory. Winnipeg’s natural geographic centrality was expanded with the arrival of the railroad, which facilitated the development and growth of the settler city as a transportation hub by the early 20th century.
Chapter 3 is the most significant part of the historical essay, with original research outlining the development of the Forks in the 1980s and ‘90s, and especially the efforts to regenerate the area called the Eastern Yards. By the late 1960s, the creation of the Symington Rail Yards and the growing trend to move freight by air and truck meant that the Eastern Yards (which had long blocked citizens from this historical meeting place) were under-utilized if not “obsolete” (p.28). The construction of the Floodway secured the site, and a few Winnipeggers, noting the success of North American urban renewal schemes to reclaim industrial neighbourhoods, set their sights on the Eastern Yards. This chapter lays out the many proposals and squabbles over this valuable land, as well as the sustained efforts over many years by key individuals and institutions to use this land for recreational purposes.
One of the most important contributions of this chapter are the insights from the authors, who were working for Parks Canada during this period or doing research for the city, and who lived through these debates. In 1973 Parks Canada opened a regional office in Winnipeg, and in 1974 the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada designated The Forks a national historic site, boosting local efforts (p. 29). The interest in urban parks was reinforced by a shift in attitude by the federal government toward cities, leading to the creation in 1971 of the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs and in 1972 the Byways and Special Places Initiative to encourage tourism and recreation. Specific to Winnipeg was the creation of the Core Area Initiative in 1981, with Federal Minister Lloyd Axworthy playing a longstanding and crucial role in Winnipeg’s urban renewal.
Part 2 of the book is a self-guided architectural tour of thirty-one sites and structures, each given a substantial entry about its original use and current adaptation and highlighting the preservationist principles that saved these modest buildings. I learned that the present Children’s Museum was once the railway engine repair shop; that the Johnston Terminal, with its present-day shops and restaurants, was once a cartage and cold storage warehouse; and that the present Forks Market was originally built as horse stables—horse power being a critical element of the freight moving business. Though transformed to the hub of the Forks today, these were originally a modest set of buildings and part of the larger freight yards design by the famous New York City firm, Warren and Wetmore Architects.
Not coincidently, the Forks and its extended area house some of the most spectacular buildings in Winnipeg, including the celebrated Union Station, also by Warren and Wetmore; the Esplanade Riel suspension bridge by Gaboury, Prefontaine, Perry; the Canadian Museum of Human Rights by Antoine Predock; and the recently designated Provincial Heritage Park at Upper Fort Garry, with transformations by Cohlmeyer Architects and HTFC. These are all discussed in the guide section of the book, but also in Chapter 3 in a section on new initiatives. Also notable in The Forks: A Meeting Place Transformed is that the contributions of landscape architects—including HTFC, Cynthia Cohlmeyer, Scatliff, Miller and Murray—are acknowledged, which is especially appropriate because the landscaping of the Forks contributes very significantly to its success. I was also pleased to see recent popular initiatives such as the winter warming huts and the skateboard park celebrated in the book.
The Winnipeg Architecture Foundation has more books planned, one a history of the use of locally quarried Tyndall Stone, and as I look forward to that project, it occurs to me that we are very lucky to have this organization in Winnipeg.
We thank Clara Bachmann for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
We thank S. Goldsborough for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
Page revised: 31 March 2021
