Eaton’s and the Portage Village Inn (A Tale of Two Cities)
Chief Danny Smyth
The origins of policing, and indeed foot patrols, come from the Thames River Patrol and later the Metropolitan Police in London in the early 19th century. Beat patrol officers became affectionally known as “Bobbies” – a tip of the hat to Sir Robert Peel who was instrumental in establishing the Metropolitan Police Service in London with a thousand officers.
The idea of a foot patrol is to have a presence to prevent crime, and to become familiar with the neighborhood or “beat”. A beat is the territory and time that a police officer patrols. Ideally, the patrol officer fosters a relationship with community members within their assigned beat to encourage cooperative efforts to make a safer community.
Since the inception of the Winnipeg Police in 1874, there have always been foot patrols in various parts of the inner city. For many rookie police officers, walking the beat was a rite of passage. I was no exception. I was assigned to the Portage Avenue beat (also known as Beat 174) when I started my career in 1986. I would become very familiar with the stretch of Portage Avenue between Main Street and Balmoral Street.
At the time, this stretch of Portage was mostly retail stores, office space, and a few restaurants and bars. The Eaton’s Department store was located on the south side of Portage at Donald (where the present-day Canada Life Arena exists). It was a rival of the Hudson Bay Store at Portage at Vaughan. The Portage Place Mall was being constructed during the period of time I was assigned to this beat. I spent many midnight shifts walking through the construction site.
I quickly learned to pay attention to the Clarendon Hotel located on the corner of Portage and Donald (at the present-day site of Browns Restaurant and the Alt Hotel). Many of the city’s thieves, petty criminals, and drug dealers frequented this establishment. A lot of shoplifted merchandise ended up being traded for drugs or cash in this place.
I got to know many stores and office managers during my time on the beat. I also got to know my share of thieves, drug dealers, and worse, during those first few years of my career. A typical shift on the beat started with doing a walk along the strip, saying my hellos to the storekeepers and managers, and seeing who was hanging around the bar at the Clarendon. Then it was off to an observation point where I could keep an eye from a vantage point high above the street. (A manager at Eaton’s often let me use a spare office that overlooked Portage). I witnessed scores of stolen property and drug transactions and got to know many of the criminals active in the area.
Chief Smyth as a young beat officer walking Portage Avenue, 1987
I had many remarkable times on the beat. Three events stand out:
1. One evening my partner and I were patrolling along Portage. There were a lot of people walking along the sidewalk outside Portage Place Mall. Walking amongst the crowd were two men pulling a big safe atop a wheeled trolley. The safe was heavy and they were concentrating so hard on pulling that they didn’t notice us as we approached. We detained them on the spot. Turns out that they had broken into a 4th-floor office in the Paris Building at 259 Portage and managed to haul the safe out to the street. The brazenness of their break, enter, and theft still makes me laugh to this day.
2. One of the regulars at the Clarendon Hotel was “Jamie”. At 16 he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 13 years in Stony Mountain for killing another drug addict. He was paroled in 1987 about the time I was walking the beat.
Jamie had essentially grown up in prison and was as tough as you might expect. At 29 years he was fit and in his prime but didn’t have much going for him. It didn’t take long for him to get involved with stolen property, drugs, and anything else that came his way. I got to know him a little, even gave him a break on a minor possession one evening. I kept track of the parolees who frequented the beat. It was only a matter of time before Jamie had his parole revoked. From my observation point that afternoon, I waited for him to attend the Clarendon Hotel – and he did.
I made my way down to the street and entered the Clarendon with the intent to arrest him. He saw me come in the front and took off out the back door. The chase was on. This was the first time I had ever tried to arrest someone who was wanted on a Canada-wide warrant. His parole, and his freedom, were being revoked and he was desperate to getaway. It was rush hour traffic as we ran along Donald and then west on Portage. We dodged moving vehicles and people for two blocks. I finally caught him around Portage and Edmonton and the fight was on. I had underestimated his desperation. The trick about foot chases – I would learn later – was not to expend all your energy running. You had to preserve enough strength to take hold and restrain someone after you caught them.
By the time I grabbed Jamie, I was gassed, and was just trying to hang on. Somehow, I had managed to yell enough information into the radio as I was running. The Communication Center dispatcher was able to figure out where I was and sent help. Fortunately, a bus driver stopped his bus and jumped out to give me a hand. Together we managed to hold him down and get the cuffs on. The backup units started to arrive not long after. In hindsight, even though I had secured the arrest, it was a stupid decision to take this guy on alone.
