Weston Stories I

I grew up in Winnipeg in a neighborhood called Weston.  The reason that it was called Weston is that it was located adjacent to the Canadian Pacific Railway's Weston Shops, which was a huge maintenance facility.  Most of the people who lived in Weston either worked for the railway or had family members that did.  My mother's grandfather, father, brother, uncle, as well as my father all worked there at some point in time.  It was a booming place in the post World War II days.

Weston was kind of an interesting little enclave because it was bordered by the Weston Shops to the North. To the south and east it was bordered by Notre Dame Ave. and McPhillips Street, both of which featured a great deal of industrial buildings.  On the west side it was bordered by Keewatin Street, on the other side of which was another neighborhood called Brooklands.  The overall effect was to create distinct borders around the neighborhood so that it seemed to me to be a little self-contained town inside the city.  Sometimes people would refer to it as "CPR Town".

When I was born my parents lived in an Apartment complex called Blake Gardens that was situated right beside The Weston Shops.  These apartments had been built to accommodate the large influx of workers and families into the area after World War II.  This was the height of the baby boom and my earliest recollection of that time was going out into the open area between the apartment complexes with my mother and seeing the place just full of kids playing and parents talking.  That was one thing about growing up in the baby boomer era, there were always lots of kids around.

Weston had three schools, two elementary and one Junior High School.  One elementary school was called Weston school and it was on Logan at Quelch.  Logan was the main thoroughfare through Weston.  The other two schools were paired together and were called Cecil Rhodes I and II.  Cecil Rhodes I was the junior high (grades 7 to 9), and was also called the "old school" or the "big school" because it had been the first and only school in the neighborhood for many years.  Located across the school ground from it was the elementary school, which was called the "little school", although it was probably larger.  The Big School was on Cecil Street bordered by Elgin and William Avenue.  The elementary school faced Elgin Avenue and was bordered by William and Worth Avenue.

Weston had a community centre, there were numerous shops and Mom and Pop grocery stores.  One thing that it did not have was a library.  This gave rise to one of my favorite memories of Weston and that was the Book Mobile.  Every Tuesday, like magic, this large mobile home converted into a mobile library would appear at a gas station at Logan Ave. and Blake St.  You entered in the door at one end and returned your books.  Bookshelves lined the length of the trailer on each side from floor to ceiling.  You picked your books and then checked them out at the door at the opposite end of the trailer.  There were always two librarians and they operated this nifty microfilm camera that took pictures of your library card and the card from the book that you were checking out.  I took many, many books out of that book mobile over the years.  It brought me great enjoyment and it is something that I don't think exists any longer.