Wolseley, Winnipeg

Wolseley is a residential area in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, located in the west central part of the city. It is named for Colonel Garnet Wolseley, a British Army officer who came to Manitoba in 1870 to suppress the Red River Rebellion.

Wolseley, as a socially defined community, is bounded on the south by the Assiniboine River, on the west by Omand's Creek, on the north by Portage Avenue and on the east by Maryland Street. The electoral district named 'Wolseley' has wider boundaries to the north and west, and includes parts of the West End and St. James.

The area that is now called Wolseley was originally part of the Parish of St.James, and was annexed into the City of Winnipeg in 1882. It was developed primarily between 1905 and 1930 as an Anglo-Saxon middle class area.

Wolseley was home to an amusement park for several years before it closed permanently in 1909. Happyland included a 90-metre Doric-style entrance, a roller coaster, ballroom, Japanese tea gardens, ferris wheel, and a 240-metre circular swing.

Beginning in the 1950s, Wolseley began to deteriorate as many middle class families left the area to settle in Winnipeg's suburbs. Many homes were subdivided into rooming houses. In the 1980s, many young professional people returned to Wolseley and began rejuvenating and gentrifying the area. Today, Wolseley is once again seen as a desirable residential area, and is one of the most intact pre-1930 residential areas in Canada.

Businesses in Wolseley's small shopping district on Westminster Avenue corroborate the claim, among them a couple of organic food marts and small bakery, bookstore, used clothing store, and yoga shop. Harvest Collective - an organic food buying collective - ran as a not-for-profit organizaiton for about three decades.

The area has a population of 7,830, of which 7.2% reported Aboriginal origin and 4.8% were visible minorities. The average household income is $47,106 or about 89% of the Winnipeg average. Fifty-six percent of dwellings in the area are owned, while 44% are rented. (Statistics Canada - 2001 Census).

A community history, Rising to the Occasion, covering the neighbourhoods of Wolseley, West Broadway, and Armstrong's Point, was published in 2000 as a millennium project of the Robert A. Steen Community Centre.