I see Winnipeg (And surrounding area) as a major stop-off point for T-Bird/Panzer Smugglers (Portage LaPrairie, a township just outside Winnipeg, is listed as a refueling point in one of the novels), with the major industries being real food production, clothing and armour manufacturing, and munitions. The Smugglers use the area to move product around from NAN Lands, UCAS, and Quebec. A lot of the Small Communities found that the Smugglers were the only support they had during the chaos of Crash 2.0, getting essential supplies during the crisis, and protect them with a fierce pride.

S-K, Ares, and Aztechnology have a big presence, each for their own reasons, with AZT taking advantage of a few loopholes in International Law to allow movement of their goods from Algonkian-Manitou Council lands without dealing with borders or customs. (Basically, they bought land on both sides of the borders, put up a warehouse that crossed the border, unload in one end in AMC lands, and reload in UCAS. No customs inspections, no taxes. Not even any drivers from outside the country of origin.). Renraku owns the telecom system for the area, including the lines up into AMC lands (They bought out Manitoba Telecom Services, MTS, after Canada joined the US and it stopped being a Crown Corporation.). Horizon is starting to make in-roads, using the hemp farms in the area to get good quality paper and doing "Print on Order" book sales for the people that want "Dead Tree Format" rather than digital, and even has a small group making hand written books for the ultra-rich (In reality, these firms all lose money, which makes everyone wonder what they're really doing here.), and they are currently building a major factory that they claim is going to produce a line of pre-packaged organic foodstuffs. Neonet has a few small offices in the city, doing some R&D, as well as running a number of Tech Support Call Centres, sometimes using SINless employees for the more stressful jobs under minimum wage. The other Megas only have secondary subsidiaries in Winnipeg for the most part. DocWagon, runs the entire hospital board in Winnipeg, crushing all other attempts at competition with an iron fist, with the exception of non-profit organizations and city-run "Klincs" (Which were founded in the 1960s by supporters of the Hippie Movement, and have a strong amount of local support.).

The legal system in Winnipeg is exceptionally weird. In the 2040s, Lone Star had the contract, but a few racist officers had pulled over someone for "Driving While Meta" (An Ork in this case), and beat him so severely that he was partially crippled. Thing is, this was the Goblinized son of a city councilor who had a lot of pull and business interestes in the city. This was caught on camera by a few extraterritorial corporations who provided the tapes to the city in exchange for privileges in city by-laws that go beyond their powers you'd find in other cities (S-K and Ares are the two major ones, but DocWagon also got a bit from an ambulance dashboard camera, and provided the expert testimony.). Lone Star was nailed hard, and the contract was voided. Now, NYPD, Inc. runs the First Response and Patrol portions of the police department, RCMP Ltd. runs the detective and investigative branches of the police department, Knight Errant runs the SWAT team, and Hard Korps are in charge of Riot Duty. Needless to say, the combination of multiple corporations (RCMP Ltd. being a Crown Corporation now out of London, England) leads to some major problems of communications at the higher levels. At the lower levels, the "Blue Line" is very strong, and unless things get political, there is a major camaraderie that occurs, "Us against the scum" is a common phrase used to show a brotherhood of sorts. The courts are still run by the UCAS government, of course. Lone Star still has a presence in the city, owning most of the parking lots and parkades in the city, and holds them in extra-territorial hands, blocking any attempt at searching the vehicles by the various police departments as much as they can. Lone Star's only office space for running all their services is a small storefront, owned now by the very Ork that was partially crippled, that overlooks their old headquarters, now reclaimed by RCMP Ltd. (A lot of political and cultural movement happened to ensure that no amount of nuyen or blackmail allows Lone Star to get any better office space.).

"Winter-Peg" has now lived up completely to it's nickname, with the weather patterns completely fowled up due to the Great Ghost Dance. The Winters are exceptionally harsh, even in comparison to what it had been previous (Which was intense by Canadian standards), and the summers are scorching and wet in a way that even people from the CAS find overbearing. Spraying for insects (In particular, mosquitoes) happens every spring and throughout the summer, but there have been the occasional Mosquito Bug Spirit Nest found, which Knight Errant has the contract for dealing with, using extreme prejudice (Although there has been a rider in their latest contract that they cannot use nuclear weapons in the city after the Chicago Incident.).

The major issue that hits the city is that it's reliant on the Hydro-Electric Dams that are now in AMC lands, and the City and UCAS have to pay for every watt of energy, which causes blackouts in even non-peak times on occasion.

