© 2023, Christian Cassidy
Portage and Main by Frank Arbuckle, Macleans, May 1, 1947
I was asked on Twitter about Portage and Main's reputation as Winnipeg's (or the country's, or North America's, or the British Empire's) windiest corner. When did it get that title and was it backed by scientific research?
The first mention I can find of "the windiest" intersection comes in a brief Tribune article from April 1946 during a particularly windy spring. A great deal of debris had built up at the intersection and was creating a vortex of trash that swirled around whenever a storm hit. The story starts: "'The windiest spot in Canada', the corner of Portage Avenue and Main Street, has the city's scavenging and street cleaning division worried."
This suggests to me that the 'windiest corner' moniker was already in use and the quotation marks around it indicate that it wasn't a statement of fact. For decades, many stories that referenced the windiest intersection title are preceded by things like "generally known as", “the old joke about”, "its reputation as", or "dubbed as."
January 5, 1954, Winnipeg Free Press
What probably helped reinforce the intersection's reputation was media coverage. Just as a reporters today will head to the Forks to help illustrate a story about high water levels in spring, reporters used to head to Portage and Main to get photos to help illustrate a wind or snow storm.
Over time, particularly from the mid 1970s into the 1980s, newspaper stories largely dropped the "old joke about" and began calling the intersection Winnipeg's (or Canada's) windiest as if it was fact.
January 28, 1980, Winnipeg Tribune
There have been some stories that looked into the merits of the windiest corner reputation.
In January 1980, Environment Canada set up a series of wind measuring devices in Winnipeg for a general wind study, not specifically to prove or disprove the Portage and Main theory.
It found that on average Portage and Smith was the windiest place downtown with an average wind speed of 0.1 kilometres more than Portage and Main. The latter did, however, record the largest single wind gust that month and did have the highest overall wind speeds when there was a northerly wind blowing.
A 1987 Free Press story interviewed a supervising climatologist with Environment Canada to look into the claim.
According to its data, Winnipeg was unofficially the third windiest city in Canada behind Regina and St. John's, Newfoundland. The scientist said that it made sense that Winnipeg ranked as one of the windiest downtowns because of its design: "The wind rushes
in from the West down Portage Avenue kind of like a garden hose. When
it gets to the nozzle or opening (Portage and Main) the nozzle is
released and it comes out with greater force."
An architecture professor from the U of M also interviewed for the 1987 story said that what made Portage and Main a particularly windy place was this steady flow of air from the West swirling and churning when it hit the Richardson Building. He noted that his students had done some wind tests around buildings in the downtown and found by far the windiest place encountered was at the base of that tower.
February 17, 1968, Winnipeg Tribune
For the most part, people had fun with the reputation of Portage and Main even if there wasn't scientific evidence to back it up.
It appeared in a series of cheeky ads in 1968 run by the provincial
Department of Industry and Commerce to promote investment the province that proclaimed the Richardson Building / Lombard Place development to be the "World's only $40m windbreak". (Another ad featured piles of ore outside the INCO mine at Thompson with
the caption "Dig our Manitoba mountains".)
When a U of W prof released data in 1971 to show Portage and Main didn't record the coldest temperatures in the city over the winter, a Free Press editorial replied tongue-in-cheek: "No longer can we pose as hardy types who take winter in their stride with hardly a thought for frozen noses. The impression will quickly be abroad that palm trees and hula girls flourish at our most famous corner."
In December 1975, a 19-year-old from West Kildonan raised over $500 for the Christmas Cheer Board by walking around Portage and Main in a bathing suite and snow boots.
As one Winnipeg Tribune editorial noted, even if Portage and Maiin, records or not: "However frigid or blustery, we love it and respect it as a vital and essential feature of our city".
Other urban legends I explore:
Did Charlie Chaplin really stay at the Windsor Hotel?
Did Bob Hope really play his first game of golf in Winnipeg?
Who had the label longer - Standard or Budweiser?
Was the Arlington Bridge really built to span the Nile?
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