I never saw Jamie again. He was returned to prison, and then later convicted for several property and drug trafficking charges. He was eventually released but still struggled with addiction. He died alone in a rooming house on Langside at the age of 51.
3. The end of my time on the Portage Avenue beat was unique. Several officers from the Crime Unit and the Vice Unit took notice of the work I was involved in and they had a plan. I was assigned to a special project targeting the criminal activity that was occurring daily at the Portage Village Inn (formerly the Clarendon Hotel). I grew my hair long, changed my appearance, and was trained as an undercover operator.
I returned to the beat, so to speak, as “Gordie”, a petty thief that fenced whatever stolen merchandise came my way. Often, I exchanged “stolen” cigarettes for the property I was offered. (In reality, the cigarettes had been lawfully seized by Taxation officials and made available to me as part of my cover story). I hung out at the Portage Village Inn for three months. I bought anything and everything from cameras, VCRs (remember them?), construction equipment, and tools – I even bought a fur coat that was stolen from a local retailer. Each time I acquired property, a team of detectives worked diligently to trace the origins of where it had been stolen.
In addition, I purchased a lot of drugs. From opioids like Talwin and Dilaudid to stimulants like cocaine and Ritalin. (At the time Talwin and Ritalin (“T’s & R’s”) were mixed together and taken intravenously. They were sold as a “set” and were known as “poor man’s heroin”).
In the spring of 1990, police raided the Portage Village Inn. Dozens of people were identified and arrested for property and drug trafficking offences. For me, it was a culmination of everything I had learned on the beat.
(I am grateful to Wade Wawryk, Mike Rudyk, Rick Guyader, Wayne Harrison, Randy Vertone, Mitch McCormick, Glenn Rand, and especially my handler, Blair McCorrister. They kept me safe, and worked diligently behind the scenes to gather evidence).
The Portage Avenue beat has changed a lot since my time there. Today there is a walkway system that connects most of the office buildings. They are interconnected with venues like the Canada Life Arena and a transit corridor on Graham Avenue. Today, Constable Aaron Bourque is a foot patrol officer in today’s environment. His perspective shows how much things have changed, and how much things have stayed the same:
We can save Downtown Winnipeg…when we get our team back
Aaron Bourque, Constable
Downtown Community Foot patrol
I am finishing my 16th year as a Winnipeg Police Officer, eight of those walking the beat, particularly in the Sports Hospitality and Entertainment District (SHED).
I love walking the beat. I love all the friends I’ve made along the way, particularly along the beat. I’ve mourned the loss of my friends on the street as well.
They’ve become my family.
Constable Aaron Bourque
I am not writing through a political lens, or to reshape a narrative, and I try in earnest, especially these days to keep my ever-evolving politics to myself. I am writing this mainly as someone that rode the bus downtown all his life, shopped for cassettes and t-shirts at Music City and Wild Planet, got kicked out of Portage Place for “acting suspicious ” with my long hair and “metal” wardrobe, played in and watched bands in dingy, legendary venues that now stand vacant, and as someone who joined the army to see the world who then got posted back here, because I missed my mom, my friends and my home.
I am also writing this as a father, and a committed member of the community in loyal lifelong service to our city. I hope my experience and ideas may help find solutions to some of the challenges facing our home. I love Winnipeg.
I feel our city and particularly our downtown, has more work to do than ever to address the needs of everyone, their access to services and support, so we can recover from the challenges of the last few years and thrive.
It feels like this process has stalled, however, with increasingly adversarial politics that oversimplify issues that require nuance and candour. The stall further upsets the delicate balance on the street. It feels like people – agencies, activists, journalists, politicians – aren’t working together, aren’t communicating anymore. Silos and echo chambers have been built. It didn’t always feel this way, and now we’re at a standstill. Anyone actually out there on the street can feel it … whether you're a restaurant owner trying to save your business, or living in a bus shelter trying not to freeze to death. The street is not concerned with ideologies and partisan bickering. If we don’t work together we fail together.