Dealing with the Shadows, there is a difference in how things operate in Winnipeg than it does in Seattle. The main difference is that both Shadowrunners and Mr. Johnsons pay Fixers a fee to connect them to each other. The larger the fee, the higher up on their list you will be when your skill-set comes to be needed, as well as the harder the Fixer tries to contact you. Saying "No" to a job or 'Runners is not considered a snub in Winnipeg, and the Fixer will not ask for a new fee as long as you don't make a habit of doing so constantly (From the 'Runners or Mr. Johnson side.). Fixers will make an introduction between the two sides at a neutral location of mutual acceptance, and then leave. This gives the 'Runners extra security as they know the security of their initial meet is partially secure compared to being forced to go where the Mr. Johnson insists, as well as having the Fixer lay his neck out on the line if the operation is a Police Sting, which is the reasoning behind both sides paying a fee. There are other small cultural differences, mostly relating to how the city is more laid back and sedate than Seattle.

Fashion in Winnipeg is a major thing, with a few fashion designers that specialize in winter clothing being located in the city, and there is a prevalence of using natural fabrics in clothing, particularly Hemp Fabrics. "Hippie" has come into vogue in the city, and even high-powered executives might show up with a tie-died shirt or tie under their suit rather than a solid colour. Sandals (No socks!) are the popular choice for summer and indoor wear, while winter wear requires layers of clothing, typically with synthleather or real leather being the outer layer to deal with Winnipeg's infamous harsh and cold winds, and boots of exceptionally high quality amongst even the poor. Beards are popular in winter among men, and heavy wool scarves are popular with women and elves (Who have a hard time growing a beard thick enough for the weather.).

Winnipeg is both heavily racist and accepting at the same time. It's a major place where the UCAS places refugees, and there is a strong cultural dislike for the NAN territories, which attempted to claim Winnipeg as part of their lands in the Treaty of Denver, as it was a "Urban Indian Reserve". Despite that, there is very little racial hatred for the Metatypes, or Changlings. It is a complete mixture of cultures from even it's beginning, with some families still seeing themselves as part of their cultural origin despite being natives of Canada/UCAS for over a century, and the music, food choices, and languages denote this, all of which have heavy English and French loanwords. English is the predominant language, with a particular dialect of French (Manitoba French-Canadian) being a close second, Acadian-French is also spoken here, although it is somewhat corrupted.

The North End of Winnipeg is the Z-Zone, being almost a complete war zone of gangs and criminals, often supporting smugglers and working as a major area for laundering stolen goods, especially munitions, food, and clothing.

Lifestyle prices in Winnipeg are a bit cheaper than listed in the main rulebook (90% of stated prices), with munitions (85% of stated prices), clothing and armour (80% of stated prices), and real food costing only 125%-150% of what a comparable synthetic choice would be, usually at a very high quality of preparation, and the multi-cultural nature of the city gives a wide variety of styles to choose from (If you can think of a dish, you can probably get it somewhere in the city!). Weapons are not produced in Winnipeg, and are at a premium despite Ares being a major player on the scene, (110% of listed prices). All other prices are about on par.

PoliClubs are still a major player in Winnipeg politics, with even Humanis able to get some inroads despite the lack of hatred towards Metahumans (They aim their hate-filled speeches at "The damned Indians that stole our land and country, and the immigrants that steal jobs properly ours!" rather than Metatypes.). International PoliClubs also have major support in the city, in particular the Irish Republican Army in Exile, who even has a councilmember on the city council.

The surrounding areas of Winnipeg are mostly farm land, with a Boeing airline factory in the Fort Garry Industrial Sector of the city, and a steel mill run by S-K in the township of Selkirk close by being the major industrial sources, with some minor factories also set up in the city and surrounding townships.

Military forces in the Winnipeg area include the "Royal Winnipeg Rifles" a light infantry group nicknamed "The Black Devils", the "Fort Garry Horse" an armoured reconnaissance unit (They've moved their old armory from the North End to the Fort Garry neighborhood, demolishing the ancient McGregor Armoury to prevent it's use by the growing gangs that were inhabiting the area). The UCAS has an Air Force training base (Sir Hugh John MacDonald Field) outside the city, and a Naval Base near The Forks that specializes in R&D, but also runs the "Brown Water" Navy that protects the area from invasion by way of the Red River that flows into Lake Manitoba, and the Assiniboine River, which flows into the former province of Saskatchewan, both of which are in AMC hands.

