Winnipeg—golden as her nearby grain-fields. Through the long sharp winters the sun supplies the gold. In the early spring it anticipates the promise of the rich earth. You say to yourself, “If anything should happen, shortage, danger, unexpected circumstance, here is our answer.”
But I found the talk was all of Power—water-power—marvelous water-power.
A short distance of the north-east of the city, the Winnipeg river, collecting the waters from fifty-five thousand square miles of lake and forest, flows over a series of falls on its journey to Lake Winnipeg. Investigation decided the fact that the river was to do more. Gauging stations were established, scientific knowledge and activity were brought to bear, and now the undeveloped power of Winnipeg’s shining water sounds like a dream.
Winnipeg’s colour means strength, also it is flamelike and flame moves fast. That she is the centre of Canada, geographically speaking, and the gateway to the West, is an old story. But there is a much older [page 169] story. It has to do with the first glimmering thought of our great golden Winnipeg which was born in a Frenchman who came up the Red River—the river of red willows—as early as 1731. He tried to build a fort, was urgently dissuaded by the Sioux, but returning five years later, made a palisaded trading post for furs, named Fort Rouge. Then he built Fort Reine, where Portage la Prairie stands to-day. But La Vérendrye was looking for the western waterway of Indian fable and he traveled westward and then towards the south.
A history of forts and fur companies, savage warfare, cut-throat commerce—those were the early days. “Irregular” is a polite adjective for the methods of the North-West Company; and the “gentlemen adventures” of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who followed, were not much better. Lord Selkirk, a Scottish nobleman, taking advantage of bitter wrangles, bought a controlling interest in the Hudson’s Bay Company, who followed, were not much better. Lord Selkirk, a Scottish nobleman, taking advantage of bitter wrangles, bought a controlling interest in the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose stock had fallen low, acquired what is now a portion of the Province of Manitoba and peopled it with his settlers. But he was outwitted by the North-West Company, and in 1816 came the terrible massacre at Seven Oaks. Afterwards there was a partial transfer of this section to Robert Logan.
In 1817 a band of French soldiers came to the rescue [page 170] of the settlement then known as Fort Douglas. They remained for some time and made their headquarters on the east bank of the Red River. Here the first Catholic Mission was established and named St. Boniface. To-day a modern cathedral on the same site is the scene of the colourful ritual of the Roman Catholic Church.
Fort Garry, erected in 1835 by the Hudson’s Bay Company, was in the early ’70’s pictured by Mr. William J. Morris, who made the trip by way of the United States with a stage drive of four hundred miles, as “an enclosure of stone wall some twenty feet high. Government House, not very long ago headquarters of the rebel chief Louis Riel, a log and clapboard dwelling, and servants’ quarters which used to be storehouses for the Hudson’s Bay Company.”
The story of early times is as vivid as that of present day power.
Stirring days were those, from 1812 to 1870, when the first Riel Rebellion was over and the Province of Manitoba was formed and had entered Confederation. Times of adventure that Canada will never experience again—when the wilderness said “no” and civilization answered “yes;” when a bag of beaver skins or a string of coloured beads was worth a man’s life, when there were no rails, no telegraph poles, no motors; when dogsleds [page 171] in winter and ox-carts in summer made their long journeys through a silent, savage land. The date 1862, “first steamboat navigating the Upper Red River Reaches Fort Garry,” is more interesting than 1873, “Winnipeg Incorporated,” but 1886, “First Railway Train over the C.P.R. from Montreal,” is thrilling.
The story of “The Streets of Winnipeg” is told by Mary Hyslop in an interesting little book which shows us, for instance, why it is that in a flat country there should be a crook in Main Street. The river was the highway, and as the river bends the street takes on its angles. Main Street is a long trail, not planned like streets of the newer cities of the plains. Portage Avenue is the oldest trail to Edmonton and the longest street in the world. In the early days it was traveled by ponies and the old Red River cart, a vehicle made entirely of wood, “which could be heard long before it came in sight.” Notre Dame is of French ancestry, but Logan Avenue and the old Logan homestead have disappeared. This house marked the spot where the dead were laid from Seven Oaks. Here too Lord Selkirk stayed during his visit to the colony. Fortunately, the old Fonseca House still stands facing McDonald Street. The grounds harbour trees and lilac bushes, but the family of old Spanish descent live there no longer.
