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Article Excerpt
Postcards in the early part of the twentieth century were frequently used as a convenient vehicle to carry greetings and brief messages to friends and family living in other parts of Canada or in other countries. As an alternative to telephone and telegraph, postcards were a relatively inexpensive way of communicating when the speed of transmission was not an issue. As an alternative to mailing letters, sending postcards permitted messages of only a few words-an advantage when the sender had little to say or was writing primarily out of a sense of obligation. The pictures, rather than the handwritten messages, were often the real highlights of postcards, especially before inexpensive cameras and film processing became common. They were intended to enlighten the recipients and perhaps to arouse some feelings of envy for the vacation travellers or proud residents who sent the cards. To achieve these results, postcards utilized images that showed off a community's most attractive and photogenic features. One noteworthy aspect of this effort is that very few postcards views of Winnipeg show snow, an artful denial of the realities of several months of each year.
Postcards were used in Canada as early as 1871, but people were permitted to write only the recipient's address on them and nothing else. Finally, in 1903, the post office authorized "divided back" private postcards, where one half of the card provided space for the address, with space for a written message on the other half. The reverse side usually featured a photograph which, before true color photography, were often painted with colors resembling those of the original. Many companies got into the business, and the "golden age" of the postcard was at hand. In the years leading up to World War I, thousands of different postcards were created and millions were sent. Their broad subject appeal, their novelty in an otherwise black-and-white world of images, and their personal connection with the sender were all factors promoting their retention, long after the message they conveyed became irrelevant. Numerous postcards from early 20th century Winnipeg exist in collections around the world, providing useful-and in many cases, unique-views of the growing city.
It is understandable that these postcards presented views of the city's heart, mostly focusing on buildings on major downtown thoroughfares. Until at least the 1950s, Winnipeg's downtown was the community's hub of commerce and entertainment. Two landmark department stores, Eaton's and Hudson's Bay, proudly stood a few blocks apart on Portage Avenue and were beacons that drew countless thousands of residents and visitors downtown every day. Hundreds of other shops along and near Portage provided even more shopping opportunities that couldn't be found anywhere else in the city. The famed intersection of Portage and Main, with its nearby Bankers' Row, Great-West Life, and the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, symbolized the early wealth and commercial prosperity of Winnipeg. Dining at Child's, Moore's, the Chocolate Shop, and dozens of other restaurants, or nights out at palatial movie houses like the Capitol, the Metropolitan, and the Odeon, ensured that Winnipeg's downtown was a busy and exciting destination even when the retail stores were closed.
Implicit in these photos is the outward movement of Winnipeg's population, especially during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Until then, most Winnipeggers lived, worked, and shopped in or near the core area of the city. There are few vintage postcards of the "suburbs" (as areas like East, North, and West Kildonan, Fort Garry, and St. James came to be called) not just because they would have offered relatively uninteresting views of streets and houses, but also because many of those areas were essentially rural at the time these postcards were produced. Some of the less desirable changes in Winnipeg's downtown (exemplified by gone-and-not-replaced buildings) are the result of the movement of the city's life blood away from its centre.
People do appear at a distance in some postcards, but their presence is clearly incidental and offers limited opportunity to study...
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