Reel life to real life Most of Winnipeg's oldest movie houses are no longer standing, but several found new purpose after the final credits rolled By: David Sanderson Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, Jul. 13, 2018 Last Modified: 9:22 AM CDT Monday, Jul. 16, 2018

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/07/2018 (2315 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In June, the owners of 394 Academy Rd., a building that began life in 1931 as the Uptown Theatre, announced plans for its latest redevelopment.

Calling it a “centerpiece of the community,” Jeff Pratte, a planner and public-engagement consultant with Landmark Planning and Design, says the three-storey structure, most recently the home of Academy Lanes, will be transformed into a residential mixed-use facility that will combine rental apartments, commercial units and office space.

Also, because the building carries a Class 3 historical designation, its exterior architectural elements won’t be adversely affected by the changes, he points out.

“I guess that’s good, as long as it still has the look of a theatre,” Robert Callaghan says, immediately after being informed about the pending makeover.

Callaghan, 68, grew up listening to his parents speak rapturously about theatres they frequented in their youth, many of which, like the Uptown, were grand, ornate spaces that accommodated as many as 2,000 movie-goers.

About 15 years ago, the self-described trivia buff began amassing photographs and newspaper articles related to Winnipeg theatres of yesteryear. After retiring from his job with Manitoba Hydro in 2011, he spent several months organizing his collection, breaking it down into categories such as Main Street, Portage Avenue/Downtown and Neighbourhood.

In 2012 he posted the finished product online under the banner Theatres of Winnipeg 1900 to present.

Since then, Callaghan’s website has served as an invaluable resource for anybody who wonders whatever became of the downtown movie house they bused to on a first date, or the neighbourhood venue they walked to as a kid, to cheer on John Wayne or hiss and boo Captain Hook.

“After my website was in place for a while, many people who live or once lived in Winnipeg sent me childhood memories and data I was unaware of, some even with photos,” he says.

“I was born in 1950, lived in St. Vital, and the Windsor Theatre was my home theatre from age six to 16. The Windsor is still there… incorporated with the building beside it as Miller’s Meats, at the junction of St. Anne’s (Road) and St. Mary’s Road. Go behind this building and you will see what I mean.”

We did. He’s right.

That got us thinking. Although the vast majority of the 100 or so theatres Callaghan has chronicled — many of which carried romantic-sounding tags such as the Rialto, the Beacon and the Gaiety — were razed decades ago, a select few, like the Hyland Theatre, now a north Main Street synagogue, the Festival Theatre, home to a Sargent Avenue daycare, and the Windsor have withstood the test of time.

So, spurred on by news of the Uptown Theatre’s pending re-rebirth, and intrigued by Callaghan’s tireless research, we hit the street, map in hand, to visit a variety of locales that go about their day-to-day proceedings in settings that were once home to a silver screen.

 

Odeon Theatre

364 Smith St.

The Walker Theatre opened as a 1,798-seat venue for live theatre, musical performances and silent films in February 1907.

Its name was eventually changed to the Odeon Theatre after the property was seized by the City of Winnipeg for back taxes in 1936.

The Odeon remained in operation as a movie theatre until 1990.

NOW: Burton Cummings Theatre for the Performing Arts

Kevin Donnelly is the senior vice-president of venues and entertainment for True North Sports and Entertainment Ltd., the company that owns Bell MTS Place, home of the Winnipeg Jets.

Since May 2014, Donnelly has also overseen operations at the Burton Cummings Theatre, a downtown live performance venue that in recent years has played host to rock ‘n’ roll heavyweights such as Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Brian Wilson, and comedian Derek Edwards. (In 2011, U2 famously set up shop at the Burt, rehearsing there for three days prior to an outdoor show at Canad Inns Stadium.) 

Donnelly vividly recalls sitting in the Odeon one evening after he moved to Winnipeg from Regina in the early 1980s. On the night in question, he thought to himself he couldn’t have picked a more perfect spot to watch Amadeus, the Academy Award-winning film that starred Tom Hulce as German composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  

“With the balconies and moulding and everything, it conjured images of a European concert hall in the 1700s. So much so I felt like I was actually part of the movie,” he says.  

Donnelly isn’t the only one to have been impressed by the Burt’s ambience; world-renowned performers often pause to admire the view when stepping onto the stage for the first time, he’s noticed.

“During his show a couple years ago, Art Garfunkel took a moment to make reference to the theatre, telling the audience it reminded him of (London’s) Royal Albert Hall,” Donnelly says.