The very names of these streets are fascinating. One, changed to Elgin was formerly Jemima Street, after a famous hostess of the early days. And there is Colony Gardens, now Victoria Park, which was the centre of social life in the colony. South of Portage Avenue to the Assiniboine River lay the Hudson’s Bay [page 173] Reserve; so, naturally its streets received the Company’s names. History is also contained in the cross-streets south of Portage Avenue, Fort Street and Garry Street especially.
The half-breeds and the prairie wagons and the Royal Mounted Police. Later the railroad and the horse-cars and the problem of muddy streets. There was the Big Boom of 1881 and then the American invasion. Capitalists began to discover the Canadian West. Winnipeg was overtaken by eager days full of work, full of promise, full of enthusiasm. The golden tide had begun to rise and to surge in as though driven by some mighty natural force. Great Britain came to realize that here was a vantage point. In twenty years the population rose from thirty thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand people.
In 1907, Rudyard Kipling, speaking before the Canadian Club, said:
“I went away from Winnipeg for fifteen years, which in the life of a nation is equivalent to about fifteen minutes in the life of a man. I come back and I find the Winnipeg of to-day a metropolis. The visions that your old men saw fifteen years ago I saw translated to-day into stone and brick and concrete. Dreams that your young men have dreamed I saw accepted as the ordinary facts of everyday life, and they [page 174] will in turn give place to vaster and more far-reaching imaginations.”
“May one write of Winnipeg and not speak of the cold?” I asked her one-time daughter, Nellie McClung, who could never have written her stories of the border-land of the Great West anywhere else, and she said, “Yes—the casual visitor is sure to comment on the cold of Winnipeg winters. But those of us who have called it home think of the warmth of the people’s hearts and the happy days and nights spent within its hospitable borders. When I first knew it there were no skyscrapers or picture shows or juvenile courts or votes for women, but it was a great city, a dim, rich city to me. I wish I knew as great a city now. I would like to find a city where shop windows are as beautiful and the streets as broad as Winnipeg’s were then, and I would go far to see it—but there aren’t any, any place.”
The Rev. C. W. Gordon, “Ralph Connor,” has been identified with Winnipeg for many years as the minister of St. Stephen’s Church. At Banff his early mission work in the foothill country brought him in contact with some of the characters that have made his books famous. “Black Rock,” “The Sky Pilot,” “The Man from Glengarry” and others, were written in Winnipeg. [page 175]
Agnes Laut, the well-known writer, was born in Manitoba and in spite of long residence in New York has remained a Westerner. Her experience in Winnipeg began when she was a little girl and she has watched the city develop. It is still impressive to her. [page 176] To see the penniless immigrant of to-day become the capitalist of to-morrow is a training in economic ideas. “The weeding out process,” says Miss Laut, “was terrific. The no-goods fall by the wayside, also the whiners, the slackers and the shirkers—and those with the red blood and the dauntless courage carry the flag over the line.”
The foreign folk of Winnipeg can hardly be overlooked in any sketch of the city. Far away from the ocean road that brought them to this continent, the cities and towns of western Canada have attracted and held many European immigrants, so that Winnipeg is a splendid ground for the study of nationalities.
In cities too young for literary tradition one sometimes finds a modern writer gathering up the ancient customs and beliefs of these new comers. Living in Winnipeg enabled Mrs. J. F. B. Livesay to paint, through vivid translations of their songs, many brief pictures of the Ukrainians and the Ruthenians. As these people become more and more absorbed in Canadian life the songs will fade, so that the translations, not only of these but other folk songs in various parts of the country, is an important work.
I have heard Winnipeg called flat and treeless, but from a high window of the Fort Garry hotel we looked down on leafy streets. And in the Roslyn Road and [page 177] other residential districts the houses are set off by careful trees. All is not lost in gold. There is here and there an old-fashioned touch. Fuchsias and pelargoniums, in the conservatories of the Public Park, are more popular than the new favorites.
Just outside the city are the Agricultural Buildings, and the original Fort Garry is now converted into a delightful motor club.
Built of native stone, and with its surrounding grounds occupying a city square, stands the stately new Parliament Building with its huge pillars, and bronze buffaloes guarding the impressive stairway. At night the lighted dome shines over the city, a ruddy crown set amid innumerable lights….From nearby is the sound of a bugle call. It comes from the station or barracks of the Royal Mounted Police. [page 178] |
