Jon J. Vopni's West End

© 2022, Christian Cassidy

January 2, 1915, Odinn

Jon "John" Jonsson Vopni is a name I have come across many times over the years. He was one of a number of Icelandic builders active in the early 1900s who developed the West End into a residential neighbourhood and helped dot the city's urban landscape with three-storey walk-up apartment blocks in the period leading up to World War I.

I only knew Vopni through his connection to fellow Icelandic builder / developer Thorstein Oddson who I wrote about in greater detail here.

Earlier this year, I was contacted by a member of the Vopni family who had read one of my "What's in a Street Name?" columns in the Winnipeg Free Press' Canstar Community News. She shared the story of how the circa 1905 Vopni Avenue in Brooklands was renamed Park Lane Avenue in 1981. It is something the family and many in the Icelandic community felt was a snub and are still calling on the city to overturn the decision or name a new street for him.

The story was a perfect fit for my column and I wrote about it here. Doing the research for the column, I came across too much interesting background information about Vopni that it was way too much to fit into a 500-word column.

Here's a more detailed look back at the life and work of John J. Vopni.

January 1, 1898, Almanak Olafs S. Thorgeirssonar

Jon "John" Jonsson Vopni was born in Iceland in 1864 and came to Manitoba in 1887. It's believed that "Vopni" is taken from the family's ancestral home of Vopnafjordur, Iceland.

Initially, Vopni settled in the Gimli area but by 1891 can be found in Winnipeg street directories as "John Vopni, carpenter" living at 646 Ross Avenue. He married Sigurbjorg Magnusdottir in October 1893 and the couple settled on Ross for the next few years and began a family.

The first newspaper mention of a construction contract for Vopni comes in 1899 when he was awarded the federal government tender to build the first permanent pier at Gimli Harbour.

March 24, 1904, Logberg

Vopni tended to work in partnership with other Icelandic builders or developers. In 1899, he joined forces with H. Halldorson to create the construction company Halldorson and Vopni. From 1903 to November 1906, it was with Thorstein Oddson and Skulli Hansson in Oddson Hansson & Vopni, a construction, development, real estate, and insurance firm.

Oddson Hansson & Vopni (OHV) were active just as the West End of Winnipeg was being transformed from a mainly rural enclave on the edge of town into a dense residential suburb between the years 1903 to 1910.

The company advertised regularly offering one or more homes for sale at a time. Ads such as the one above showed they were also responsible for the sale of likely hundreds of residential lots for others to build on.

October 5, 1904, Winnipeg Tribune

At least 120 building permits were issued to Vopni between 1900 and 1906. He received six for Toronto Street in October 1905 alone. Most were for houses in the West End with a cluster around what is now the Health Sciences Centre on Bannatyne.

This is not the true extent of his work as he often worked in partnerships and later funded construction projects as a developer. (As building permits were normally issued to the primary contractor his name wouldn't appear in records.)

It is hard to find examples of Vopni houses today as he tended to build on streets that were newly subdivided. Instead of house numbers, most permits have vague descriptions of the location, such as "East Side Victor Street between Ellice and Sargent".

Some can be traced using owner's names and street directories and they are quite typical of what you see in the West End - everything from small bungalows to the standard 2.5-storey family homes. One of the finer examples is 11 Lipton Street built for his son, John A., in 1922.

Source: Winnipeg Architecture Foundation

An example of a Vopni-built commercial block is the ca. 1902 McKerchar Block at 600 Main Street. Designed by architect J H G Russell, Edward Cass and Vopni teamed up to build it.

Another building he apparently built was the 1903 Dingle and Stewart Block at 263 - 265 Stanley Street for the odd combination of family businesses Dingle Bros. construction and Dingle and Stewart Fruit Merchants. 

Both of these buildings were prior to his involvement in OHV, so it seems his efforts as a builder of commercial blocks was channelled into residential development instead.

September 30, 1905, Winnipeg Tribune

Vopni built the first permanent home of the First English Evangelical Lutheran Church on Ellice Avenue and Beverley Street in 1905. It was described in a newspaper article as measuring 32 x 80 feet with room for 300 worshippers.

The congregation built a new church in 1913 and the old building became home to Elim Chapel for a year or two until they moved on. In the 1940s, it was a Holiness Movement Church.

Despite some of these churches having a well-documented history, finding a photo of this church is difficult.

December 6, 1906, Winnipeg Free Press

A mixed-use building that opened a month or so after the OHV partnership dissolved was the 1906 Vopni Building at Ellice and Langside which was also designed by architect J H G Russell. The name of the building lasted only a year or two which suggests he may have sold it off soon after it opened. The building has been demolished.

This is not to be confused with the Vopni Block, an apartment building on Lydia Street and Bannatyne Avenue which was the same intersection as the family home. It went by this name from about 1906 to 1914 and was demolished likely for a schoolyard.