Donnelly, who often overhears concert-goers chatting about specific films they saw at the Odeon, says after True North took over the property, he became excited when he tripped over a few remnants of its movie-house days while poking around. (On the other hand, he has yet to meet Mabel, the Burt’s resident spirit.)

“This was the original projection booth, and taped to its door is a 1916 projection booth operator’s permit from the city, allowing the theatre to show motion pictures,” he says, after escorting a visitor up two flights of stairs to the Burt’s third level, or “God’s balcony” as it was called in the 1920s, when it was a men-only seating area.

“That’s a piece of Winnipeg history right there,” he continues, pointing to a yellowed, brittle piece of ephemera. “We’re like, ‘don’t ever freaking touch that thing,’ when we’re showing new employees around for the first time.”

 

 

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Tivoli Theatre

115 Maryland St.

The Tivoli Theatre enjoyed a 32-year-run as Wolseley’s neighbourhood theatre, welcoming movie-goers to the northeast corner of Maryland Street and Westminster Avenue from 1927 to 1959.

NOW: Foodfare

Store manager Ramsey Zeid knew his place of work used to house one of the first Safeway stores in Winnipeg.

But until an elderly gentleman popped by a few years ago, he wasn’t aware the art deco-style building, situated directly across the street from Westminster United Church, had been a movie theatre prior to that.

“I’d heard about the Safeway connection but didn’t have a clue what else it had been until this guy — he had to be in his 80s — came in one day and told me he used to work here as an usher, back in the ’40s or something,” says Zeid, whose family owns and operates five Foodfare locations in Winnipeg.

Zeid says he’s spent “a bit,” of time snooping around the premises, searching for clues related to the Tivoli’s past.

For starters, he’s peeked at the theatre’s original ceiling, hidden from view by the store’s drop-ceiling tiles.

Second, if you’re standing behind the wall at the rear of the store and look up, you can make out a raised seating area that looks like it could have been part of a balcony, he says.    

“One thing I haven’t figured out yet is how to correctly pronounce the theatre’s name,” he says with a chuckle.

“I’ve heard some people call it the Tie-vole-ee while others say Tiv-o-lee. I’m still not sure which one’s right.”

 

 

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Times Theatre

959 Main St.

The Times Theatre, near the corner of Main Street and Selkirk Avenue, opened as the Royal Theatre in 1908.

It was reborn as Von’s Theatre in 1923 then changed monikers again in 1937, to the Times.

It remained the Times until its closure in 1957.

NOW: Fish Gallery

Yew Wing Lam is the owner of the Fish Gallery, a tropical fish and pet-supply store that opened at 959 Main St. in 2003, two doors down from Connie’s Corner Cafe.

“I’m sorry but I don’t really know the history of the building,” Lam says when approached while he is busily checking water temperatures in his aquariums. “But I’m pretty sure this was a carpet store before I got here and I bet if you get in touch with them, they’ll be able to tell you a lot more than I can.”

Good idea.

“For sure, I have lots of stories about the old theatre days,” says Dane Kastes, whose father Paul Kastes founded Floors Moderne at 959 Main St. in 1961, along with his partner Sam Kreger. “I’m 64 and started working at the store when I was 15, back when a lot of Polish and Ukrainian gentlemen used to stop by to tell me what movies they saw there when it was the Times.”

Although Kastes never took in a flick at the Times himself, his father did, which is why he knows precisely how audience members spent their time during the break between Saturday matinees.

“Apparently during intermission, the owners would run tournaments on the stage for the local kids. Sometimes it was a yo-yo competition, while other times it involved those paddleball things, with the flat wooden paddle and a ball attached to it by an elastic band,” Kastes says.

“Whoever could keep their ball bouncing the longest while the projectionist was busy changing the reel won a free hotdog or bag of popcorn.”

 

 

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Convention Centre Cinema

375 York Ave.

Twelve months after the Winnipeg Convention Centre celebrated its grand opening, a movie theatre opened for business on the second level of the downtown meeting and convention facility. While Cineplex Odeon abandoned the 586-seat venue in 1990, it eventually reopened as an independently-run discount theatre, before it closed for good in 1996.

NOW: RBC Convention Centre Presentation Theatre

The first movie ever screened at the Convention Centre Cinema was Midway, a Second World War epic starring Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum and Pat Morita.