It’s become quite apparent to me as people return to downtown after being away for so long due to COVID that safety and security are important to them. They now realize how things have deteriorated during their absence, seeing it for themselves. They are starting to tell me that as I am out walking my assigned beat. All the time.
I always knew this was important to those who had remained downtown, but they were more focused on survival, and advocating for them became difficult during the pandemic.
The political landscape that has developed in the last few years seems to increasingly view efforts to restore safety and security as an affront to less privileged or marginalized members of our society. Marginalized communities are further harmed by this mindset because they are also predominantly the victims of crime and are at the bottom of our safety nets when they start to fail. The people on the street are just as concerned for their safety now more than ever and tell us that every day. That never stopped, despite what was going on around us.
At our Millennium Library, which is part of my beat, security measures were put in place to make it a safe space physically, but they became controversial because it made the library now exclusive, and to some, oppressive. There were even lockers the public can deposit items in for safekeeping prior to security screening that they don’t want subject to scrutiny. It wasn’t enough though; the optics seemed to be more important than the issue being addressed.
It’s really no different than the type of measures that are employed at a Jets game, or a liquor store, but the unfortunate reality is that was needed to be done to ensure the library is safe, for everyone.
In the last 2 months, I’ve been in a number of critical incidents in the library and its vicinity including the assault of a 76-year-old woman in a wheelchair at 8:30 in the morning, or someone suffering from acute methamphetamine psychosis requiring medical intervention and physical restraint at lunch hour.
I’ve had countless weapons and assault arrests in the surrounding area over the years. The proliferation of weapons, needles, and drug psychosis make it dangerous and things escalate that quickly that often. Is downtown that bad right now? Yes, it is.
The root causes of why that’s the case are important, but it doesn’t address the ongoing emergencies created from those causes. Addressing both doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.
Is there a middle solution that doesn’t require checkpoints and security? I hope so, but only frank discussions and compromise are going to get us there ... not tweets and talking points. I don’t like what we’ve become either and I think we need to strive for something better for everyone.
I met Dwayne when he used to hang out all the time in the Exchange District on my initial year on the beat, after I had been voluntold to go to the new foot patrol unit they had just set up. Dwayne had a problem with alcohol addiction and lived most often in the Mainstreet Project area. He would be set up with housing from time to time but his addiction invariably took him back to the street as his dependance on alcohol , potable or otherwise was all consuming. This is a story I see everyday on the street and is a common plight of people experiencing homelessness.
He would become aggressive when intoxicated which resulted in my initial encounter with him, and we didn’t start off on the right foot at first. Our only interactions were when I would be arresting or detaining him so he could sober up but it wasn’t until a year later, when I transferred to the downtown plainclothes crime unit when I finally really got to know him.I was investigating an assault where Dwayne was the victim and I knew where I’d find him to follow up.I then got to know him in a different context. When he realized that we would help him just as readily as we help someone else when he would get aggressive, that changed things.
Two years later I was back on the beat and I would still have to deal with Dwayne when he had his moments of weakness but I also got to know him during his better times as well. When he did become aggressive with other people, he knew when I came along to deal with it that I had a job to do, but the relationship we had built transcended whatever state of mind he may be in at any given time. He trusted me and would immediately de-escalate and would go without further trouble to sleep it off.
We would have coffee together the next day. This happened fairly regularly .
When he was having a better day he would tell me that he was a father, and that he had great kids. I was a new father at the time and felt a kinship to him when he proudly spoke of his children. He told me of his time in New York and about his Ibanez Bass guitar he once had. All my bass guitars (and a number of my regular guitars ) have always been Ibanez. We agreed they had the best necks.
Dwayne was one of the first, but I began to try and build relationships with all my folks on the street. I made so many great friends. And when I needed to be a police officer they knew I would be fair which really took the edge off. There was a professional courtesy now. I felt like I was becoming part of the community.Years later after not having seen Dwayne for awhile, a transit supervisor told me that he heard Dwayne had passed away. I was despondent . I moped around my beat for a bit heading down Portage Ave until I turned the corner at Vaughn and not 20 minutes after hearing the bad news, saw Dwayne standing with some of my other folks: Jeffrey, Oliver, and Gabriel.
I was overjoyed…. I ran up and hugged him. Dwayne laughed and said he had been in hospital recently but everything was fine. He said if he was going to die that would have happened a long time ago. His wit was always razor sharp, even in his moments of weakness.
