Portage and Main: How an iconic intersection shaped Winnipeg’s history, politics, and urban life explores stories of Portage and Main throughout Winnipeg’s history and the complicated relationship between the city’s oldest intersection and culture of the urban environment that grew around it.

Fifty years ago, Portage and Main was closed to pedestrians as part of a downtown renewal project. This left an intersection void of pedestrians, and the promised vision of a revitalized city never came to fruition. 

In 2025, Portage and Main will open to pedestrians once again. With a city struggling to balance the demands of its sprawling suburbs with its need to invest in downtown, the future of this iconic crossroad is in flux once again. 

Winnipeg historians Alex Judge and Sabrina Janke, hosts of the One Great History podcast, describe how open, closed, or somewhere strange and in-between, the intersection’s history reflects the ideas of what Winnipeg is, could be, and has been. 

Whatever the case, one thing is clear: Portage and Main is far more than just an intersection.