“The Paddlewheel restaurant, a mainstay of The Bay’s downtown store in Winnipeg, will close later this month.
Officials with the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Compass Group, a food services company, say the longtime eatery will shut down on Jan. 24. 2013
Officials did not specify why they are closing the Paddlewheel, except to say in a statement that the closure supports “The Bay’s continued efforts to improve and deliver an exceptional shopping experience to our customers.”
The restaurant in the downtown store, at the corner of Portage Avenue and Memorial Boulevard, features a simulated paddlewheel steamship alongside one wall and painted steam clouds on the ceiling.
Some of the seating gives the illusion of being on a paddlewheel deck.
Once an immensely popular restaurant that has served generations of Winnipeggers, the Paddlewheel appears to have fallen out of favour in recent years.
In 2011, The Bay said it was revamping 24 of its in-store restaurants across Canada, including the Paddlewheel.”
From the CBC website
Old ads courtesy of;
http://winnipegdowntownplaces.blogspot.ca/2011/02/downtown-places-paddlewheel-restaurant.html
“The Hudson’s Bay Company founded The Beaver as a monthly digest in 1920, following a countrywide naming competition. The editors filled its pages with tales of fur trapping, encounters with natives both genial and ferocious, and far-flung expeditions across the border, all peppered with odes to the greater glory of the Hudson’s Bay Company. “Canada’s prosperity may be attributed to no other influence so certainly than that of the Hudson’s Bay Company,” was a typical declaration published in June 1921.
The first issue, dated Christmas 1920, featured a breathless dispatch from the HBSS Nascopie, voyaging from Montreal into Hudson Bay. The passenger list “included the Eskimo murderer ‘Ovangwak’ and his intrepid captor Sergeant Douglas, who bore the long arm of British law into the Arctic Regions last year in his search for the man-killing ‘huskie.’ ” Conversely, a later issue printed the pulpy tale of Hudson’s Bay man Alec Macdonald and his forbidden love affair with Nekamoos, an 18-year-old Eskimo woman. (“My father wishes me to marry Was-tag-win,” said the girl gravely. “The deuce he does! You will refuse, won’t you?”)”
from
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/02/17/how-‘the-beaver’-lost-its-name/
The Paddlewheel is an icon. My grandfather took me there when I was a child. It was a favourite spot when I was a teen and the office coffee destination when I worked in the store as part of the Bay’s Central Region promotions department wayyyyy back in the 80s. I will miss it.
How about a big send off Winnipeg. If you loved the Paddlewheel, come out next week. Bay management, what say you? Can you do something special for us on the last day?
Beautiful shots. Thank you for taking the time to post this so that those of us at home (and away) can share in the memories.
My pleasure! It’s sort of my job…