We know this because a quick-thinking employee working at the Convention Centre on June 18, 1975 took a few seconds to snip a “starts today” blurb out of the Free Press, which he or she Scotch-taped into a scrapbook for posterity’s sake.

“Since you first contacted us, asking about the theatre, it made me curious. Now I’m trying to find pictures of what the entrance or box office area would have looked like, and what other movies played here,” says Karen Ilchena, the RBC Convention Centre’s communications specialist.

(Hey, we can help you out; this writer is 100 per cent sure he saw Kiss of the Spider Woman, Lorenzo’s Oil and — “What’s your real name, Baby?” — Dirty Dancing at the Convention Centre Cinema.)

These days, the room, which looks almost exactly the same as it did when it became one of the first theatres in Winnipeg to feature Sensurround audio, is used primarily as a lecture hall.

Besides the projection booth still being intact, David Chizda, the convention centre’s director of sales and business development, is fairly certain the wall-to-wall screen is original, as well.

“I can’t say we hear a lot of people reminiscing about what movies they saw here but that’s probably because so many of our visitors are from out of town,” he says. “But I definitely came to movies at the convention centre myself. After all, when it first opened, it was quite the place to go.

“Even if it was minus- 30 outside, you could park downstairs, take the elevator up and go for dinner at the Shangri-La or Countess of Dufferin, both of which used to be right down the hall from the theatre. It really was the perfect date setting back then.”

 

 

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Garrick Theatre

330 Garry St.

The Garrick Theatre opened as a one-screen operation in 1921.

The Garrick 2 was added in 1968. Eleven years later, two more rooms — appropriately enough, the Garrick 3 and Garrick 4 — joined the mix, turning the downtown theatre into Winnipeg’s first quadriplex.

The Garrick Cinemas, the name ultimately given to the multi-screen setup, shut its doors in 2002.

NOW: The Garrick

Staging the first two Phantompaloozas, a pair of fan-fests devoted to the cult classic movie Phantom of the Paradise, at the Garrick in 2005 and 2006 was a “no-brainer,” says Doug Carlson, one of Phantompalooza I and II’s chief organizers and a consulting producer on Phantom of Winnipeg, a soon-to-be-released documentary on Winnipeg’s longtime love affair with the Brian De Palma-directed flick.

“Since the movie had played there so long in its original run, there was no other place we could even consider,” Carlson says. “I think half the fun of the event was simply being back inside the theatre, which had become a second home for a lot of us back in 1975. The only thing missing was the lady with the red glasses who used to sit at the box office. We considered having someone (play) her but it didn’t seem right.”

Sam Smith is the operations manager for MRG Concerts, the firm that has been responsible for booking live acts at the Garrick since September 2017. (Everybody have fun tonight: in June, the Garrick played host to ’80s chart kings Wang Chung, along with Cutting Crew, of (I Just) Died in Your Arms-fame.)

“I’ve been racking my brain because I definitely came here a million times when I was growing up, but I can’t think of a single (movie) title I saw here,” Smith says, standing in what was once the theatre’s projection booth, which has since been transformed into a dressing room for performing acts.

“I remember seeing Return of the Jedi at Grant Park and not getting in to see Alien at the Met because I was underage but here for whatever reason, I can’t remember what I saw.”

(For the record, this writer vividly recalls seeing Midnight Express, Eight Men Out and Stop Making Sense at the Garrick, the latter of which played at the Garrick 3, a 274-seat room that has since been converted into an indoor swimming pool for guests at the Marlborough Hotel, connected to the Garrick by an indoor skywalk.)

Smith says concert-goers often make a point of telling him how much they appreciate the fact the Garrick is still being used as an entertainment venue on the way into the venue.

“It’s almost like they come in to see a live show, looking for evidence of their youth. They tell me they remember lining up for popcorn at what is now our coat-check area, or which way they used to turn depending on which of the four theatres the movie they came to see was playing in.” 

 

 

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Metropolitan Theatre

281 Donald St.

The large and luxurious Allen Theatre opened to much fanfare on Jan. 2, 1920. It was rechristened the Metropolitan Theatre three years later.

The Met, as it was affectionately known, called it a day Nov. 26, 1987, following a 9 p.m. screening of the long-forgotten Date With an Angel, which starred Phoebe Cates.

