The North End
Photographs by John Paskievich
Overview
Winnipeg’s North End has informed the Canadian mythology and influenced the national psyche. The North End also divides and defines the city of Winnipeg, shaping its politics and sense of identity. It is here where First Nations and Old and New World immigrants cross the boundaries of ethnicity, class, and culture, creating a complex multicultural community. There is joy here, and pride, and poverty, and richness, and beauty. John Paskievich grew up in the North End. In these photographs, taken between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, he set out to explore the North End he knew in his youth. What he found were traces of it, captured in the stillness in which the past still lingers and in the dignity and singularity of its inhabitants.
Reviews
“Paskievich’s real, unadorned glimpse into the community and its people is striking, but most of the scenes and characters captured here aren’t pretty in the conventional sense. It’s his inclusion of these tarnished details – gritty streets, peeling piont and wrinkled, weary faces – that truly gives the work its unfiltered beauty. Similar to Winnipeg’s North End itself, Paskievish’s new book is a gem that can only be discovered, explored and cherished by a patient and sympathetic eye.”– Up! Magazine, March 2008
“Whether sitting, walking, lying, standing, marching, dancing, or simply staring into his lens, Paskievich’s characters steal the show and turn his book of stills into a slide show that moves, informs and entertains from cover to cover.”– New Pathways, January 31, 2008
Awards
Mary Scorer Book Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher (2008)
KOBZAR Literary Award, The Shevchenko Foundation (2020)
