Pauingassi Trading Post

This picture is of the Pauingassi Trading Post, located 276 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg and 16 km from the Manitoba and Ontario border. Mission worker Henry Neufeld brought a request from community elders for a store focused on community well-being, as well as economic viability to the Conference of Mennonites in Canada, and a partnership developed with the newly established Christian Investors in Education group. On Feb. 26, 1969, the trading post opened to instant community approval on the front porch of a cabin. Now residents did not have to shop at the Hudson’s Bay Store in Little Grand Rapids. By 1971, the store had a positive balance sheet, and profits were returned as dividends. A new building and residence were built in the early 1970s. In 1973, a general store opened in Pauingassi, but soon ran into trouble with the community. The general store became known as “the store of trouble” and the trading post as a “store of peace.” The Trading Post was sold to a private businessman in 1989 and the store burned down in July of that year. Shortly thereafter, the Hudson’s Bay Company-owned Northern Store moved in to Pauingassi.

For more historical photos in the Mennonite Archival Image Database, see archives.mhsc.ca.

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