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Photo: Courtesy of City Park Runners
City Park Runners was the first independent run shop in Winnipeg, and 20 years later, they’re still going—in the same building where they started, right across from what used to be called City Park. The current owner, Jonathan Torchia, bought out the original owner a few years ago, but the former paramedic was a running enthusiast organizing groups and runs in the city long before he made the shift to retail.
2021 was a weird year to enter the retail space: Covid restrictions were implemented and loosened, and, while the run scene was booming in Canada, retailers struggled to meet demand while not being allowed to welcome customers into their stores. That didn’t stop Torchia, though. When the shop owner declared he was ready to sell, Torchia was ready to buy. “I was in need of a big career change,” he says. “I’d been heavily involved in the running community as a race director for a fairly large race, helping at run clubs and coaching. All of the stuff I was enjoying was running-related, so I jumped at the opportunity.”
Photo: Courtesy of City Park Runners
Many run shop owners are longtime runners. Torchia isn’t new to running, but he does consider himself a later-in-life runner. “I wasn’t born into running,” he says. “I wasn’t a naturally gifted athlete. I was more likely to skip out on the endurance running gym class because I just didn’t like to run. I was a big, muscle-y, butterball kind of guy, and I wanted nothing to do with running. But then my very amateur football career ended after high school, and I realized I couldn’t just be that big guy. I had to change my lifestyle.”
At 20, he reluctantly got on the treadmill at the local YMCA and gritted it out. At first, it was about getting through one mile. Then, 20 minutes. It built from there, and suddenly, he was on the start line of a half-marathon, where he admits he made every mistake you’d expect a new runner to make. That day, he officially fell in love with the sport. “My life just became all about the run,” he says.
Photo: Courtesy of City Park Runners
Marketing and event planning manager Olivier Robidoux had a slightly different entry to the sport, coming to running after a stint as an elite mountain biker. “Towards the end of my cycling, I was in a weird place in my life, and I thought, let’s try something different,” he says. For him, that was training for a marathon. Like Torchia, he fell in love.
For both of them, the Winnipeg running community played a big role in growing their passion for the sport. “Winnipeg has one of the best run communities, in my mind,” says Torchia. “It shows up. It’s super supportive, super community-driven, really inclusive.” Any group run in the city can easily bring out more than 100 runners, and the shop’s club—the City Park Runners Friends Run Run Club—is no different.
“The community is always rallying behind one another, helping each other out and pushing one another,” says Torchia. “The one thing we pride ourselves on is being inclusive. We don’t want elitists, and we don’t want people with egos. We just want everyone to walk in the door and feel welcome and wanted and connected.”
“No one’s here just to run fast,” adds Robidoux. “I think people show up to spend time with each other.”
Photo: Courtesy of City Park Runners
And of course, the elephant in the room: Winnipeg in winter is cold. How do run clubs run when it’s -30 C?? If you’re from the Prairies, you likely know the answer: you add a few more layers, and you show up anyway. “People don’t stop running,” says Robidoux. “For the two weekly runs that our club does out of the shop, we’ll have 45 runners coming every single week. The city doesn’t hibernate during the winter, they just keep doing all those activities. Yes, it’s cold. Yes, we are all sick of it by now. But people still stay involved.”
In addition to weekly runs, the shop hosts events. Their Run Your Lungs Out fundraiser, where they raise funds for Cancer Care Manitoba, is coming up; it involves eight treadmills run around the clock for 24 hours, and last year they raised $125,000. “I feel lucky to be able to plan these events with my staff in the community,” says Torchia. “Every year, we host this event called Bagels and Beers and 5K Cheers. It’s important to me that we’re putting on events and being a part of the community.”
As with any local running store trying to make it in 2026, community is key. “Of course, we have to sell shoes and apparel and nutrition to pay the staff and turn the lights on. But more important, we’re woven into the community,” says Torchia. “Our slogan is ‘in the community, for the community, a part of the community.’ We want every single guest that comes through our door to have a positive experience, whether they buy something or not. We want it to be so good that they’re going to talk about it. And that’s one thing that happens repeatedly on the daily, in our shop. We greet everyone and ask, ‘Oh, have you been here before?’ If someone is new, they almost always tell us that a friend recommended they come in. And that’s always a really nice feeling.”