© 2022, Christian Cassidy
Signs in the window of Dominion News and Gifts at 262 Portage Avenue note that the store is closing. The current incarnation of the business dates back to 1968, but its roots go back much further.
Here's a look back at 98 years of what is likely downtown Winnipeg's oldest independent retail business.
October 30, 1926, Winnipeg Tribune
The Dominion News Agency first appears in 1924 at 234 Portage Avenue in the Curry Building. It was primarily a newspaper and magazine shop specializing in national and international titles, but also sold radios, records, popular books, greeting cards and tobacco. In 1940-era newspaper ads it billed itself as "West's largest newsdealer."
For its first quarter-century, the store was run by Gerald (Jerry) P. Crossing. In street directories and newspaper ads he is always referred to as the manager which suggests he may have been a co-owner or simply an employee.
Crossing's background was in the seed business. When he married Christine (Teenie) Mowat in 1915 he was the assistant manager at a seed firm and in the years leading up to Dominion News he was secretary-treasurer of Harris McFaydin Seed Company.
The Crossings had two sons, Keith and Kennedy. When they were teenagers the couple relocated from their Minto Street house to the Oriole Apartments at 111 Furby Street.
Keith and Kennedy both enlisted to fight in World War II.
Kennedy survived, but Keith was with the RCAF when he went missing in action over Holland in June 1942. In December he was declared "for official purposes presumed dead". The following spring, however, the International Red Cross passed on information that his body was discovered soon after he went missing and had been buried a couple of days later at Ambt-Delden General Cemetery. (For more information and photos of Crossing, see his Virtual War Memorial page.)
Jerry Crossing continued to run Dominion News until around 1948. The family then disappears from Winnipeg street directories. He died at Vancouver, B.C. in 1967.
April 14, 1949, The Jewish Post
The next proprietors of Dominion News were Sam R. Posner ad B. Posner. In March 1949, they relocated the store to 229 Portage Avenue, still inside the Curry Building.
The store continued on selling its usual line of items plus bus passes and is listed the odd time as a ticket agent for independent shows at the Playhouse Theatre.
It is unclear how long the Posners owned the store. Advertising dropped off in the 1950s and though the two men are listed in street directories, neither is associated with Dominion News.
April 5, 1962, The Jewish Post
A new era for Dominion News began in 1962 when Myer Mitchell and Larry Mantell bought it. Their company was known as Dominion News and Gifts (1962) Ltd..
Mitchell had been a manager of the McIntyre Block and Mantell owned Curtis Jewellery Ltd.. Their store manager was Cathy Smigelsky, formerly of the Manitoba Farmers Union.
In an advertorial in the April 5, 1962 edition of The Jewish Post, it boasted that the store had a "physical face-lifting".
Old lines like newspapers, magazines and tobacco from around the world were still available and they had also bolstered their personal stationery department and their giftware section now included German and Czech crystal, plush toys, and chinaware.
Greeting cards, party favours, and gags were on the mezzanine level and its main floor record bar, which it called "the most complete line of records in the city", was expanded.
June 7, 1962, Winnipeg Free Press
A product line not mentioned in the advertorial was the girly magazines.
In June 1962, the Morality Squad of the Winnipeg Police raided Dominion News and seized 50 American magazines. They were called Escapade Year Book 1962, Caper (Sept 1962 edition), Ace, and Bachelor. The owners were ordered to appear in court later that month "to show cause why the matter seized should not be forfeited to the Crown for reason of their being obscene."
Dominion News brought to the hearing Arnold Edinborough, former editor of respected Canadian periodical Saturday Night magazine and a member of an Ontario government committee looking into the definition of obscenity.
Edinborough felt the magazines were not obscene. He said that society's attitudes towards sex and nudity were changing and with them came this new generation of slick, sophisticated magazines that dealt with the topic. He told the judge that these magazines should not be lumped in with the cheaper "pulp magazines" that dealt with the same topic.
On November 5, 1962, Judge A. R. Macdonnell sided with the Crown and the testimony of police officers and ruled two of the magazines, Escapade and Dude, to be obscene.
March 9, 1964, Winnipeg Tribune
Dominion News, along with the publisher of Escapade, appealed the ruling to the Manitoba Court of Appeal and lost. They then took it to the Supreme Court of Canada and their case was heard in March 1964.
The Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that Escapade and Dude were not obscene under the Criminal Code of Canada which had been updated in 1959 to deal with obscenity. It did not give a detailed reason for its decision.
Herbert Maslove bought the business in 1968 and it became known as Dominion News and Gifts (1968) Ltd. The business address also changed to 231 Portage Avenue still inside the Curry Building.
In 1974, Maslove moved the store to the main floor of the Avenue Building at 263 Portage Avenue.
It was noted in a 1980 Gene Telpner column that the store began putting its adult magazines behind a gate and charging customers 50 cents to enter. Maslove said in a later interview that it was to cut down on theft and to encourage people to buy, not browse. (The fee was refunded if the customer purchased something. (The fee, now $1.00, is still in effect to this day.)
The store was about more than adult magazines. A 1983 Free Press story about the sale of out-of-town newspapers noted that the Sunday New York Times was so popular at Dominion News that it was flown in for sale the next day. It sold at least 100 copies a week.
Also in the 1980s, Dominion News became a well-known arcade frequented by Portage and Main businessmen on their lunch breaks.
There was a second Dominion News location further west next to the Boyd Building from about 1982 to 1989.
Source: Google Street View
The business changed hands from Herbert to his son, Howard, in 1990.
Dominion News became the last tenant in the dilapidated Avenue Building and in 1999 its owner decided not to renew the lease and close the building down. This sent the store across the street to the former Hurtig Fur building at 262 Portage Avenue where it has been ever since.
The final owner is Guy Paquette who became a co-owner with Maslove in 2004 and the full owner in 2012.
December 19, 1924, Winnipeg Free Press
January 18, 1949, Winnipeg Tribune
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