Winnipeg is a major node of magic, and has a multitude of aspected areas to various different types of magic, but Shamanism in particular, but also Masonic Magic (Some Mages can tap into this) as well. There are a large number of Free Spirits in the city, most of which are just sights to be seen, and are not dangerous at all. A few "Notable Citizens" of Winnipeg are actually Free Spirits that imitate Metahuman behavior, including some Buskers at The Forks, a major trading post since before European Immigration. While they do not have any real legal status, they are typically not bothered by the Government or Police unless they break the law. There is also a major point of magic in the former Legislature Building, which was built with spiritualism and magic in mind, but has been locked off from public view since it's purchase by S-K. As stated before, there area number of Insect Spirit nests in the area, with those areas aspected towards their magic very strongly.

And that's about as far as I got. I'm aware that most people won't know what I'm talking about when it comes to neighborhoods, but, well, there it is. Realize that I'm also "One of those bloody immigrants" into the city, although I only come from Ontario.

Excellent! I usually run games set in Minneapolis, sort of the same region, so it's good to have something to draw on for surrounding cities.

Also works as a place to hide out when it's too hot in Minneapolis. Or to catch a ride with a Smuggler to another country. Quebec, for all it's problems, is a great place to hide out.

As long as you can speak Québécois. Oh, and it HAS to be Québécois! Just regular Parisian French will not substitute and will show yourself as a foreigner, and attract some attention, not to mention probably get the prices jacked up on you. Acadian-French or French-Canadian will just not cut it, either, and might get you outright hatred. Shop those LiguiSofts carefully!

Excellent flavour for running in the city, and interesting detail for corps and cops. Nice work. I wonder if there would be some kind of Métis revival in the area. (I know you touch on that idea tangentially.) Any thoughts?

I'd have seen the Metis running right into the NAN, but there is a huge bit of it in Winnipeg. As I said, this was a rough draft that was only in my head. I was going to work on that more, including the possibility of a Ancestor Spirit of Louis Riel, or a Free Spirit imposter (No one is quite sure.). I was going to have him inhabit the statue of Louis Riel that overlooks the Assiniboine River behind the Legislature Building.

There's also Intrepid, a Free Spirit that stylizes himself off of "The Man Called Intrepid", Sir William Samuel Stephenson, who Ian Flemming once wrote about as "James Bond is a highly romanticized version of a true spy. The real thing is ... William Stephenson.".

I, uh, like Free Spirits, and, as I said, Winnipeg is an OLD city and full of spiritualism and life in general. More than any other city or town I've ever been in.

Very beautiful and horrifying take on SR Winnipeg, CanRay. I always wondered how Winnipeg didn't go NAN and I am sure you know why. I loved how you pointed out the mosquitos but what about the black flies?

And as far as agriculture goes, considering how things went with the corps in the early days of chaos, what do you figure happened with Monsanto? I would think that Winnipeg going to the UCAS would in some way be related to the answer of what happened to those greedy, power hungry bastards. Also, did you consider that perhaps Canada's part in the rounding up First Nations and putting them into camps might have also had an impact on Winnipeg in some way, perhaps the northern section of Winnipeg housed a FN processing camp?

Oh, and please find a way to include the homeless FN guy who jumped in the river to save someone ... twice.

Oh, and the flooding of the river that has happened a few times round those parts, work that in somehow too, could be your version of how some places end up with barrens due to earthquakes, magical, natural, or natural magically enhanced. And speaking of weather, weave something in there about the rolling thunder and lightning, those storms were like nothing I ever saw in BC. I think you kinda already weaved in the winter snow storms that some FN people were tossed out into by the cops IIRC.

Which reminds me, I think you hit on the gang land violence that has gone on there too, ghetto world and what have you.

No black flies here. There are in other parts of Canada, but not in Winnipeg. (I come from Northern Ontario where the two types of terrain were Rock and Muskeg, basically a thick swamp. We got mosquitoes, black flies, horse flies and deer flies!). Maybe the fogging gets them, but that doesn't explain why they weren't around the year they really screwed the pooch on that.

Monsanto? The Corporation?

Also, IIRC, the rounding up of First Nations was a US-majority thing, with some Canadian Tribes getting some really good lawyers. I might be wrong, however.

Flooding happens? On a flood plain? Really now? No, the systems set into place are pretty well designed against even massive flooding in Winnipeg itself. The outlying regions that aren't in the city, however... Well, that'd get a few farmhouses.

