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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 Montr?al 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
centre.
