I found another development-related special issue of the Free Press today, from 1890. It's pretty interesting since it is looking back on the years 1880-1890 which started out with the boom but ended with five years of "bust". So the Free Press speaks with a very chastened sort of tone, with the city having learned some hard lessons.
The front page is devoted mostly to a proposal to dam the Assiniboine at Omands Creek and build a power canal through what is now Wolseley. There would then have been mills and factories between the canal and the Assiniboine. There were plans to divert Lake Manitoba into the Assiniboine to increase the flow. The water from the canal would have been carried to the Red River through sluices. The article makes reference to a previous plan to build a canal from St James to Point Douglas.
The economic idea was to power mills that could refine wheat into flour -- in other words to create some secondary value-added industry. The Free Press writes:
When the water power is available there will be no reason why the bulk of this should not be milled in Winnipeg and exported from here as flour. Winnipeg should be to Manitoba and the Territories what Minneapolis is to Minnesota and Dakota. The waterpower will be near the C.P.R. line at St. James; and a spur running down the bank of the river between the canal and the river banks would give every mill a railway at its door to bring it wheat and carry away its flour.
Here is my transcription of the beginning of the article, which says a lot about the mood in the city after the boom had ended -- what is clearly needed is a more sober and economically informed attitude to future growth:
WINNIPEG’S WATERPOWER.
---
It Will Make the City a Manufacturing Centre.
---
A Ten Thousand Horse Power Can be Developed.
---
This Would Support a Population of 50,000.
---
Description of How the Power Will be Utilized.
It has long been the hope of every Winnipegger that this city is destined to become one of the distinctively great cities of the continent. Orators have pictured in glowing prophecies the future glories of the place that has passed with one stride from a frontier outpost to a city of metropolitan pretensions; and but few of our citizens have not indulged in day dreams of a splendid city stretching far and wide over what is now miles of prairie dotted here and there by groups of houses, the vanguard of the future’s solid blocks.
And no one can say that these hopes are chimerical and foundationless—that is no one can say it justly, for of course the craven hearted and the doubting Thomases are here as they are in every spot on the face of the earth. Take even since the boom, from the collapse of which the city is supposed to be still staggering, and has there not been a continual upward movement, slow undoubtedly but still indisputably upwards? Look at the magnificent blocks that have taken the place of the corner shacks—relics of the pioneer days—in which the boom merchants displayed their goods; the public buildings that have been erected; the increase in the attributes of a city, such as street-paving, street lighting, the supplying of water; note that the wholesale businesses have quintupled in the interval; observe the steady beautifying of the residential portion of the city in the erection of handsome houses, and the laying out of beautiful grounds; consider the development of home industries; go to the railway stations and see the trains roll in from the north, and the west and the south and the east; regard the development of those institutions which index the intellectual and moral qualities of a people—the schools, the colleges, the churches, the hospitals. No one who thus surveys the field can doubt that the city has thus far to a certain extent justified its early promise.
But only in part. Nine years ago people did not use in their estimates of the future, their common sense; if indeed they possessed that attribute in those times of feverish speculation. One hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, a quarter of a million, half a million—these were the estimates of the population that Winnipeg would have within two decades. But population cannot grow on nothing; and of recent years those interested in the city in place of expecting development to happen, as the result of fortuitous circumstances, have set themselves to work considering calmly in what way more employment to capital and labor can be given in the city, and in this way ensure its growth. It has been established by experience that the natural situation of the city is such that the bulk of the wholesale trade for the Northwest will be done from it. As a grain buying centre its position is also assured; and there are also other influences such as those resulting from the seat of government, and the colleges being here, that will do their share in advancing the city. But if the bright dreams of the future are ever to be fully realized, there must be another upbuilding influence—that supplied by manufacturing. Now the manufacturing industries of the city are not inconsiderable, but under existing circumstances Winnipeg can never become a distinctly manufacturing centre, though there are inexhaustible quantities of raw material available for more than one industry. The chief drawback is the cost of the motive power. The dearness of wood and coal make steam power so costly that taken with the extra cost of labour, it places manufacturers at a decided disadvantage with eastern competitors.
The cheapest motive power in the world is that supplied by nature—water. ‘Since steam power is not practicable why not look to our rivers’ was a thought that occurred to some of the citizens some four or five years ago. This was not the first time that the potential uses [?] of the latent power of the river courses had been discussed, for nearly a decade ago there was a proposition to build an aqueduct from St. James through the city to the Red River at Point Douglas, and utilize the fall thus obtained for the purpose of supplying motive power. The scheme never approached any tangible shape. To Major Ruttan, the city engineer, is due the chief credit of bringing the citizens to a sense of the possibilities of power which the Assiniboine contains. In [18??] he brought the matter before the city council and was allowed to make a report to the city, without charge, on the matter. That report started public interest; and ever since the subject has not been lost sight of by the city council and other public bodies. A succession of reports, surveys, investigations by committees, demonstrated that even the minimum flow of the Assiniboine would supply sufficient water power to a large number of manufactories; that the proposition to realize this power by means of a dam was perfectly feasible at a cost which in respect to the important results anticipated cannot be regarded as great. And now after a year or more of negotiating with various companies the city is about entering into an arrangement with a substantial syndicate of capitalists headed by James Ross, the wealthy railway contractor, by which the construction of the work will be begun within a few months.
---
Here is part of another front-page article discussing how the city had changed from 1880 to 1890:
Prev
Linear Mode
