The Lesser Known: A History of Oddities from the Heart of the Continent

By Darren Bernhardt

Shortlisted for the 2021 Manuela Dias Book Design Award

A 2021 Manitoba Day Award Honorable Mention

Manitoba's history is one of being carved. Ice sculpted the land before nomadic first people pressed trails across it. Southern First Nations dug into the earth to grow corn and potatoes while those in the north mined it for quartz used in arrowheads. Fur traders arrived, expanding on Indigenous trading networks and shaping new ones. Then came settlers who chiselled the terrain with villages, towns and cities.

But there is failure and suffering etched into the history.

In The Lesser Known, Darren Bernhardt shares odd tales lost in time paired with archival images, such as The Tin Can Cathedral, the first independent Ukrainian church in North America; the jail cell hidden beneath a Winnipeg theatre; the bear pit of Confusion Corner; gardening competitions between fur trading forts and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Great Plains Publications
• Release date: Aug 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781773370491

Book preview

Cover page of the book titled The Lesser Known A History of Oddities from the Heart of the Continent written by Darren Bernhardt. An inverted pyramid of numerous horse wagons emerging from a small pole on the road is present on the cover page. On the left and right-hand sides of the page are railway tracks. On the left of the wagons is a scene of a road with parked cars depicted in form of a cut out of a human figure.

THE

LESSER KNOWN

A History of Oddities from

the Heart of the Continent

DARREN

BERNHARDT

Logo: Great Plains Publications

Copyright © 2020 Darren Bernhardt

Great Plains Publications

1173 Wolseley Avenue

Winnipeg, MB R3G 1H1

www.greatplains.mb.ca

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or in any means, or stored in a database and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Great Plains Publications, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.

Great Plains Publications gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided for its publishing program by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund; the Canada Council for the Arts; the Province of Manitoba through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Book Publisher Marketing Assistance Program; and the Manitoba Arts Council.

Design & Typography by Relish New Brand Experience

Cover artwork by Christine Fellows

Printed in Canada by Friesens

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Title: The lesser known : a history of oddities from the heart of the continent / by Darren Bernhardt.

Names: Bernhardt, Darren, 1970- author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200274880 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200274902 | ISBN 9781773370484 (softcover) | ISBN 9781773370491 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Manitoba—History—Anecdotes. | LCSH: Manitoba—Anecdotes. | LCGFT: Anecdotes.

Classification: LCC FC3361.8. B47 2020 | DDC 971.27—dc23

Logo of fsc.orgThe official symbol of the Government of Canada - Canada wordmark.Logo of Environmental Benefits Statement along with the list of resources saved in printing the pages of this book.

To my mom, whose strength is a far bigger story than any I could ever compose.

To my dad, who kindled my love of history with his yarns of the old days and our excursions to the Exchange District when it was home to discount shops.

A black and white canvas painting depicting a view from the St. Boniface side of the forks of the Assiniboine River and Red River.

Follow for extended description

A view from the St. Boniface side of the forks of the Assiniboine River and Red River.

Upper Fort Garry is in the distance while the ferry that carried people across the Red is visible in the lower left. MANITOBA ARCHIVES, FORT GARRY 1875, OIL ON CANVAS PAINTING BY W. FRANK LYNN

At First Light

Election Riots

Tin Can Cathedral

When the Streets Had No Names: Winnipeg’s Short-lived Fling with Numbers

Bijou’s Secret Cell

Corduroy Roads

Gardening at the Forts

Pine to Palm Highway

Roblin City: The Town Never Built

Budweiser’s Winnipeg Clydesdales

Canada’s First Black Olympian: John Armstrong Howard

Kilmorie: Gates of the Once Grand Estate

The Minigolf Mobster: Verne Sankey

Magicians’ Brotherhood

Bear Pit of Confusion Corner

Comfort Stations

Monorails and Elevated Roads: Winnipeg’s Futuristic Dreams

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

At First Light

Election Riots

Tin Can Cathedral

When the Streets Had No Names: Winnipeg’s Short-lived Fling with Numbers

Bijou’s Secret Cell

Corduroy Roads

Gardening at the Forts

Pine to Palm Highway

Roblin City: The Town Never Built

Budweiser’s Winnipeg Clydesdales

Canada’s First Black Olympian: John Armstrong Howard

Kilmorie: Gates of the Once Grand Estate

The Minigolf Mobster: Verne Sankey

Magicians’ Brotherhood

Bear Pit of Confusion Corner

Comfort Stations

Monorails and Elevated Roads: Winnipeg’s Futuristic Dreams

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CITATIONS

Guide

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

Start of Content

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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AT FIRST

LIGHT

Along a rutted and dusty tract of Main Road, about a block north of where it met the Portage Trail, the future flickered then settled into a warm glow.