NOW: Metropolitan Entertainment Centre

“Oh my god, there aren’t enough zeroes on a cheque to pay for that kind of advertising,” says Janet Harder, general manager of the Metropolitan Entertainment Centre, referring to the night in May when, prior to an NHL playoff game between the Winnipeg Jets and Nashville Predators, Hockey Night in Canada’s Ron MacLean and Don Cherry began their broadcast on the Donald Street locale’s second-storey overhang, much to the delight of thousands of revellers who were attending that evening’s whiteout street party.

“We had a lot of outreach from the rest of Canada – people who were interested in the history of the venue or in booking the room — after they saw us on TV,” Harder says. “For sure, we couldn’t have asked for better exposure.”

After being closed for 25 years, the Met — located directly across Donald from Bell MTS Place — reopened in 2012 as a multipurpose event centre, run by Canad Inns. It’s a rare mix of a state-of-the-art-facility that dutifully pays homage to its past, she says. 

“One of the very first things I learned when I came on board was how the room was refurbished to look almost exactly as it once did,” says Harder, who grew up in California.

“In fact, during the renovation-phase, the plaster mouldings were brought up from the United States, from the same company that originally made them. Ninety years after the fact, they still had the templates.”

“Concerts, university events, awards shows…” she says, listing the types of events scheduled week-in and week-out. “We also do a ton of weddings, so much so we recently hired a wedding specialist just to focus on that. We hear it all the time, people who tell us, ‘There’s no wedding like a wedding at the Met.’”

 

 

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Classic Theatre

1837 Portage Ave.

The Classic Theatre was one of the first neighbourhood theatres in St. James when it opened in 1926, beating its longtime, down-the-street-neighbour the Kings Theatre by three years.

The Classic shuttered its doors in 1957.

NOW: Classics Billiards Bar & Grill

“You learn something new every day, I guess, because as far as I knew, this place has always been a pool hall, since it stopped being a theatre,” says Mario Pereira, one of the owners of Classics Billiards Bar & Grill, when told research shows his establishment was once a community centre before becoming a popular neighbourhood hangout for pool sharks in the early 1960s.

Pereira, whose father-in-law Guiseppe Filleti along with his brother Rocco Filleti bought Classics from original owner Jack Shore in 1975, says there isn’t much inside the St. James mainstay to suggest it had once been a movie theatre.

(That said, Pereira escorts us to a room on the second floor he uses strictly for storage, where a square-shaped hole in the wall indicates precisely where a projector lens would have pointed out towards the screen.)

“On the other hand, if we head outside and go around back, you’ll notice how the building slopes down. What we’re standing on in here is a fake floor. The original floor used to be on a slant, so people seated in the theatre could see over each other’s heads. You really get a sense of that from the back lane.”

Every so often, a person in their 70s or 80s will drop by for a beer and share stories with Pereira about how they used to come to the Classic as a kid, and take in three movies on a Saturday afternoon for the princely sum of 10 cents.

“At times you do feel a bit like a caretaker of history,” he says. “I love learning about the place from people who grew up coming here.”

 

 

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Park Theatre

698 Osborne St.

The Park Theatre opened in 1912 as a vaudeville venue. It switched over to motion pictures 10 years later, and functioned as a movie theatre until it closed for good in 1997, after a frustrating decade of shutting down and reopening every few months under different management.

NOW: Park Theatre

Park Theatre owner Erick Casselman usually doesn’t bother to lock his front door when he’s in his second-floor office doing paperwork. 

“Because we get so many ex-Winnipeggers stopping by asking if they can have a look around, especially in the summer when they’re in town visiting family and friends, it’s easier to keep the door open, rather than get up every 10 minutes to say, ‘Sure, come on in,’” says Casselman, a movie buff who purchased the Park in 2004, and reopened it as the Park Theatre and Movie Cafe in September 2005.

For the first couple of years, Casselman operated his new venture as a combination coffee bar/video-rental outfit. These days, it’s a multi-use centre that’s booked close to 300 days a year with everything from concerts to improv festivals to off-the-wall productions such as Evil Dead: The Musical and Grease Sing-a-long to Winnipeg Jets playoff-game viewing parties.

“People who grew up in the Riverview neighbourhood have a real sense of attachment to this place,” he says. “Two years ago when Churchill High School held a (Class of 1967) reunion, there were literally hundreds of people stopping by, asking about the place and inquiring what goes on here nowadays.”

The venue was named Live Music Venue of the Year at the 2014 Western Canadian Music Industry Awards.

