The North End Revisited

Cities and the people who live in them are the classic subjects of photography. Winnipeg's North End is one of North America's iconic city neighbourhoods, a place where its city's unique character and politics have been forged. First built when Winnipeg was the "Chicago of the North," the North End is the great Canadian melting pot, where First Nations and Old World immigrants cross the boundaries of ethnicity, class, and culture. It is a world of babas in babushkas and onion-dome churches, but also of poverty and resilience. Like New York's Lower East Side, the North End is also the place which forged its city's political identity of resistance and revolt. Award-winning film maker John Paskievich grew up in Winnipeg's North End, and for the last forty years he has photographed its people and its spirit. Paskievich's films, many made for the National Film Board of Canada, follow the lives of different outsiders, from Slovakian Roma to stutterers. The North End Revisited brings together many of the photographs from Paskievich's now classic book The North End (2007) and adds 80 additional images to present a deep and poignant picture of a special community. Texts by critics Stephen Osborne and Alison Gilmour and film scholar George Melnyk explore the different aspects of Paskievich's work, and add context from Winnipeg's history and culture.