In 1907, Thomas A. Foster and his associates purchased 40 acres of land near the Methodist Church at Cypress River from a Mr. Chewing to establish a brick yard. Foster was a contractor from Stonewall and he employed 16 men at his brick-making yard. The site was served by a Canadian Pacific Railway spur track and had its own drying sheds and kilns. The T. A. Foster and Company made white brick and salmon-coloured brick. A Monarch brick-making machine was used to produce this brick which had a capacity to produce 45,000 bricks per day. However, the yard typically produced 20,000 to 25,000 bricks per day.
J. Christie of Cypress River purchased 50,000 bricks from Foster and Company for the construction of his new home. The contractor for the project was Thyne of Belmont.
The yard was no longer producing bricks by 1908 and, by this time, brick was being brought into the town by train from the Somerset Brick Yard for the veneer on the residence of G. W. Harrison.
Manitoba Brick Yards by Randy Rostecki, Manitoba Historic Resources Branch Report, May 2010.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 9 May 2020
Manitoba Bricks and Blocks
A history of the manufacture of bricks and concrete blocks in Manitoba, based on research by Randy Rostecki for the Manitoba Historic Resources Branch and supplemented by information compiled by Gordon Goldsborough of the Manitoba Historical Society. .
Bricks | Blocks | People | Glossary
We thank Hugh Arklie, Gordon McDiarmid, and Heather Bertnick for their help in the development of this online guide. Financial support of the Thomas Sill Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. Additional information was provided by Ina Bramadat, David Butterfield, Neil Christoffersen, Frank Korvemaker, Ed Ledohowski, Ken Storie, Lynette Stow, and Tracey Winthrop-Meyers.
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Randy Rostecki, Manitoba Historic Resources Branch, Gordon Goldsborough, and Manitoba Historical Society.
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