Gee whiz!
A buflyer200 posted some incredible, never-before-seen (by me, anyway) photos from Winnipeg Transit's archives. Here are a few:
A civil age. Passengers, c. 1940s
Looking East on Selkirk Ave. from Salter St., late '40s
Looking West on Portage from Donald St.
North on Donald Street, to Princess Avenue
South on Donald from Ellice Avenue
Portage at night, West from Fort Street
When walking the beat wasn't an "initiative." Portage looking to Main
Fort Street from Portage
Portage and Notre Dame
Looking South on Osborne to Stradbrook Avenue, c.1920s
Confusion Corner, pre-Confusion. Looking North on Osborne. The apartment block is still standing today at the NE corner of Osborne and McMillan Avenue.
A civil age. Passengers, c. 1940s
Looking East on Selkirk Ave. from Salter St., late '40s
Looking West on Portage from Donald St. 
North on Donald Street, to Princess Avenue
South on Donald from Ellice Avenue
Portage at night, West from Fort Street
When walking the beat wasn't an "initiative." Portage looking to Main
Fort Street from Portage
Portage and Notre Dame
Looking South on Osborne to Stradbrook Avenue, c.1920s
Confusion Corner, pre-Confusion. Looking North on Osborne. The apartment block is still standing today at the NE corner of Osborne and McMillan Avenue.
posted by The Rise and Sprawl at
7:27 PM
3 Comments:
Ah, the good old days—when Winnipeg had rail transit that went almost everywhere.
Actually, it looks more like the bad old days. Listless proles shuffling between their densely erected urban hovels and work. Housewives wiling their days away on the public rails between the butcher, baker and green grocer just to keep the icebox full and the family looking respectable. Truly, a horrid and primitive existence that we should not be coerced into returning to by misguided urbanists.
Anon has a point. For all the "civility", you have signs at the beaches saying "No Jews" - not a trivial thing even if you don't happen to be Jewish. For all the "character", you have half the adult population providing unpaid and often unappreciated support to the paid labourers (and risking their own futures in the bargain, should they be widowed or divorced) because there was no other way to get all the work that needed to be done in a household. For all the convenience of streetcars, you had people who couldn't afford them because their full-time job barely paid the rent and groceries.
Your readers may notice the snappy hats, but do they realize what that streetcar smelled like? Most people only owned two or three changes of clothes and could only wash them every five or six wearings, and most of them didn't bathe every day because ten people shared a single bathroom and there was no shower, and it took half an hour to fill the tub with six inches of water. Maybe that was why everyone smoked like chimneys - it deadened their sense of smell.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home