Winnipeg's Union Station turns 100

Beaux Arts Gateway to the West

By Jim Chliboyko

A pale spring afternoon sun lights up the atrium under the main dome of Winnipeg's old Union Station.

It's usually quieter here but today Poppers snack bar is doing brisk business with some of the international students from Red River College's upstairs classrooms. And at the south end of the atrium, people with mile wide smiles seem to be attending a graduation ceremony and, in a way, they are. They're Africans, Filipinos, Russians, Germans and they're all clutching their new Canadian citizenship papers.

It's a proud moment in a proud place for newcomers to Canada. The "citizenship ceremony room" is a handsome old space with woodwork halfway up the walls, a warm yellow arched skylight ceiling, the flags of all the provinces and vintage immigration posters.

The whole building is handsome.

It's a confident limestone and steel presence topped with a green copper dome, exactly as its designers, the Beaux Arts* architectural firm of Warren and Wetmore, intended.

Union Station opened in 1911, two years before Warren and Wetmore unveiled its cousin, New York's Grand Central Terminal.

The place takes up 350 feet along south Main Street facing Broadway. It appears as if Broadway actually springs forth from Union Station heading west and passing the Fort Garry Hotel, the Manitoba Legislature and other architectural heavyweights before it sideswipes Portage Avenue two-and-a-half kilometres later.

Competition for the CPR

A hundred years ago, Union Station was the answer to the rival Canadian Pacific Railway station, which also still stands today, just off the corner of Higgins and Main, a few kilometres north. Union Station was built for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and the Transcontinental Railway, which had agreed to the joint operation of one facility (which is where the word "Union" comes in). The Hudson's Bay Company, in turn, asked that the place not be built north of Broadway. So, it was built right on old Broadway, creating a T-junction and effectively preventing the street from continuing into the French neighbourhood of St. Boniface, across the Red River. (Provencher Ave. in St. Boniface is a natural extension of Broadway.)

"When (the original bridge between Broadway and Provencher) was closed in 1912 following the construction of Union Station, there was an outcry, particularly from St. Boniface," writes Marjorie Gillies in Street of Dreams. "Citizens felt 'humiliated' that their direct access to Winnipeg had been so summarily ended."

Local newspapers of the time sported ads boasting about the station, and even the classifieds were fond of name-dropping the new station, especially landlords who pointed out how close their properties were to the impressive landmark.

Union Station benefited from good timing.

Winnipeg happened to be growing at an exponential rate in 1911, and the new station played a huge role as gateway to the west.

In fact, the area between Main Street and the Red River, where the Forks Market complex now sits, was a slighter version of Halifax's Pier 21, even before Union Station. Early maps make note of "emigrant sheds" close to where the Red and Assiniboine rivers met, essentially in Union Station's backyard, where people were put for processing once they arrived. The city had had immigration sheds from about 1872 and on into the 20th century. Evidently, they weren't very nice places. According to some accounts, they resembled stables, weren't maintained particularly well and were often overcrowded.

Union Station had a separate entrance for the newcomers. According to an historical buildings report, "Immigrants could therefore be taken 'to and from both trains and the street without coming into contact with other passengers.'"

Once off the train, immigrants were ushered downstairs, to the basement. A writer for the Manitoba Free Press toured the station in April, 1911, noting, under the heading "provision for immigrants," that "the basement, which is fifteen feet below the level of the main floor, is excellently laid out for the convenience of immigrants." The facility was equipped with a laundry, a lunch counter and baths for men and women, a smoking room, a women's room and a barber shop.

The new arrivals weren't allowed to mingle with others in the station upon disembarking. The railway platforms were set up so that immigrants were ushered into the basement.

Now, Union Station is a welcoming place for new Canadians.

There have been citizenship ceremonies in the citizenship room there since 2003, and officials estimate that every year 2,500 to 3,500 people become citizens under the curved yellow roof, raising their right hands and saying the oath of citizenship in unison.

"For the new citizen, the ceremony is the formal entry into the Canadian family and the public acceptance of the rights and responsibilities of becoming a Canadian citizen," says John Nychek, director of the Citizenship and Immigration Office in Winnipeg. "For very many, it's a significant milestone. It's amazing; we provide the opportunity for the citizens at the ceremony to stand up, if they want to, and get them to tell what citizenship means to them. Often it brings tears to one's eyes."

Union Station also saw men off to war (and returning from war), it's where people would catch the train to the lake on summer weekends and it was the scene of grand celebrations on New Year's Eve. There are still occasionally Christmas concerts under the dome, though they rarely match the buzz of earlier events.

The station, for its time, also acted as a foyer to the city. It welcomed all sorts of people to Winnipeg, from royalty to prime ministers, sports heroes and people like Arthur Conan Doyle, who famously pursued his interest in spiritualism in the city.

The old station still works as a station (unlike the CPR station). It serves two main VIA Rail routes, the cross-country east-west route, the Canadian, three times each way every week, as well as the twice-weekly train to Churchill, 1700-kilometres north. Non-railroad tenants rent office space in the north and south wings. And on rainy summer Saturdays, you can be sure to encounter wedding parties posing for photographers.

But it is a lot quieter in Union Station these days. Often, on a lonely winter weekend evening, when even Poppers is closed, you might see a lone figure, perhaps carrying a hockey stick, on his way to the skating rinks at the Forks, crossing the grand marble floor, footsteps echoing under the dome. He'll pass historical photos on the wall, and staring back at him are Manitobans from long-gone generations; soldiers returning from war, immigrants looking hopeful and jubilant crowds mugging for a photographer on a distant New Year's Eve.

The bulk of the building's work has already been done. Union Station may look like a monument, but its real job has been the city and the province that it helped build.