40 Years of Preservation, What Makes a City Worth Remembering?
- Eric Peters
- Apr 18
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 21
DIRXECP — CLIENT WORK — APRIL 2025
40 Years of Preservation.
One Night to Celebrate It.
DIRXECP partnered with Heritage Winnipeg to produce the intro video for their 40th Annual Preservation Awards — a cinematic tribute to four decades of protecting the city's architectural soul.
Client: Heritage Winnipeg // Venue: Fort Garry Hotel // Date: April 1, 2025
40 Years of Preservation 40 Buildings Celebrated 54 Slides Produced
THE BRIEF
A City Remembered Through Its Buildings
Heritage Winnipeg has spent 40 years making the case that old buildings are worth fighting for. Each year at their Preservation Awards, they honour the individuals, owners, and organizations who go the extra mile to protect Winnipeg's architectural history. This year was different — it was their 40th, and they wanted the room to feel it.
Executive Director Cindy Tugwell reached out to DIRXECP to produce an intro video for the April 1 ceremony at the historic Fort Garry Hotel. The goal was simple in concept, ambitious in execution: honour every single award winner from 1985 to 2025. One building per year. Forty buildings. Forty years. One film.
"What makes a city worth remembering? For 40 years… the buildings have been the answer." — Opening titles — Heritage Winnipeg 40th Anniversary Video
THE APPROACH
Structure as Story
The video was designed to feel like an architectural archive brought to life. Rather than a highlight reel, we structured it as a chronological journey — decade by decade, building by building — letting the sheer volume of preserved landmarks speak for itself. By the time you reach 2025, you genuinely feel the weight of 40 years of collective effort.
The cut opens with three title cards setting the emotional tone, moves through a greeting from Mayor Gillingham, then launches into the heart of the piece: a decade-by-decade montage of every award winner, each paired with archival photography and a concise note on why that building mattered. It closes with a ceremony photo montage and a dedicatory thank-you to the community that made it all possible.
01 / Decade Markers
Four decade-opening cards — 1985, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s — gave the audience a sense of time passing, each with an evocative subtitle about the era of preservation work.
02 / 40 Building Slides
Every award winner from Dalnavert Museum (1985) to the Gregg Building (2025) got its own dedicated slide — name, year, archival photo, and a short description of its preservation significance.
03 / People Behind the Preservation
A closing montage of ceremony photos from across the decades — faces, handshakes, certificates — reminding the audience that buildings are saved by people.
04 / Live Event Delivery
The final cut was formatted for large-screen playback in the Grand Ballroom of the Fort Garry Hotel, timed as the opening piece of the evening's formal program.
THE BUILDINGS
40 Years, 40 Landmarks
Every slide in the video told a story. Here's the full honour roll — every building recognized by Heritage Winnipeg since the very first award in 1985.
1985 — Dalnavert Museum
1986 — Bank of Montreal Building
1987 — A.A. Heaps Building (Bank of Nova Scotia)
1988 — Paris Building
1989 — Ashdown Warehouse
1990 — Kerr House
1991 — Toronto Dominion Centre Parkade
1992 — Downtown YM-YWCA
1993 — Canadian Bank of Commerce (Millennium Centre)
1994 — Walker Theatre (Burton Cummings Theatre)
1995 — Scott House — 29 Ruskin Row
1996 — Le Musée de Saint-Boniface
1997 — Former CPR Station
1998 — Bright and Johnston Building
1999 — Pavilion Gallery Museum
2000 — Empire Hotel (Centre du patrimoine)
2001 — Isbister School
2002 — Manitoba Electrical Museum
2003 — La Maison Gabrielle-Roy
2004 — Lindsay Building
2005 — Wilson House
2006 — The Beechmount
2007 — University of Winnipeg — Wesley Hall
2008 — Manitoba Legislative Building
2009 — Union Trust Tower
2010 — Waddell Fountain
2011 — Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centre
2012 — Manitoba Archives Building
2013 — Paterson Global Foods Institute (Union Bank Building)
2014 — Ryan Brothers Building
2015 — Union Station
2016 — City Council Building (Winnipeg City Hall)
2017 — Dawson Richardson Building
2018 — Confederation Life Building
2019 — Porter/Galpern Building
2020 — Westminster United Church
2021 — No Awards (COVID-19)
2022 — Ukrainian Labour Temple
2023 — Park Alleys
2024 — Philips Square
2025 — Gregg Building
ON SHOOTING IN WINNIPEG
The Buildings You Walk Past Every Day
What struck me most working through this project was realizing how many of these buildings I walk past every week without a second thought. The Millennium Centre. Union Station. The Burton Cummings Theatre. The Ukrainian Labour Temple. They're part of the city's texture — and they're only still standing because someone, at some point, decided they were worth fighting for.
That's the work Heritage Winnipeg has been doing for 40 years. This video was a chance to acknowledge that, publicly, in a room full of the people who made it happen.
THE NIGHT
Fort Garry Hotel — April 1, 2025
The 40th Annual Preservation Awards took place in the Grand Ballroom of the Fort Garry Hotel — itself one of Winnipeg's most celebrated heritage landmarks. There's a certain poetry in celebrating preservation inside a building that has itself been carefully preserved for over a century.
The video opened the formal program of the evening. Seeing 40 buildings scroll past in chronological order, with the room recognizing names and places, was exactly what the project was designed to produce — a collective acknowledgement of how much work it takes to keep a city's history intact.
"40 years of preservation wouldn't be possible without the dedication of our community." — Closing titles — Heritage Winnipeg 40th Anniversary Video
Congratulations to Heritage Winnipeg on 40 years of advocacy, education, and public service — and to Cindy Tugwell and the entire team for building something that genuinely matters. Here's to the next 40.
DIRXECP — Winnipeg, MB — dirxecp.com — @dirxecp
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