Entrepreneur.
Born at London, England on 29 July 1876, he came to Canada around 1896 and worked on a farm near Rapid City, Manitoba for a time, eventually moving to Winnipeg where he married and had a son. Soon afterware, his wife was killed when his house burned down. He then moved to Vancouver and Regina before returning to Winnipeg around 1922.
Among his enterprises was the Imperial Immigration League of Manitoba, where he and a group of prominent citizens negotiated for a former prison farm on the Greater Winnipeg Water District Railway, east of Winnipeg, and settled on it a few British immigrants. A related venture in the 1950s was Camp Ulysses Limited that intended to settle 5,000 pensioners on a camp near Ste. Anne. He also attempted to form a federal political party, the Constitutionalists of Rupertsland, dedicated to fighting a government that was “never fitted either by God, by Guess, or by Nature to interfere in any way with the internal affairs of the Province of Manitoba which we dub loosely Rupertsland”. His many and varied business ventures included the LaCoulee Community Centre, Manitoba Trading Estates, Rupertsland Development Corporation, Hupe Demonstration Farms, Sandilands Acropolis, Dufresne Pulp and Paper Company, Seraimous Plastics, Eastoun Gas and Power, LaCoulee Sand Gravel and Lime, Barfoot Associates Limited, Red Wing Co-operative Limited, and Phoenix Co-operative Limited.
He was widely known in Manitoba church, political, and legal communities as “the last of the great characters”, having strong opinions on a wide variety of topics that he never hesitated in expressing, regardless of the surroundings or person. He was described as having “an unequalled capacity for invective and denunciation plus a stentorian voice” when pressing his latest scheme relentlessly on mayors, police chiefs, premiers, lawyers, physicians, clerics, businessmen, and other public figures.
He died at his Winnipeg boarding house on 22 March 1960 and was buried in St. James Cemetery. A group of six Anglican clerics were his pallbearers.
“Man-about-town, Bobby Moore dies”, Winnipeg Tribune, 22 March 1960. [Manitoba Legislative Library, Biographical Scrapbook B12, page 3]
“Funeral Thursday for Bobby Moore”, Winnipeg Tribune, 23 March 1960. [Manitoba Legislative Library, Biographical Scrapbook B12, page 2]
“‘Greatest character’ Bobby Moore dies at 83”, Winnipeg Free Press, 22 March 1960, page 1.
“Death for last ‘greatest character’”, Brandon Sun, 23 March 1960, page 3.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 3 December 2011
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