© 2025, Christian Cassidy
Place: Wedley Block
Address: 937 - 943 Portage Avenue
Constructed: 1919 and 1923
Closed: Last businesses left in 2024, major fire in December 2025
The earliest newspaper mention that can be found of this property comes in January 2, 1920 edition of the Winnipeg Tribune. A story announced “negotiations are in progress for the purchase of a portion of the W. N. Kennedy property on Portage Avenue at the northwest corner of Banning Street".
The purchaser of the property, who was represented by a real estate firm and did not want his name divulged, was said to have put a down payment of $10,000 for a section measuring 220 feet along Portage and 242 feet deep on Banning.
There was no follow-up to the article, but by December 1920, the first advertisements by a business at this corner suggests that the sale had gone through and a building had been constructed.
Wedley's series of grand opening ads, Jan and Feb 1921
The man who bought the land and built the store was grocer Walter Ernest Wedley. He was born in England and came to Canada as a young man in 1905. The following year, he married Elizabeth Mellors, who had come from England a couple of years before him.
Wedley had operated grocery stores in the vicinity for a number of years, including one at Portage and Sherburn and Portage at Arlington. By the time this store opened, they were living at 363 Banning Street with their four children.
This new store was a combination grocery, lunch counter, and confectionery shop, which was unusual for the time. From his ads, it is clear that Wedley was not just concentrating on selling to the neighbourhood, but to passing motorists heading out of town.
Wedley took out a $12,000 permit to construct a building at this corner in April 1923. It is unclear if it was a completely new building or if he just added units onto the store he had just built three years earlier.
By the end of the year, his grocery was joined by John Stalker Meats at 939, a vacant shop at 941, and the Warner Fur Company at 943.
Not long after the building opened, the Wedleys' personal life became rocky.
In 1925, the couple separated and Mrs. Wedley received the family home on Banning Street and a $125 monthly allowance for her and the children. She successfully took her husband to court seeking an extra $20 per month.
By January 1926, Mr. Wedley was in rough financial shape and declared bankruptcy. Somehow, he managed to hold onto the building and business - perhaps his land holdings had increased enough in value that when sold off satisfied his creditors..
A further blow came in April 1927 when Mrs. Wedley died at the Grace Hospital at the age of 38 after a months-long illness. Her death sparked a nasty legal battle over the ownership of the house and its contents between her husband and her family.
The 1926 street directory shows the lineup of businesses as: W. E. Wedley grocer at 937, Dugald McMillan Meats at 939, Cooper's Electric Bakery at 943, and Alex Gilchrist barber.
These types of businesses remained fairly constant in the block over the next couple of decades with the odd flower shop and tailor thrown into the mix.
By 1940, Wedley had remarried, moved into an apartment at 760 Wellington Avenue, and operated a second store in an apartment block at 753 Wellington. In 1944, he leased out the Portage Avenue store, and it became known as Brown's Confectionery owned by William Brown.
The following year, Wedley sold the entire block, including the store. He eventually moved to Vancouver where he died in 1981.
The grocery then became Ray and Mc Ewan's Red and White Store. Red and White was a loose chain of stores. Each was independently owned and operated, but the owners were able to pool their purchasing and advertising dollars to help compete with the big corporate chains.
The last grocery at this location was owned by Alex Bremner in the late 1940s. It closed in 1950, right around the time Safeway announced that it was going to build one of its new "mega stores" a block away. The space then became home to Henry Shumsky's Fur Shop.
A long-term tenant of the building was Peter Guy Gamble, a CPR employee who lived at 910 Valour Road with his wife, Mae, and their two sons. He opened Gamble's Radio Shop at 941 Portage in 1941.
As the name suggests, the store repaired home radios. It also sold records and was well-known for introducing the latest American jazz artists to local music lovers. The record sales were due to Gamble also being a musician. He played in several bands, including the Gar Gillies Jump Band, (Gillies of Garnet amplifier fame.)
In 1946, the shop became the local repair depot for Canadian Marconi brand car radios. In the
1950s, as television was taking off, it got into antenna repair and
eventually TV sales and rentals.
Gamble ran the store until 1965. It continued under the his name for a couple of years before it became Quad A Electronics TV Repair.
Countless other businesses called the Wedley Block home over the century, including Drag City Performance Sales in the 70s and 80s, a Magic Cuts salon in the early 2000s, and Cafe Ce Soir from 2012 to 2019.
No Name Autos Sales, located behind the Wedley Block, burned down in February 2018. Then, two long-time businesses departed. One was the Flower Lady, who had been there since 1995, and the other was Jonnie's Sticky Buns.
The entire 23,064 sq. ft. block from Banning to Lipton streets was then combined into a single lot under the address 955 Portage Avenue, which sparked redevelopment rumours.
A couple of businesses did continue at the site, with Food For Folks and Phantom Nails moving out in 2024.
In November 2025, a variance was approved to permit the construction of a six-storey, 24,000-square-foot, mixed-use commercial and office building under the address 951 Portage Avenue.
In December 2025, the Wedley Block, by then vacant, suffered a major fire that started in the 943 Portage space and will be demolished.
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