What do the Bricks Remember?
In this quiet alley tucked between glass towers and modern facades, the bricks speak. Layered with soot and winter grime, each one holds the weight of decades—of workers’ boots, of deliveries once vital to downtown Winnipeg’s commerce, of cigarettes smoked in solitude. This back lane is not empty. It is full—of residue, memory, and endurance.
Just as stories live in the land up north, here too, they settle between the cracks of time. These buildings, though scarred, have survived waves of development and erasure. The alley is no longer a main artery of city life, but it has not been erased. Instead, it insists on its presence—unmoved, rough-edged, and real.
Beside the towering new structures, these remnants of another era stand with quiet defiance. They tell of a city that was built by hand, brick by brick, by people whose names we may never know. While the city grows skyward, this alley stays grounded, holding space for the past in a future that rarely looks back.
