Jan. 19, 2024 marks 150 years since the City of Winnipeg’s first council meeting, and it was quite the occasion at city hall.
Local dignitaries, including members of Parliament, city councillors past and present, grand chiefs and Premier Wab Kinew, filled a room outside Mayor Scott Gillingham’s office for a luncheon.
The room was dense with laughter, music from a Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra string quartet, wafts of warm food and bursts of yellow highlighting the Winnipeg 150 graphic.
City archivist Konrad Krahn said Winnipeg’s first council meeting wasn’t completely unlike council meetings now.
“It did start 30 minutes late, which is, I understand, not unheard of,” he said.
But there were certainly some differences, he said.
“It took place in a rented space on the second floor of L.R. Bentley’s newly constructed commercial building on the west side of Main Street — near where McDermott is today,” Krahn said.
He added there were only four wards at the time, labelled North, South, East and West, and that the population started out as a humble 2,000.
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Despite what seems like simpler times, Gillingham says he’s happy to be on this side of 150 years.
“I can’t imagine what the first mayor and council went through, because they were really starting from scratch and just organizing themselves as a municipal government,” he said.
Krahn said, “the first council meeting was largely devoted to the procedural issues of setting up a new government, including the establishment of standing committees on finance assessment, local improvements, markets, police and fire and water. We know all this because the events were recorded by hand in the city’s first council minutes.”
While laughter and joy took centre stage Friday morning, the celebration was also a time of commemoration and reflection on the city’s past.
“Though the city of Winnipeg is only 150 years old, we know that this land, the meeting of the rivers, has been a home of Indigenous people for millennia,” Manitoba Lt.-Gov. Anita R. Neville said.
Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Cathy Merrick was also in attendance.
“Going back (through) the 150 years, we can speak about the oppression of First Nation people who were not allowed to leave the reserve to come to such a city, who were not allowed to vote in elections, were not allowed to go to university, or you had to give up your treaty status,” she said.
Though she said First Nations people still suffer some of the worst statistics in the country, and in Manitoba, a story of resilience is woven through the past century and a half.
“We have First Nations people who are leaders within this city, this province and this federal government who are lawyers, who are judges, who are senators, and even the premier of Manitoba,” Merrick said.
In a continuation of the celebration, Gillingham said tomorrow he’ll be at the Forks handing out hot chocolate, and each of the 15 city councillors will be hosting an event — or a few — in their ward.
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