The storms I was going to write about in the weather. When I first got here, the rain almost never let up, and I worried to plug my computer in as I didn't have a good power bar at the time. Earthquakes are almost impossible here, the land is totally wrong for it (I grew up on a fault line, so I know a bit about Earthquakes, less so about Hurricanes or Spitfires, er, Floods), but, hey, Magic!

I never did figure out the political wrangling that happened at the Treaty of Denver that allowed the UCAS being able to keep Winnipeg, but, if I had to think of something off the top of my head, a rash of violence from refugees made it less desirable to the fledgling NAN.

Oh, I didn't mean to give the place a earthquake, more so that a terrible flood could do something similar to what earthquakes have done for other places like Vancouver, where Richmond IIRC was taken out by what was rumoured to be a magical earthquake, though its not like BC needs magic to have an earthquake.

And yes, Monsanto, the corporation. They have their hands heavily into food, so I am curious about a SR place that is heavy into food, which SR mega corp came from or gobbled up Monsanto and what kind of impact on Winnipeg that would have because it likes to grow food.

AZT most likely. They're the "Food People", and have their fingers deep in AMC lands for farming in exchange for... Something I can't remember right now.

So maybe food is part of the reason Winnipeg went UCAS instead of AMC? UCAS has never really been a big fan of AZT, correct? Soy wasn't always the staple it is in 2072+, correct, so UCAS would have wanted to hold on to some of the big bread basket, eh?

The UCAS lost a lot of the "Breadbasket States" to the NAN, which is a major issue. Food production and transportation would be the reason the UCAS would fight so hard to keep Winnipeg (Winnipeg is also a Transportation Capital, something I didn't touch on. Railways, Roads, and Waterways galore here!). How they got to keep it during the negotiation of the Treaty of Denver would be up to politics.

Dirty, dirty game, politics. But good for Shadowrunners.

Winnipeg itself isn't good for growing food (Something about all the concrete they have all over the place here.), but the surrounding area is farmland, yes. Production of the food happens in Winnipeg, yes. Aztlan (And thus Aztechnology) was part of the NAN at the time, but didn't have their fingers in the AMC yet, so that wasn't the issue.

And the UCAS probably suspects part of what's going on with AZT, but most likely doesn't have any hard proof other than a bunch of posts from anti-social, neo-@ borderline sociopaths on an illegal BBS.

Honestly, I'd always supposed that the reason it ended up in UCAS hands was that all the Natives were driven out. I kind of envisioned Winnipeg as the Hue of the Ghost Dance War; the Anglos had to destroy the city in order to save it. SAIM gave people a hell of a house-to-house fight before finally being pushed out. As a result, parts never got rebuilt and are astrally tainted by the violence, and people still are finding unexploded bombs and such. But with that kind of fight for it, it becomes a city very hostile to the NAN and no way in hell anybody was giving it back.

On the Native side of the fence, once it was lost they might be happy to trade it in the treaty for a port like Thunder Bay, which would bring a lot of economic benefit to an otherwise mostly landlocked country. And Thunder Bay would stand to benefit economically from being the main port, so I doubt they'd complain too much.

CW, I've always equated AZT with Monsanto.

And the flood idea, I'd save that for Fargo which doesn't have the flood diversion systems Winnipeg does.

OK Megu, that makes the best sense, except for, um, Anglos in Winnipeg?

...

Oh, right, they dumped "Everyone not AmerIndian" into the Anglo pool. Oh, also found out something that didn't click for the "How did there get to be so many Native Americans" question. Aztlan was part of the NAN at it's founding, which means that Hispanics were included in the "AmerIndian" list, even if they didn't have Mexican/Aztlaner blood. They might have only included "New World Hispanics" (North, Central, and South Americas), but that's still a large number that could explain the population "Jump".

Yeah, I'm definitely using this as a cultural category rather than an ethnic one. It seems like people in 2070 might talk about Anglo vs Native the way we talk about being Hispanic or not, as a category separate from and on top of bloodline ethnicity. And yeah, the Latinos being included thing is HUGE.

A thing about the flooding, we're seeing quite a bit of it in the area right now. I haven't been near the rivers yet, and live quite a bit away from them, but, yes, it's still an issue today. (The flood my house had to deal with was more of a trickle down the foundation, which is over a century old, and the only damage was to an Italian Duffel Bag I stupidly left on the ground.).

I'm betting that S-K and Ares tested a lot of construction techniques for the building of re-enforcement dykes and other flood diversion emplacements, as well as popular for local PR. Again, outlying areas are screwed.

Canada, Eh?

I feel inspired to write up the place where I live, now. Hmmmm, runner haven or corporate enclave?