17 hours ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Opening of intersection proof that ‘Peg can change
Opinion
Only in Winnipeg could something so ordinary — so pedestrian — as crossing the street become a historical event witnessed by hundreds.
And yet, on Friday morning, that's exactly what happened.
The day many Winnipeggers have been waiting — and hoping, advocating and voting — for had arrived: the intersection of Portage Avenue and Main Street, the Crossroads of Canada, the iconic, debated, maligned, politicized, romanticized heart of our city, was finally opened back up to pedestrians for the first time since its closure in 1979.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
Several hundred members of the public and media gather for speeches for the official opening of the pedestrian crosswalks at the historic intersection of Portage Avenue and Main Street in Winnipeg.
I was born in 1985, so for longer than I've been alive, Portage and Main has been for cars, not people. Our most famous intersection became our most infamous — for its concrete, bunker-like barricades, for the almost comically convoluted way one had to get across it. For too long, the heart of our city was a hard, closed, inaccessible thing.
And then, on a gorgeous morning in June, it opened — both ceremoniously and unceremoniously.
Hours before the 'official' opening at 10:30 a.m. — before Mayor Scott Gillingham crossed Main Street to Randy Bachman's Portage and Main (the slow version) — when the pedestrian signals were still covered and the temporary barricades were still in place, people were, in fact, crossing Portage and Main.
As if they've been doing it every morning. As if it were any morning.
Office workers carrying takeout cups of coffee unknowingly made history by being among the first to traverse the freshly painted zebra crossings. A crew of construction workers in their neon safety vests crossed it — Abbey Road-style — to sweep away the remaining construction debris.
It wasn't long before a large crowd formed to hear the mayor speak, filled with Winnipeggers eager to be part of their city's history. So large, in fact, it threatened to spill onto the streets and people had to be reminded to move away from the road.
And then, there they were, without fanfare: walk symbols, illuminated, on Portage and Main. A thing like that. Every day and historic. Ordinary and extraordinary. Unremarkable and remarkable.
Under a big blue Prairie sky, reflected in skyscraper glass, we didn't have to imagine a vibrant future for our downtown because, for the first time in a long time, we could actually see a glimpse of it.
I suppose, technically, Portage and Main is just an intersection. But it's always been more than that — even when, for a long while, it felt like even less than that.
Portage and Main has always represented vision and potential and possibility — both realized and unrealized. If historical editorial cartoons are any measure, people were as vociferously opposed to its closure in 1979 as they were to its reopening in 2018.
Witnessing the reopening was a joyful, energizing experience, because Winnipeggers were excited to be in a place that, for so long, they really couldn't be — save for under very specific, usually Jets-related circumstances.
There was applause and good-natured honking, hugs and shoulder-slaps. Business people and babies, dogs and bikes. Walking on Sunshine blaring from a speaker and sirens blaring from emergency vehicles because it's still a city centre, after all.
A woman, positioned in full view of the bank of media cameras, held a bright green sign that simply read 'Finally!!!!'
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Portage and Main is just a starting point. There are other projects and plans that are changing the city. And that's just it: Portage and Main is proof that Winnipeg can, indeed, change.
Under a big blue Prairie sky, reflected in skyscraper glass, we didn't have to imagine a vibrant future for our downtown because, for the first time in a long time, we could actually see a glimpse of it.
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
Mayor Scott Gillingham, along with several city council members and stakeholders, cross Main Street to mark the official opening of the pedestrian crosswalks.
As the festivities wound down and the crowd started to disperse, Portage and Main began its new life as 'just an intersection' that will probably never look that clean again. But Friday showed us what's possible. Look toward any corner and you could see the parties and protests and pop-ups. The people.
We wanted to be able to walk through Portage and Main, that's true. But maybe being there — actually being there — felt so good because now there's a place to be.
Jen ZorattiColumnist
Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen.
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