Dwayne did finally find some housing again but in 2021 I was saddened to learn a patrol shift had attended his residence on a check well-being call. He had passed away. The street had finally caught up with him. I have many folks from the street who’ve I had the privilege to get to really know, and unfortunately see how it takes them too.
I am such a richer person for having served them, and being part of their community. I never planned to walk the beat for as long as I did, but I felt it was my responsibility to look after my folks out there.
My experience dealing with people in various states of crisis in the Downtown or the surrounding area is that there are a number of other resources to assist, and with full respect to them, they stand back until we arrive despite whatever intervention training they’ve received. That’s not a criticism. In many cases, it’s simply not safe.
When things go well and the team works together, with follow-up, we’ve managed to divert a number of people to mental health alternative measures, housing, and support after making the case definitively that safety was the issue. That was the missing piece. Until then they were falling through the cracks. These are the success stories.
People experiencing homelessness in the bus shelters are another issue that’s become paralyzed by politics and competing world views among our decision-makers. The shelters have become littered with needles, catch fire, and are places of violence for those using them as a home, as well as those using our increasingly beleaguered transit system. They’ve become a no man’s land.
Housing, when it is available a lot of the time become venues for problems that aren’t adequately addressed by ‘just housing’. Hence a return to the bus shelters or encampments for many of these folks is inevitable. Anyone who knows me knows that I love and care for the people in those shelters with everything I’ve got.
As foot patrol officers on our beat, it has become our responsibility to make sure that these folks are alive and warm. That’s not our mandate, but we’ve made it our own.
My shift mates saved someone from a drug overdose at 4:00 in the afternoon in a bus shelter in December. It was happening in plain view of all sorts of people but only my shift mates recognized what was going on because they’re in there all the time. The public was staying away from the shelter because of the state it was in. It wasn’t safe. For anyone.
We’ve never left someone cold or hungry. We’ve spent thousands of dollars of our own money buying mitts, snacks, and coffees for our people. I’ve always marvelled how the folks on the street always want a triple/triple or four sugar/four cream at Tim Horton’s.
When I try now to get those things for my friend that lives in one of the bus shelters, I’m told to send him to the shelter eight blocks away. But he, like many others, doesn’t feel safe there.
There’s a van that sometimes transports people like my friend, but only if he is sober and not exhibiting a potential safety concern. That’s a barrier for a homeless person, experiencing chronic psychosis while surrounded by a pile of discarded needles.
In the bus shelters, we operate on a case-by-case basis, usually armed with food and cigarettes to coax the occupants out so they can at the very least get them cleaned. When cleaning the shelters, front-end loaders and multiple sharps containers are the norm, many times accompanied by the fire department or ambulance.
Imagine if I could call someone on my beat to get winter boots, a sandwich, and coffee delivered to an individual in need within 20 minutes and potentially triage or refer them to something better. If you’re a size 11 you’re in luck … I got lots of boots. Otherwise, it takes me a day or two.
Inter-agency communication and coordination are key. We need to focus on logistics as much as we do tactics.
The hard discussion of safety vs. shelter vs. the needs of the entire community is a tough conversation to have right now. There are a lot of social, political, and cultural sensitivities and very real issues that come up when trying to address them. The last thing we want to do is enforcement without a plan in place by other community actors for a bus shelter or encampment.
We need to solve this as a team.
As the Winnipeg Free Press editorial board wrote recently for another hot button issue, “It’s time to choose civility over conflicts”, cities are fortunate to not have systems in place where they are governed by party lines. Cities can be more nuanced and pragmatic. I implore our city leaders to use this system to their advantage and be exactly that.
Even as someone who has been out there as long as I have, on the street, I’m still an outsider looking in. I had a much easier childhood than any kid I’ve ever met out there. I have my blind spots too. But the first thing I learned when I joined the army at 19 is if you've got a job to do it’s irrelevant what your differences are, or where you came from… you need to work as a team otherwise none of your problems will be solved.
You’ll either fail together or succeed together. Winnipeg needs to work as a team again for the benefit of our city. We can succeed together. I do my best and will come to the table with anyone that wants to help our city. Perspectives need to be shared, not dismissed.
For anyone that doesn’t want to be on the team just know I’ll always be there if you change your mind. And together we can help Winnipeg.
That’s my community commitment.