Out front of the Davis House saloon and hotel, the first lamplight west of the Great Lakes was illuminated on March 12, 1873—six years before inventor Thomas Edison’s incandescent bulb was created.

It was something to behold for the frontier town of Winnipeg, where wood plank sidewalks raising pedestrians above clay and mud were the greatest advancement in civility at the time. It was a place where the most travelled road linked two fur trade posts—Upper Fort Garry at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers and Lower Fort Garry 30 kilometres north.

A photograph depicting view of Main Street, looking north from Portage Avenue, about 1876. The various businesses in the City of Winnipeg are shown such as Davis House on the left and the Blue Store can be seen beside it.

Main Street, looking north from Portage Avenue, circa 1876. Davis House is at the left and the Blue Store can be seen beside it. CITY OF WINNIPEG ARCHIVES, WINNIPEG IN FOCUS, REFERENCE CODE I01520

A black and white portrait of Robert Davis.

Robert Davis ARCHIVES OF MANITOBA, DAVIS, ROBERT ATKINSON 3, MLA WINNIPEG, 1874

The lamp in front of the Davis Hotel is quite an institution, a Manitoba Free Press report from the day said. It looks well and guides the weary traveller to a haven of rest, billiards and hot drinks.

It was installed by the hotel’s owner, Robert Davis, who would go on to become the fledgling province’s premier just over a year later.

His lamp used an inert gas inside a glass container to create a charged arc between two electrodes. The first major public exhibition of arc lighting wasn’t held until 1877 in New Jersey. One year after that, Europe’s first arc light was turned on in Paris, France.

Davis’s single lamp didn’t shine over much distance but it was enough to light up his building, a half-block from Portage on the west side of Main.

There is no record of how long the lamp remained in place but was enough to spark interest of entrepreneurs and government officials alike. Within seven years of the Davis light being turned on, the Manitoba Electric & Gas Light Company was incorporated and granted authority to supply light and heat in the province by gas, electricity or other means.

Two years after that, four street lamps using the same arc light were installed along Main from Broadway to the Assiniboine River. They were turned on for the first time on the evening of October 16, 1882. By 1890, there were three companies competing to provide light and electricity for Winnipeg and another in Brandon.

It all started with Davis’s light, which secured his place in the province’s history. But the hotel was already a landmark before Davis even arrived in Winnipeg from Quebec in 1870.

A full length portrait of Henry McKenney.

Henry McKenney ARCHIVES OF MANITOBA, N23650

EMMERLING AND MCKENNEY

Built in 1862, it was first known as Emmerling’s Hotel.

George Emmerling, better known around the village of soon-to-be Winnipeg as Dutch George, is said to have arrived from Minnesota in 1860 with one barrel of whisky and two more of apples.

There is little information on how he did it, but Emmerling, who developed a reputation as a crafty businessman, went from peddling fruit to buying a shack on Post Office Street (now Lombard Avenue). He called it Dutch George’s Place and sold warm baked and buttered potatoes.

It was well worth trampling through the village mud to get there on a wet night, the Winnipeg Tribune reported in 1947 in an article called Old Troopers of the Prairies.

Emmerling’s spud success enabled him to buy The Royal Hotel, on the east side of Main between Thistle and Post Office streets (now Portage Avenue East and Lombard Avenue). The Royal, established in 1859 by Henry McKenney, was the first hotel in Manitoba and well known when Emmerling took over.

A map of Winnipeg City in 1869.

Follow for extended description

Map 1870 THOMAS BURNS 584, ARCHIVES OF MANITOBA

So popular was that hotel under McKenney that it helped change the course of development in the entire settlement and set the future for Winnipeg.

Before McKenney bought the old log building from pioneer businessman Andrew McDermot and turned it into a hotel, the commercial centre had been centred around Upper Fort Garry.

There wasn’t much more than a few wooden shacks around the Royal, which was considered too far away and in an undesirable place mostly marked by mud, marsh and scrub oak.

He was ridiculed for his decision but McKenney didn’t care. He went full in. In 1861, he enhanced his hotel by adding the first licensed bar in western Canada. He also opened a general store in one section of it.

