James A. Richardson and Winston Churchill leaving the Grain Exchange together in August 1929.
– a necessary next step if it was to be- come a major and mature presence in the world’s marketplace. Sellers and buyers could now hedge their cash transactions utilizing a futures contract to protect themselves against a change in wheat prices. Futures trading opportunities would bring a battalion of new buyers to the Winnipeg exchange. By 1917, the exchange was operating
futures markets for wheat, oats, flaxseed, barley and rye. A handsome, seven-storey (eventually 10-storey), golden sandstone brick build- ing, built by and housing the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, opened in 1908. One of the city’s largest buildings, it faced on Lombard Street, a block from Main. It had an Italian Renaissance-style exterior and was richly decorated inside (much changed today). Banks occupied the ground floor; but
the star presence in the building was the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, with its floor for trading and other operations on the sixth. Te large trading room, 24x15 metres, with its two trading pits, was lit on three sides by great arched windows. Te wall space was crammed with coun- ters, blackboards and cubicles, and for many years noisy telegraph machines. Not too many Winnipeggers had rea-
son to visit the grain exchange, but many through the years would form a mental image thanks to the magic of television, of its trading floor and famous “pits”
The Hub
The Grain Exchange Building, in the foreground, in 1937, shows how little the face of Lombard has changed over the years.
where grain was bought and sold, a re- lentless mix of loudly barking men, co- lourful coats and impenetrable hand sig- nals. Every bid had to be clearly heard by everyone in the pit. Te anointing, by law, of the Canadian
Wheat Board in 1943 as virtually the sole buyer and seller of western Canadi- an wheat changed the Winnipeg Grain Exchange forever, and left it searching for more to do. It traded in gold for a while. It was
1967, and the Winnipeg Grain Exchange (soon to change its name to Winnipeg Commodity Exchange) was itself in the market now, looking for products with earnings potential to fill the product vacuum left by the now-departed prai- rie wheat trade. Live cattle? Launched in 1968, abandoned in 1975; it didn’t pay. Maritime potatoes? Maritime growers were confused by the futures trading system and were quickly gone. Gold? A huge bonanza, until the Americans changed their laws and lured the eager traders to exchanges back home. But canola made it big, and Winni-
peg canola has become the preeminent futures contract for the world market. Today it helps determine the price for canola futures trade across the globe, just as it once did for wheat. And today, with the once powerful and monopo- listic Canadian Wheat Board declawed and its regulating powers gone, wheat is once again on the roster of the Win- nipeg exchange, and the Wheat Board, now called the CWB, is simply another trader. A decade ago, the Exchange closed
its trading floor and became the first North American agricultural futures exchange to trade only electronically. It was purchased in 2007 by Intercontinen- tal Exchange, Inc., a young, aggressive, Atlanta-based network of financial and commodity markets traders. Renamed ICE Futures Canada, the
Winnipeg group operates out of a Pem- bina Highway office with a “small core staff.” Te name and its awesome role in Winnipeg’s history live on, though, in the historic district where it so long plied its trade.
Winter 2014 • 37
Photos courtesy of ICE Futures Canada.
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