Around Town Catalyst for change
Neeginan Centre: Our Place Story and photos by Dorothy Dobbie
The retired train station for the Canadian Pacific Railway has been reborn as the Neeginan Centre of Winnipeg.
and prostitutes, a place where only the uncaring or desperate would go at night. Tat was 25 years ago. Now all that has changed: the bars
T
are gone and new construction has put a bright face on the corner. Te catalyst for that change over the past 25 years has been the Aboriginal Centre of Winni- peg Inc., now Neeginan Centre of Win- nipeg, along with a collection of agencies that reside in the massive building that used to be the railway station and offices
28 • Fall 2016
he corner of Higgins and Main once
reputation in Winnipeg. was the centre of seedy bars
had the worst It
of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Te story of that change is one of cour-
age and conviction, of entrepreneurial spirit laced with a social mission. And it is the remarkable story of a handful of aboriginal people who decided to take control and make change happen for their people in the inner city of Win- nipeg.
Te power symbol Back in the late 1800s, the coming of
the railroad to Manitoba was a game changer for everyone living here, most particularly for the First Nations, who were crowded out of their traditional lands to make room for an influx of Eu-
ropean settlers. Many of these settlers came through the CPR station and its adjacent immigration sheds. Tis massive four-storey,
120,000-
square-foot office building, with an elegant hotel attached next door, was built as a monument to the power of the railroad in 1904 to 1905. It was vacated in 1989, a decade after passenger traffic through the station had ceased and the offices were moved out of province. Te activist entrepreneur
In 1989, newly minted Mamawi-
wichiitata executive director Wayne Helgason learned the CP Station was for sale. According to the press, “not even
The Hub
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