How Metro Route 20 became Lagimodiere Boulevard

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This article was published 03/01/2023 (721 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In October 1969, the Metropolitan Corporation of Greater Winnipeg, or “Metro”, announced a ‘name-the-highway’ contest for its newly opened north-south Metro Route 20. The move was an about face to Metro’s long-held stance of not allowing municipalities to give names to numbered urban highways.

The Metro route system was launched in 1965 and stitched together existing streets, with the odd new bridge or junction, to create traffic corridors that would bring motorists from one end of the greater Winnipeg area to the other and then connect them to a provincial road or highway.

The need for a Metro route on the east side of the Red River was identified by Metro’s traffic planners, as the old Highway 59 was unable to cope with the traffic volume created by the rapidly urbanizing municipalities of North Kildonan, East Kildonan, Transcona and St. Boniface. Rather than expand the old highway, a new Highway 59/Route 20 was constructed.

Route 20 was built in two sections. One stretched from Dugald Road south to the Trans-Canada Highway and the other ran from Dugald Road to the north Perimeter Highway. Both sections opened a week apart in September 1969, with the odd junction still under construction.

Metro’s naming contest was approved at its Oct. 9, 1969, council meeting. It claimed that naming the new route was a way of celebrating the upcoming Manitoba centennial, but the more likely reason is that route numbers never caught on with the public. Even today, nearly 60 years after more than 20 Metro routes were introduced, only Route 90 is used commonly.

The contest was open to anyone living in the Metro Winnipeg area and the grand prize was a cheque for $100 with 25 consolation prizes of monthly bus passes. The entries were judged by an eight-member panel made up of representatives of the Manitoba Historical Society and St. Boniface Historical Society.

The Winnipeg Free Press checked in with the panelists a couple of weeks into the contest and learned that the most-submitted name was Riel Highway. Other suggestions included Century Highway, for the centennial connection, Apollo Highway, owing to the recent moon landing, and Shakespeare Road, for a St. Boniface policeman killed in a recent robbery.

The contest closed on Dec. 31, 1969, and three weeks later it was announced that of the 820 entries received, Lagimodière Boulevard was the winner.

Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière was a farmer and trapper. He and his wife, Marie-Anne Gabour,y are considered the first white couple to settle permanently in the West and were the grandparents of Louis Riel. A land grant given to the Lagimodières circa 1817 would have crossed a section of the new highway.

The winning entry was provided by George Funk, 17, of Lincrest Road in West Kildonan who took an interest in Lagimodière when he was covered in his Grade 11 history class at Garden City Collegiate. Funk thought it was appropriate that something should be named for Manitoba’s first farmer and was surprised there wasn’t already a street bearing his name.