RIVERBOAT STORY STIRS INTEREST IN U.S.
MARCH 26, 1970
By Garth Stouffer, Sun Associate Editor.
The Empress of Ireland (Assiniboine Queen if you prefer) is making an
even bigger wake in the waters of history that she made while chugging
through the waters of the Souris and Assiniboine rivers.
The boat, built at Coulter in the early days of the 20th century,
enjoyed a few years of life on the Souris before her builder-master
Captain H.J.R. Large moved her to Brandon, where he later converted her
to a coal-carrying self-propelled barge that helped build the concrete
bastions for a bridge on a railway line that never developed.
The Queen died just before the First World War enflamed the world and
lay buried in silt and Assiniboine River willows until late last fall
when her location was determined by Roy Brown, Grand Valley Council
co-ordinator, and she was partially exhumed.
The story of the Queen was told by Mr. Brown in a small volume
published late in the fall, thousands of copies of which have gone to
Manitoba schools, and the tale of the story was published in The Sun
and other papers.
Away down south in Wheeling, West Virginia, a man by the name of
Michael J. Kaiser, group manager of Great, West Life Assurance Co., in
that area, read about the finding ofthe skeleton of the Queen in the
Assiniboine. He saw the story in the S & D Reflector, a publication
of the Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen, a group of people
dedicated to the preservation not only of the history of rivers, but
also the rivers themselves.
Mr. Kaiser wrote to Mr. Brown, advising that he would be in Winnipeg
April 6-11, and suggesting that he would like to take time off from his
visit with the head office of his company, to come to Brandon for a
closer look at the history of the Queen.
|
