by Robert Wardhaugh
University of Western Ontario
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Jim Blanchard, Winnipeg 1912 Diary of a City Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2005, 260 pages. ISBN: 0887556841, $24.95 (paperback).
Winnipeg is one of the most historically-rich cities in Canada. Prior to contact, the forks of the rivers was a gathering place for the Plains tribes. In the era of the furs, Red River served as the supply point for the trade and it became the homeland for the Métis nation as well as the Selkirk Colony. In 1870 the area witnessed the Red River Resistance and the birth of a province. In 1885 it was the launching point for the military force that was dispatched west to deal with the Riel Rebellion. In the years that followed, the frustrated ambitions of the boosters promoting western settlement and the growth of a prosperous city were realized. Winnipeg came into its own. Amid the immigration boom from 1897 to 1911, the city became the “Gateway to the West”, as newcomers funneled through it. The city’s growth was rapid and seemingly without end. By 1912 Winnipeg was the third largest city in Canada with a population exceeding 165,000.
In Winnipeg 1912 Jim Blanchard provides a fascinating glimpse of this important city. But this book is unique in that it offers a snapshot of the city, frozen in time. Rather than looking at the history of the city and its development over a certain period, the author focuses on one specific year—1912. The book contains a dozen chapters — one for each month of the year — each providing not only description of the city in that month but also illuminating particular themes.
So, for example, the first chapter entitled “January” offers a description of the new year’s celebrations at the Royal Alexandra Hotel at Higgins and Main, complete with a guest list and vignette of the local orchestra, led by Samuel Barrowclough, former bugler in the 90th Winnipeg Rifles in the 1885 campaign against Riel. “February” provides a snapshot of Winnipeg’s workforce and habits, as well as its religious makeup. Aside from successfully bringing the city to life through these descriptions, Blanchard is able to provide interesting historical information. In Winnipeg, for example, the two largest denominations were the Anglicans and the Presbyterians, providing the city with “a different religious landscape from Toronto’s and those of other Ontario cities” (50) where Methodists dominated.
“March” takes the reader into the Victorian brick Legislative Building on Kennedy Street and examines the political affairs of the provincial capital in 1912. Conservative Rodmond Roblin has been firmly entrenched in the premier’s office since 1903 but the scandal over the construction of the new Legislative Building that will bring down the government is only a year in the future. “April” is an interesting chapter because it offers a detailed profile of the city’s elite living along one of its most upper-class streets, Roslyn Road, while also connecting Winnipeg to the larger world by discussing those from the city who were involved in the Titanic disaster.
“Winnipeg was the first and greatest of all the railroad towns that bloomed across western Canada” (99), and the “May” chapter walks the reader through the yards of the four railways that dominated the city’s landscape. Twentyseven different lines entered the city, serving an industry that employed a significant portion of the population. “June” highlights the importance of horses for “a population just making the transition to the automobile age” (117). It demonstrates the dominance of horses, not only for transportation and work, but also for leisure. “July” details the 1912 visit of the Governor General, the Duke of Connaught, and his daughter, Princess Patricia, to what was a very British and Imperial city, culminating in an appearance at the summer Exhibition. “August” provides a glimpse of how middle- and upper-class Winnipegers spent their holidays and leisure time, at such places as Winnipeg Beach and the Lake of the Woods. The chapter also examines the real estate market, an influential source of speculation and profit in the booming city, as well as a revealing economic indicator of Winnipeg’s fortunes.
Winnipeg Horse Show entries at the Amphitheatre at the corner of Colony and Osborne, Winnipeg, June 1913.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, Foote Collection 89, N1689.
“September” is dedicated to a discussion of the influential Jewish community in Winnipeg, concentrated north of the CPR yards in the district bounded by Jarvis and Selkirk avenues and Main and Robinson streets. As Blanchard points out, the Jewish community “was the largest of what we might call the non-British ethnic groups in the city” (193). But unfortunately, this chapter provides one of the few glimpses of Winnipeg’s “north-end” and “shantytown”, neighborhoods that marked the city as the most class- and ethnically-segregated in the nation. “October” leads the reader into the inner sanctums of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, the formidable edifice built on the corner of Rorie and Lombard: “It loomed above Portage and Main and could be seen for a great distance down Portage Avenue, a symbol of the dominance of the grain industry in Winnipeg” (219). By “November,” winter’s chill can already be felt in the city. This chapter looks at the importance of coal to heat homes in 1912. It also offers an interesting look at the military presence in the city on the eve of the First World War. The last chapter, “December” describes Christmas celebrations and shopping along Winnipeg’s bustling downtown streets.
This is a wonderful book. The reader emerges with an intimate sense of the Winnipeg of 1912. It is not difficult to imagine how the city would have looked, sounded, and even smelled. But Blanchard’s portrait fails to capture fully the class and ethnic divisions that characterized Winnipeg. Too much time is spent describing the lives, homes, and Gisli Pálsson, Travelling Passions: The Hidden Life of Vilhjalmur Stefansson Translated from the Icelandic by Keneva Kunz Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2005, 374 pages. ISBN: 0887551793, $39.95 (hardcover) In recent years, the work of Vilhjalmur Stefansson and the Canadian Arctic Expedition (1913 - 1918) has become a veritable publishing industry. In 1991, the diaries of anthropologist Diamond Jenness were published (Jenness 1991), in 2001 the diaries of Vilhjamur Stefannson (Pálsson, 2001), in 2004 a biography of George Wilkins (photographer) based on his diaries (Jenness, 2004). Now Gisli Pálsson has brought us a further biography of Stefansson. Why this continued fascination with this expedition and its enigmatic and charismatic leader? habits of the rich and famous. To an extent, this is understandable because the author is bound by his sources; Town Topics, the local entertainment and society weekly is an excellent source for any historian of the city, but it inevitably focuses on Winnipeg’s elite. Details from the lives of the city’s working-class are not likely to find their way into its pages. Reading Blanchard’s work, it is difficult to understand, for example, why the General Strike ultimately occurred in Winnipeg in 1919 or why Prime Minister R. B. Bennett was loath to allow the On-to-Ottawa Trek to reach the perimeter of the “radical” city in 1935. Fittingly, Blanchard concludes his intimate portrait with a walk through St. John’s Cathedral graveyard and the resting places of “the people who had created the Winnipeg of 1912.”
This criticism of the limited coverage of the working classes aside, Jim Blanchard has made a very significant contribution to the history of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the Prairie West. The structure of Winnipeg 1912 is unique and offers a fascinating glimpse of this city at the end of its boom period. The enormous prosperity and optimism that Winnipeg had enjoyed was about to be replaced by an era of failure and decline. The world was already sliding towards the horror of the Great War. As Blanchard makes clear, 1912 was a watershed year for Winnipeg, “a year of fulfillment and transition, which invites a closer look.” This work offers just such a look.
Page revised: 24 April 2011
