Читать книгу A Winnipeg Album - John David Hamilton - Страница 7

1881 WAS THE YEAR of the showdown at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, and the year when Sitting Bull returned to the United States after five years sanctuary in Canada following the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

More important, it was the year of the Winnipeg railroad boom when Canadians seriously began building the CPR and settling the prairies. In many ways, Winnipeg was the most turbulent town on a wild frontier because it was the single gateway to the Canadian West — the only comparable American entrance ports were Kansas City and St. Joseph, Missouri. Winnipeg prepared the way for Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary . . . even far-off Vancouver. This was Camelot, one of a hundred Camelot’s about to rise on the prairies between the North Saskatchewan River and the Rio Grande, and the Red River of the north and the Red River of the south.

It was a time of rugged frontiersmen whether they were aboriginal Indians, Metis buffalo hunters, or navvies on the railroad.

Winnipeg had as much colour as Kansas City, Denver, or Omaha, and in our own history it was more important than any of these cities were in the development of the United States.

But what made Winnipeg and its North American counterparts different was that the prairies were opened at the time of the greatest technological revolution in the history of mankind, which saw the emergence of railway and steamboat travel, the telegraph, the telephone, the electric light bulb and the electric motor, the internal combustion engine, and the airplane.

The Red River Rebellion came in 1869, before the Selkirk Settlement at the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine had established a real town. There were a few settlers and a few long-sighted hustlers who saw possibilities in the future and were determined to steal a stake from the Indians and Metis. Their prototype was Dr. John Schultz, villain or hero, who fought Riel and ended up a knight and lieutenant-governor of the province. Manitoba was already a part of the new nation of Canada when Crazy Horse killed Custer in 1876.

The CPR set up shop in Winnipeg in 1881, and from then on the city’s future was mapped out.

As for my family, my grandfather, Dave Hamilton, a gawky, twenty-two-year-old Ontario farm boy, came to Winnipeg first in 1881. He said there were 100,000 people when he arrived and only 10,000 when he came back during the bust a few years later. Both were exaggerated figures, but he had already embraced the big brag fashion of the west. My father, at 13, lived in a “soddy” on the bald prairie in 1900 while the homestead house was being built. I was conceived on a bush cattle ranch north of Winnipeg in 1919.

So my western ties go as deep as any white man’s, apart from the French-Canadian voyageurs and the Selkirk Settlers.

Wagons at Portage and Main — before there was a city to go with them (1872).

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American covered wagons heading west — in Canada (1880).

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The village grows (1874).

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Parking was easy on Main Street (1883) . . .

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. . . but there were crowds at times.

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The family station wagon — an Indian family with a Red River cart.

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Or you might prefer the latest 1880s model of a skidoo. (Dog teams in front of The Hudson’s Bay Company).

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THE SETTLEMENT at The Forks began in violence with the Seven Oaks Massacre in 1816, when Nor’Wester buffalo hunters struck down Scottish settlers and continued with the first Riel rebellion in 1869. This was rough frontier country. The crooks and hustlers from Upper Canada had been stealing land from Metis settlers for a generation with the full support of the Queen’s government, and the Metis were finally lashing back. Louis Riel was hanged for his pains. His antagonist during the rebellion, Dr. John Schultz, lived on to become a knight of the realm and lieutenant-governor of Manitoba.

Apart from the rebellion, the transition from frontier fur-trading post to real city went with remarkable speed and efficiency. Winnipeg grew up at the Forks of the Assiniboine and Red — which became the corner of Portage and Main — while Riel’s home town of St. Boniface, across the Red, became a peaceful village, then a town.

Bakery in 1900 on what would become Tache Boulevard.

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Norwood Hotel.

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Whether you were laying out a lawn or turning the sod for the Red River railway to the States, that awful gumbo mud had to be dealt with.

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More and more branch lines spread out — to the American border and to Hudson Bay.

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As soon as the railways arrived, farmers hitched up the old ox to the wagon and unloaded supplies.

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The immigrants never stopped coming, and in 1915 they were surging in almost as fast as in 1910.

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By 1910, the CPR was a venerable institution and ready to make a monument of the first locomotive, the Countess of Dufferin, before an enthusiastic crowd.

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As the new postage-stamp province of Manitoba began to fill up, the settlers brought with them civilization on every level. Among the first institutions were the churches, which began as missions but soon took on a much more important role. The Roman Catholics and Anglicans had missions and schools in 1820; the Presbyterians came in the 1870s and the Methodists in the 1880s. For many years, Wesley College was the only high school in Manitoba.

Manitoba College (Presbyterian).

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St. Boniface College, Bishop’s Palace, and Cathederal.

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New St. Boniface Roman Catholic Cathedral.

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St. John’s College (Anglican).

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Wesley College (Methodist).

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WESLEY COLLEGE was unique among the religious institutions of higher learning on the prairies. The Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Presbyterians all sent their clergy out to minister unto the aboriginals and the newcomers and their colleges were largely used at first to train missionaries. But the Methodists had a broader perspective. For many years, Wesley College was the only high school in the province and it also threw open its doors to young people of all denominations. Until the Second World War at least, the non-sectarian University of Manitoba was segregated and had a quota system which kept out most Jews. It was also too expensive for poor immigrant boys and girls and its president, Sydney Smith, said publicly that only the well-to-do should be given a higher education.

But Wesley College, under Principal J.H. Riddell, welcomed everybody and kept its fees low. That meant there were many students who were the sons and daughters of impoverished clergymen and school teachers. But there were many Jews, Ukrainians, and other Central and Eastern Europeans, and even Canadian Indians.

We learned about one another and Wesley became perhaps the greatest force for tolerance in a province that had always been riven by religious and racial bigotry.

I am eternally grateful to my alma mater.

Religion came to the prairies with the La Verendryes, who built Fort Maurepas in 1734 near the Forks where the Assiniboine River joined the Red. This had been one of the great junction points of the world from time immemorial: here woodland and plains’ Indians met to trade — down the Red from the south, east along the Assiniboine from the true prairies, west along the Winnipeg River from the east, up the Red from Lake Winnipeg and the whole Saskatchewan River system.

Roman Catholic missionaries were at the Forks early and they were soon followed by Anglican and Presbyterian missionaries. As elsewhere, religion was a two-edged sword as far as the aboriginals were concerned. On the one hand, the missionaries tried to moderate the behaviour of the more rapacious white traders while at the same time bringing Christianity to the natives. On the other hand, Christian missionaries did their best to wipe out native religions and, indeed, all native culture.

Later, the Christian clergymen and Jewish rabbis were a pervasive influence on the new white settlers who poured in with the building of the railroads.

The early city of Winnipeg grew up around tiny Central Park, which in turn was close to several impressive churches, such as Knox Presbyterian.

The Rich