Vacation in Canada, eh? 5: Getting to Know Us
Americans who want to show support for Canada should consider spending their next vacation here. Winnipeg is a great place to start getting to know us.
By Peter Coffman
I thought I’d take a page out of the Prime Minister’s book, and address our American friends directly at this time of stress. I won’t be calling anyone by their first name, though, so relax.
Dear America,
Chances are, Canada was barely on your radar a few weeks ago. Now we’re in your news, and in your face. And you may be wondering what’s going on. “Why are they booing our national anthem? Why wouldn’t they want to be the 51st state? Aren’t they really just like us anyway?”
To answer the first question, read any Canadian newspaper. To answer the last one, you could start by visiting the city of Winnipeg. It’s geographically in the centre of the country. And it’s long been at or near the centre of our history, too. It’s a great place to start learning about this country.
If you dabble in our history, you’ll soon come across the ‘two founding peoples’ trope – the claim that Canada is a joint project of the English and the French. That’s obviously too simplistic to do the country justice. But it’s easy to make a major improvement at a single stroke: expand the ‘peoples’ to English, French, and Indigenous. Winnipeg, more than any other city I’ve visited, embodies all three. And their cultural DNA is in the city’s architecture.
The English
The ’English’ buildings are easy to find. The Westminster parliamentary system announces itself in all its Beaux-Arts glory at the Manitoba Legislative Building. Designed by English architects in an ancient European style, and clad in local Tyndall limestone, it’s the very image of European values and institutions grafted onto this patch of Turtle Island.
With English settlement came English capitalism, and in the Canadian west that meant the Hudson’s Bay Company. Founded in 1670 as a fur-trading company, its flagship retail outlet is still one of Winnipeg’s most imposing architectural landmarks (although it’s no longer owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company – more on that below).
The French
The French presence is equally palpable. It includes Winnipeg’s oldest building: the Grey Nuns’ Convent, built 1846-51 in St. Boniface, still the heart of city’s francophone community. It now serves as the excellent St. Boniface Museum, but the most remarkable artefact there is the building itself.
Nearby St. Boniface Cathedral bears witness to the centrality of the Roman Catholic Church in early French-Canadian society. The cathedral’s ‘front door’ is in fact the ruined shell of a cathedral built in 1905 and destroyed by fire in 1968. The ruins act as an atrium for the modern cathedral designed by Étienne Gaboury.
Bells mounted on the back of the ruined façade (just visible in the photo beneath the arch and above the oculus) are still rung every day:
The Indigenous
Both the French and the English are newcomers compared to the Anishinaabeg, Anishininewuk, Dakota Oyate, Denesuline and Nehethowuk Nations, all of whose ancestral lands lie in what we call Manitoba. The province is also the homeland of the Red River Métis, and includes ancestral lands of the Inuit. And all three groups – First Nations, Métis, and Inuit – are vibrantly present in Winnipeg and its buildings. A few examples:
A long-held dream of First Nations students was realized in 2008 with the opening of the Migizii Agamik (‘Bald Eagle Lodge’) student centre on the campus of the University of Manitoba. Designed in close consultation with Indigenous elders and students, it embodies traditional symbols, practices and world-views.
For many, the first thing that comes to mind when ‘Winnipeg’ and ‘Indigenous’ come up in the same sentence is the Métis people – and specifically, the Métis statesman, hero, and martyr Louis Riel (1844-85). Winnipeg inhales and exhales the story of Riel; he is part of the city’s soul. He is commemorated in public sculptures at l’Université Saint-Boniface and the Manitoba Legislature.
There is also an extensive permanent exhibition about his life and work in the St. Boniface Museum, and his grave is just down the street on the grounds of the cathedral.
The Inuit
Numerically, the Inuit are the smallest Indigenous group in Winnipeg, but their cultural presence is mighty. This is in no small part due to a stunning new building – the Qaumajuq, a 2020 addition to the Winnipeg Art Gallery that houses the collection of Inuit art. Its massive, undulating white form was inspired by the landscape of Nunavut as well as by the artworks it houses.
Inside, the largest collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world is on permanent display.
A Step toward Reconciliation?
In an unexpected closing of a circle, the flagship Hudson’s Bay Company Building, the quintessential icon of colonial capitalism, is to become an Indigenous centre for business, administration, and affordable housing called Wehwehneh Bahgahkinahgohn – Anishinaabemowin for ‘It is visible’. For generations of Indigenous people, this building was a powerful symbol of the system that had taken their land and prosperity. Now, it belongs to them.
Does this mean that everyone is one happy family and Winnipeg is a model of harmony? Obviously not. Winnipeg is a complicated place with a complicated history – and it has its share of complicated problems. Inequality is woven through its history – not because it’s Winnipeg, but because it’s Canadian (or perhaps because it’s human). But so is the desire to do better, to acknowledge both achievements and failures, to seek unity and justice. In many ways it seems to encapsulate what Canada was, is, and might hope to become. It’s not by chance that the city’s most audacious architectural landmark isn’t a government building, or a religious one, or a commercial one. It’s the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.
I’ve read lots of social media posts by Americans who don’t support their country’s economic war on Canada, but don’t see any way to help. Well, one way, if you can manage it, is to visit us. Get to know us, experience our places, hear our diverse stories, discover who we are, what made us, and what makes us tick. Winnipeg is a great place to start.
Peter Coffman, History & Theory of Architecture program
peter.coffman@carleton.ca
@petercoffman.bsky.social