That hub of business became so popular that a new path was formed on the prairie as travellers from the west veered off the original Portage Trail, which stuck closer along the Assiniboine River before meeting the Main Road near the fort.

The new branch of the trail headed towards McKenney’s hotel, meeting Main about a kilometre north of the fort. Recognizing the growing importance of that intersection, McKenney sold his hotel to Emmerling and built a general store on the northwest corner.

That new path eventually thrived, superseding the original one, and McKenney’s store became the anchor for the now famous windblown intersection of Portage and Main.

The Royal Hotel continued to be a boon for Emmerling, who made enough money that by late 1862 he bought property beside McKenney’s booming store and built a new hotel.

Other businesses soon followed, taking advantage of the shift away from the fort and HBC post. Even so, Winnipeg was still considered an irrelevant fringe of the larger Red River Colony—formally known as Assiniboia.

In fact, it wasn’t even called Winnipeg. That name was used for the first time on February 24, 1866, in the weekly Nor’Wester newspaper, to differentiate McKenney’s store and its neighbours from the colony. The name, borrowed from the large lake 65 kilometres north, began to appear on the paper’s masthead soon after that.

Like McKenney, Emmerling committed to that location and made certain his building was noticed. In 1867 it was expanded to more than double its size, measuring in at 32 feet long, 22 feet wide and two stories high. All built of solid oak logs.

He brought the first billiard table into the West and added another the following year due to the game’s overwhelming popularity.

So much of Winnipeg life seems to have centred in the hotel of George Emmerling, an eccentric citizen of the United States who came from Minnesota to be the boniface (innkeeper) of the village of the plain, the Manitoba Free Press reported in April, 1905 as part of a story on the city’s history.

This was an old landmark of Winnipeg. Soldiers, natives, adventurers and newcomers largely visited Emmerling’s hotel.

A map indicating the area covered by Rupert's Land in 1670.

This map shows the area covered by Rupert's Land in 1670. RUPERTSLAND INSTITUTE, MÉTIS CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE

RUPERT’S LAND AND RIEL

The Emmerling Hotel also became a headquarters for the American annexationists, who pushed for Rupert’s Land, a vast territory of fur-trade wilderness controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company, to become part of the United States rather than Canada.

The US purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 and Canada feared the Americans would turn their attention next to Rupert’s Land, which encompassed 7.8 million square kilometers—two-thirds of what is now Canada—and included all of what is now Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, southern Alberta, southern Nunavut, northern Quebec and northern Ontario. It also included a section of the northern US, encompassing parts of Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana.

The HBC had held a monopoly over Rupert’s Land since May 2, 1670, when England’s King Charles II signed a 7,000-word charter giving it sole right to the fur trade in all the lands draining into (Hudson) Bay, as well as the right to rule those lands with everything and everybody therein.

At that time, HBC was known by a much longer title: The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson Bay. It was that company of adventurers who named their trading area Rupert’s Land in honour of Charles’s cousin, Prince Rupert, who first organized a group willing to risk money on a trading venture to Hudson Bay in 1668. When the Nonsuch ship returned the following year with a bounty of furs, it was Prince Rupert who convinced Charles to grant the monopoly.

Some 200 years later, though, the HBC’s fur monopoly was in a steep decline. Instead, the stores at its forts had become more lucrative. Western settlement and the gold rush brought people who shopped with cash rather than trading in furs.

The British ceded all the area south of the 49th parallel to the US when it signed the London Convention of 1818. That agreement created the international boundary and resolved ongoing issues between the United Kingdom and the United States.

HBC was known by a much longer title: The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson Bay.

The company was ready to offload the land and turn fully toward retail (opening its first-ever department store in 1881 at the corner of Main and York Avenue, just north of Upper Fort Garry).

Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald was eager to add Rupert’s Land to the Dominion in order to expand Canada’s frontier. The HBC had prepared to transfer it to the Americans, but the British government—which first gave the HBC the money and royal charter for trading rights—made it clear it wanted the territory to belong to Canada.

...the Crown transferred Rupert’s Land to Canada but without any consultation with First Nations, Métis and Europeans who had settled in the area.

Reluctantly, Hudson’s Bay surrendered its charter back to the British Crown, receiving $1.5 million in compensation. It kept more than 120 posts and was given title to 45,000 acres of land around them, as well as a further option for the