© 2026, Christian Cassidy.
Someone asked in a Facebook group about the origins of wee Percy Avenue in the West End, so I thought I would check it out.
Percy Avenue first appears in the 1912 edition of Henderson’s Street Directory, the data for which would have been compiled in 1911. (Someone speculated it might have been named for Percy Haynes, but he was just born in Guyana in 1911).
I wrote a street name origin column for the Free Press Community Review for three years, and what struck me is how informal the naming of streets was. A section of the city would be surveyed, and someone at the city surveyor’s office would have to come up with 10 or 20 street names ASAP to get them on the agenda of the next council meeting so that they could go in line for eventual subdivision.
A favourite was to choose names associated with the landowners. That’s why in the oldest parts of the city, you find runs of first names. For instance, the Robert Logan estate has Logan, then descendants Alexander, Lizzie, Harriet, Lily, Owena, Stanley, and Mary (renamed Martha in 1893 to save confusion with St. Mary). Same on the Ross estate, Bannatyne estate, etc.
Sometimes even the surveyors would get in on the act. George McPhillips named McPhillips after himself, and there are other McPhillips family names here and there.
When the city surveyor's office ran out of names, they might choose some landmark from that landowner’s region back in the old country, or something generic to round out the list.
Every year or two, the city would have to change a bunch of street names because they sounded too much alike (Vickers and Victor), looked the same when handwritten (Horne and Home), or were the same as a street name in a neighbouring municipality.
My best guess would be that Percy was a name associated with someone who owned that piece of land or someone who surveyed it! We'll never really know, as council minutes only passed the lists of names; no background information was recorded.
Above are images from McPhillips’ 1910 map and Hathaway’s 1911 map of Winnipeg. You can see that the neighbourhood around Percy Avenue was still in development at that time.
Early maps like these usually make neighbourhoods look more settled than they were, as they showed what was on the ground and near-term development plans so that the map wasn't out of date before it was printed.
For instance, in 1911, Clifton Street only had 23 houses on it, 22 of those between Wellington and Richard avenues and one between Richard and Notre Dame. Much of the street likely resembled a slightly windy, gravel country lane with no sewer or water that probably didn't line up form block to block.
The Clifton School you see on the map was located on the west side of Clifton at Barratt Avenue, though Barratt didn’t come about until 1910. It first appears in the 1912 street directory, the data for which would have been compiled in 1911.
More development in the neighbourhood around Percy Street:
July 1908: Winnipeg School Board files plans with the city for Clifton School on Clifton Street. The wood-frame building was ready for students for the start of school on September 1st.
December 1908: The city approved funding for the construction of a water main from Portage Avenue to the school the following year.
March 1910: J. B. Mitchell from the school board appeared before a city council committee meeting to ask that a sewer line be laid from Portage Avenue to serve the school. It would take a couple of years for this to come about.
September 1910: The city requests from the school board the t"most southerly fifty feet in width of the Clifton School site, the property so transferred to the city for the purposes of street openings as demanded by the vendors."
1911: Barratt Avenue and Percy Avenue first appear in Henderson's Street Directory, likely part of the 50 feet of land noted above.
September 1911: The city requested from the school board the "most westerly 16 feet of depth through the entire (Clifton) school property" so that it could widen Spruce Street. In return, the city transferred a portion of Wolver Avenue that projected onto the school site to the school board. (That's why Wolever cuts off where it does.)
March 1913: Tenders are advertised for the construction of Isaac Brock School. It opens by the end of the year.
June 1914: Tenders are advertised for the purchase and removal of the old Clifton School building from the Isaac Brock grounds.
1952: Building permits are issued for the first house on Percy Avenue, number 1261, and the first house on Barratt Avenue, number 1266.
1953: The remaining five houses on Barratt Avenue are built.
1954: The remaining four houses on Percy Avenue are built.
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