Audio Transcript

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If you take a look straight ahead, you'll see a newer building on the corner. New is boring though, so naturally, we'll talk about the one next to it.

That building is known as the Paterson Block.

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Hugh Paterson came to Winnipeg from Oshawa, Ontario when he was 21 years old. It was a very different world in 1877, when he made his journey of almost 2,100 km. by horse and wagon, in search of his fortune.

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A year earlier, working as a grain merchant, he’d come across wheat from the Manitoba prairies and decided it was “the dirtiest but best he’d ever seen”. He believed the future of grain was in Winnipeg and set out to discover it.

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And discover it, he did! Hugh S Paterson played a leading role in Paterson Grain, one of the biggest players in Canada's grain industry and watched Manitoba’s wheat grow in popularity, as the prairies became known as “the bread basket of the world.”

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Unlike the places we’ve seen up to now, Paterson Block was designed to modestly blend in. Can you imagine the beauty of this neighbourhood for an impressive Tudor design like this to not stand out?

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The exterior hasn’t changed much over the years. Inside has seen some reno's, but many original features remain.