1908 Henderson's Directory of Winnipeg

The Vopni Building on Ellice contained apartments upstairs and a general merchant store called The Vopni-Sigurdson on the main floor. It sold everything from crockery to boots to hardware.

The business was a partnership between John Vopni with his wife Sigurborg, Sigurd Sigurdson with his wife Jona, and local butcher Halldor J. Vopni. It appears to have lasted until 1910.

May 26, 1909, Winnipeg Free Press

In May 1909, Vopni was awarded the contract to build 20 stations, 14 section houses, and various outbuildings along section F of the new National Transcontinental Railway line.

The line is described in the 1911 - 1912 Seasonal Papers of the Dominion of Canada as "That portion of the line between Winnipeg and Lake Superior Junction - the junction point of the G.T.P Railway Company's branch line to Fort William and the main line of the National Transcontinental Railway...".

The contract was worth $118,743, about $3 million in today's money, and appears to have taken a couple of years to complete.

It is said that Vopni then got into developing apartment blocks. This is likely the case as many of his contemporaries, such as Arni Eggertson, G. Johnson, and Thorstein Oddson, did just that. Icelandic builders and financiers helped dot Winnipeg's urban landscape with hundreds of three-storey walk-ups in the pre-World War I period.

December 2, 1916, Winnipeg Tribune

Vopni turned his attention to community service after the war.

He was elected twice, in 1917 and 1918, to city council representing Ward 4. In his rookie year, he was appointed to the good roads committee, pension committee, and the prestigious post of chair of the city's property and works committee, a position previously held by Mayor Fred Davidson. He also sat on the 1918 Special Committee on Amalgamation that recommended a sweeping reorganization of the city's bureaucracy.

In the lead-up to the November 1918 civic election, which he ended up losing, the Winnipeg Tribune reported that “…Alderman Vopni has handled his civic duties commendably and especially his duties as chairman of the board of works, city officials aver.”

After the election, Vopni served on the board of trustees of the Winnipeg General Hospital. He was first elected by hospital subscribers, (it was a private, charitable institution at the time), in April 1919 and served until his retirement 22 years later.

Other organizations that he was a long-time executive member of included First Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Synod, Gimli's Islendingadagurinn - serving as its president in 1907 and 1919, and the Jon Bjarnason Academy board of directors from 1914 to 1921.

1936 Jon Bjarnason Academy Yearbook

Vopni got involved in the printing business later in life and it was something that would define the future of the family as many of his sons went on to have careers in the printing or publishing business.

In the 19-teens he was on the board of Columbia Press, the publishers of Lögberg newspaper, and served as the paper's business manager.

In 1920, he founded the commercial printing firm Art Press and built a building for it at 106 Lydia Street which was located in the back yeard of the family's Bannatyne Avenue home.

It was a family business with a number of his sons working there, including John A Vopni who went on to the newspaper publishing business, and  Bill Vopni. Son Edward Vopni carried on the business into the late 1980s and the company still exists today.

As for his personal life, John and Sigurbjorg Vopni moved from Ross Avenue to 620 McDermot around 1902, then to a large house he built at 597 Bannatyne Avenue in 1904 where they would remain for the rest of their lives. There was also a family cottage at Gimli.

The Vopnis had twelve children: Aurora Vopni (Ross) 1895-1993; Anna Vopni (Bardal)1897-1919; John Anthur Vopni 1898-1972; Bjorgvin Magnus (Bud) Vopni 1900-1989; Edward Vopni 1902-1992; Wilfrid Herman Vopni 1903-?; Rakel Margaret Vopni (Lloyd) 1906-1996; August Vopni (Clark) 1906-1973; Wilfred Halldor (Bill) Vopni 1911-1973; Richard Leon Vopni 1913-1941; Helen Jona Sigurborg Vopni (Munday) 1915-2021; baby boy 1919. (Source: Vopni family member)

The Vopnis in 1943 at their 50th Anniversary
Western Canada Pictorial Index, Gunnlaugsson Collection

Sigurborg Vopni came to Winnipeg from Iceland with her family at the age of ten. When she wasn't rearing children, she was involved in First Lutheran Church and a member of the Jon Sigurdsson Chapter of the IODE for which she hosted numerous events, such as silver teas, at the house.

Starting around 1920, as the children moved out, the Vopnis rented out rooms to lodgers. By the 1940s they were advertising three rooms. They remained at the house until their deaths.

John J. Vopni died June 11, 1956, at St. Boniface Hospital at the age of 92 and is buried in Brookside Cemetery. (It is a place he knew well as back in 1897 won the bid to erect a mortuary chapel on the site.)

Sigurborg Vopni died August 7, 1957, at the age of 81 and is buried in Brookside Cemetery.

Thanks to Dorothy Mills of the Vopni family for additional information.

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