Village Squire, 1976-10, Page 25Winnipeg -
a character
all its own
Travel
BY MARY JANE CHARTERS
What kind of city is Winnipeg? It's a city with a character all its
own.
Winnipeg is Canada's largest prairie community, capital of
Manitoba, centre of the country's grain industry. It's a city of
wide, straight streets, modern shopping complexes, a developing
"village" of boutiques, a noted art gallery, theatre and several
museums.
There's a new feeling about the city -- a sense of something
going on.
Winnipeg is populated by a cultural mix. Most residents are
descendants of homesteaders who changed vast tracts of
Canada's west into valuable acreage and liveable towns and
cities.
Manitoba's first great influx of settlers was largely
English-speaking, from other parts of Canada. In 1975 some
French-speaking people who left Quebec to settle in New
England were joined in Manitoba by others from Quebec and a
sprinkling from France.
St. Boniface, once a separate city across the Red River from
Winnipeg, is still an historic French-Canadian community and
the largest centre of French culture in Canada outside Quebec.
Immigration accelerated in 1881 when the Canadian Pacific
Railway reached town. Germans, Scandinavians, Jews,
Ukrainians, Icelanders, Mennonites from Russia, Hungarians, as
well as Scots, Irish, and English, flocked to the city.
Cut off from the mainstream of urban cultural life, Winnipeg
Canadians of Ukrainian Descent form more than 10 per cent of
the population of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Here a group of
Ukrainian -Canadian youngsters perform folk dances in front of
the statue of the Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko. The statue
stands on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislative Building in
downtown Winnipeg. [Canadian Government Office of Tourism
Photo.]
created its own which now includes the Royal Winnipeg Ballet,
an innovative company that has danced all over the world;
Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra; Manitoba Theatre Centre and
the Winnipeg Art Gallery noted for its extensive Eskimo
collection.
Added to all that is an assortment of restaurants -- everything
from The Old Spaghetti Factory to La Vieilla Gare, a French
restaurant in St. Boniface, the Japanese !chi Bin, the Chinese
Shangri-La and the Western Hy's Steak Loft.
Best place to start a tour of the city is at the Legislative
Building, seat of the provincial government. The classic Greek
structure, visible from most parts of the city, is constructed of
Manitoba Tyndall stone -- the same limestone taken to Ottawa for
the Canadian Parliament Buildings.
On top is Golden Boy, a five -ton, 131/2 -foot bronze statue
holding a sheaf of wheat under his left arm and raising a lit torch
in his right hand. He symbolizes "progress and future economic
development". Wheat means money in Winnipeg.
Charles Gardet, the French sculptor who created Golden Boy,
was also responsible for the two massive buffalo in the legislature
foyer. Tours of the building are conducted from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Monday through Friday.
All around the legislative building are well groomed lawns and
gardens dotted with statuary -- Queen Victoria, Scotland's
Robbie Burns, French-Canadian Father of Confederation
Georges -Etienne Cartier, Iceland's man of letters Jon Sigurdson,
VILLAGE SQUIRE/OCTOBER 1976, 23