Casselman, who grew up in Snow Lake and had never set foot in the Park until the day a real estate agent took him inside to have a look-see, says only two things remain unchanged from the Park’s early days: its sidewalk marquee and women’s washroom.

“Everything else we completely gutted,” he says. “Honestly, if I’d know how rundown and decrepit it was before I stepped in here for the first time, I probably would have never considered buying it. But now when people tell me about the good times they had here and start listing off movies they saw, I couldn’t be more proud.”

 

 

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Roxy Theatre

385 Henderson Hwy.

Built for a reported cost of $150,000 — a fortune at the time — the Roxy Theatre welcomed its first customers on Christmas Eve in 1929. Once billed as “Canada’s finest atmospheric theatre” in an ad, the Roxy ceased showing movies in 1960.

NOW: Roxy Lanes

Like the Uptown Theatre, the Roxy Theatre was converted into a bowling alley shortly after closing its doors. A few months after purchasing the lanes in November 2009, Melissa and Robert Gauthier discovered they got a bit more out of the deal than they had bargained for.  

“I have an office in the basement of the building and one afternoon, when I knew all the doors upstairs were locked, I started hearing voices outside my door,” Melissa says, seated near her second-level birthday party room, which once housed the theatre’s projection equipment. “I immediately phoned my husband, telling him what I’d heard and he was like, ‘yeah, right.’”

A month or so later, a woman there for a family bowling get-together asked the Gauthiers if she could have a look around, explaining she’d long been interested in establishments with a bit of history to them. To which Melissa replied, “Hey, knock yourself out.”

After the woman was done poking around the first and second floors, Melissa offered to escort her to the basement.

“As we were going down, she stopped suddenly at the last step and said, in a super-serious voice, ‘Do you know you have three spirits down here? But there’s no need to worry; from what I can tell they’re fun.”  

“I don’t care if they’re fun,” Gauthier replied. “They still piss me off when I’m down here trying to get my work done.”

Besides the spectres, Roxy Lanes’ lower level also houses a museum-quality assortment of vintage seats, popcorn machines and projector parts.

To boot, the theatre’s original oak doors — each of which stands close to four metres tall — are tucked away in a dusty corner, partially hidden by what Gauthier believes was the theatre’s exterior marquee.

“One time an antique dealer asked me if I knew how much the doors are worth and I said, ‘I don’t know; $500 apiece?’ He said, ‘More like $2,500.’

“He wanted to buy them off me but I told him sorry, if those doors are going to wind up on somebody’s house, it’s going to be mine.’

 

 

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Windsor Theatre

592 St. Mary’s Rd.

The Windsor Theatre, at the junction of St. Mary’s and St. Anne’s roads, was reportedly opened in 1938 by a married couple, both of whom were members of the nearby St. Vital Legion.

After changing hands several times in subsequent years — in the late 1960s and early ’70s, it went back and forth between screening soft-core porn films and pre-Bollywood, Indian-language flicks — the Windsor closed for good in 1976.

NOW: Miller’s Meats

Cam Miller was 10 years old when his parents Ken and Cathy Miller opened Miller’s Super Valu Meats in 1971. In 2003, by which time his parents had turned the day-to-day operation of the butcher shop over to him, Miller was trying to figure out a way to expand his family’s bursting-at-the-seams operation without cutting into his adjacent parking lot. That’s when he and his wife Sandra decided to make an offer on the for-sale-building next door, the one-time home of the Windsor Theatre.

Six months later, not only had his store more than doubled in size, than Miller had a dedicated office for the first time, albeit one with a sizable hole in the wall.

“We never bothered filling it in or drywalling over it because we always thought it added to the charm of the place, and was a nice reminder of the building’s history,” Miller says of his projection room “window.”  “Plus it’s a good way to keep an eye on what’s going on downstairs, in the store.”

The Windsor Theatre, a framed photo of which hangs on the wall above the store’s cash register, was converted into an indoor skateboard park after it closed in the mid-1970s. It later became an evangelical church, then the Miracle Temple, which it remained until the Millers bought it.

“I can’t remember anything specific, but I’m fairly certain I went to movies at the Windsor when I was a kid,” Miller says.

“One thing I do recall for sure is how people going to movies there used to steal our parking spaces all the time. When you start thinking about the old, neighbourhood theatres like the Park and the Kings, you realize none of them had a parking lot. I suppose they relied primarily on people who lived nearby, walking over to see a movie for their business.”  

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca