Wawanesa Mutual Insurance is expanding its location at its eponymous hometown to accommodate recent growth.

The mutual insurance company purchased a Pro Hardware store and a 20-stall parking lot to accommodate more staff at its location in the village of Wawanesa, Manitoba. Wawanesa Mutual’s original two-storey, red-brick building – built in 1941 – no longer has enough space to accommodate more staff.

“We’ve got staff kind of all over, including a few in the basement, which hasn’t happened in years,” Wawanesa Mutual senior vice-president and chief operating officer Keith Hartry told Winnipeg Free Press.

Space was so limited in the old office that the company resorted to placing its staff in the boardroom.

“We still have an annual general meeting in Wawanesa each year with the board of directors, so we need that boardroom space,” Hartry explained.

Hartry could not specify exactly how many staff had been recently added to the Wawanesa location, but gave an estimate of about 15 new employees. He, however, confirmed that the company currently has about 60 staff in the village.

The insurer was founded in Wawanesa in 1896 by a group of farmers. Originally based in a room above a drugstore, it later moved to a small sand-bricked building in 1901, which later became designated as a heritage building and now serves as the Sipiweske Museum.

The insurer eventually transferred into its current building in 1941, where it continued to operate until it ultimately moved its executive offices to Broadway in Winnipeg. At present, the Wawanesa village building is the main supervisory center for rural Manitoba and all of Saskatchewan.


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