From Vimy Ridge to Winnipeg's Vimy Ridge Memorial Park

 © 2024, Christian Cassidy

Did you know that the 44th Battalion monument in Vimy Ridge Memorial Park on Portage Avenue once stood on Vimy Ridge? It was removed in 1924 to make way for the current national monument and returned to Winnipeg. Two years later, it was erected in what was then called St. James Park. The monument was refurbished and the park's name changed in 1967.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge took place between April 9 - 12, 1917. Over 15,000 Canadian soldiers, including the 44th Battalion, successfully captured the five-kilometre-long ridge at a terrible cost of 3,598 soldiers killed and another 7,000 wounded.  They were the bloodiest days in Canadian history.

Here's the story of the 44th Battalion and the history of its monument.

44th At Camp Sewell, Royal Winnipeg Rifles Museum & Archives via MHS

The 44th Canadian Infantry Battalion was established in Winnipeg on November 7, 1914, with headquarters in the newly opened Minto Armouries on St. Matthews Avenue. After seven months of recruitment and basic training, it was off to Camp Sewell, (later named Camp Hughes near Carberry), for five months of more intensive training.

The 1,200 or so men of the 44th Battalion left for Britain in October 1915 and were dispatched to France on August 12, 1916. It fought in some of the most famous and bloodiest in France, including The Somme, Passchendaele, Hill 70, Vimy Ridge, Arras, Canal du Nord, and Amiens.

Royal Winnipeg Rifles Regimental Museum

The 44th Battalion was still located in the Vimy Ridge area in the fall of 1917 and began erecting this monument atop "The Pimple", a strategic hill on the ridge.

The body of the monument was made from cement and other materials captured from the Germans. The names of the 328 members of the battalion who lost their lives at Vimy Ridge, the Triangle, and La Coulotte were carved into its side panels

When the 44th Battalion returned to Canada, the monument stayed behind to honour its fallen.

June 9, 1919, Winnipeg Tribune

When the war ended the battalion hung around England for months with tens of thousands of other soldiers awaiting passage back to Canada. Finally, in May 1919 they boarded the Empress of Britain in Liverpool and landed at Saint John, New Brunswick on June 2, 1919 where the troops were dismissed.

The return of the battalion to Winnipeg was anticlimactic. By the time its train reached the CPR depot on Higgins Avenue on the morning of Sunday, June 8th, it was reported that barely 50 men from the unit disembarked.

This was partly due to some finding alternate transport home from Britain - its men had been trickling back to the city throughout 1919. Another factor was that there were not many Winnipegers left in the 44th Battalion.

According to Six Thousand Canadian Men, of the original 1,200 men only 100 "originals" remained at the end of the war. Its ranks were bolstered many times throughout the war to replace those lost due to death and injury with soldiers from across the country and there were few Winnipeggers in its ranks.

Those who did disembark were driven to Minto Armouries by volunteers where they signed their discharge papers.

May 5, 1926, Winnipeg Free Press

The 44th Battalion was officially disbanded in September 1920 but the 44th Battalion Association was established soon after in Winnipeg. For decades after the war it held an annual reunion dinner and memorial ceremony in the city and cared for the legacy of the unit.

The federal government announced that it was going to build the Canadian National Vimy Monument near the site of the 44th Battalion monument in 1924 and it would have to be removed. According to Six Thousand Canadian Men, "From all corners of the earth, members (of the 444th Battalion Association) contribute the funds needed to bring this trophy home to Winnipeg."

After negotiations with the city, the monument was reassembled in the northeast corner of what was then called St. James Park and rededicated on Sunday, June 27, 1926.

The ceremony included military brass, a guard of honour, and a military band. Dignitaries included  Major General H. D. B. Ketchen, Premier John Bracken, Mayor Ralph Webb, and Sir Hugh John Macdonald. The unveiling was done by Mrs. J. Bowes of Boissevain, Manitoba who lost three sons with the battalion.

Memorial Service in St. James Park, (Source: 6,000 Canadian Men)

In January 1967, federal Veterans Affairs Minister Roger Telliet and Winnipeg Mayor Stephen Juba announced a refurbishment of the deteriorating monument to commemorate both the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge and Canada's centennial year.

The federal government paid to have the cement base replaced with Tyndall stone and the cement panels containing the 328 names were put on bronze plaques. The cross and its base appear to be original to the monument that stood in France.

For the city's part, it also spent $1,000 to improve the landscaping and garden area around the monument. It also announced that the park's name would be changed from St. James Park to Vimy Ridge Memorial Park.

The ceremony to rededicate the monument and rename the park took place on Thursday, June 15, 1967.

It was led by members of the 44th Battalion Association, Mayor Stephen Juba, Veterans Affairs Minister Roger Teillet, and Paul Piroson, the recently retired caretaker of the Canadian Vimy Memorial in France.

There was a bit of an ulterior motive for the renaming of the park and the new landscaping.

The Veterans Affairs department let it be known that in Canada's centennial year it was also looking for possible Canadian sites to become national war monuments or memorial sites. Such a designation would mean that the federal government would be responsible for the cost of the care and upkeep of the space.

Despite the department's hand in the refurbishment of the monument and the minister's attendance at the renaming ceremony for the park, this site did not become nationally designated and the city has maintained it ever since.

The monument and landscaping surrounding it was refurbished in 1992. In 2017, a $350,000 refurbishment of the memorial and surrounding walking plaza and gardens area took place.

The 44th Battalion monument has been joined by other monuments and memorials over the decades. The Royal Winnipeg Rifles monument was dedicated in 1992 (and rededicated in 2018), the Andrew Charles Mynarski V.C. was added in 2015, the XII Manitoba Dragoons / 18th Armoured Car Regiment in 2000, and the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders in 2022.

June 17, 1915, Winnipeg Tribune

More about the 44th Battalion:
Manitoba Organization: 44th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force MB Historical Society
War Diaries of the 44th Canadian Infantry Battalion Library and Archives Canada
Six Thousand Canadian Men Library and Archives Canada

"First World war Soldier" on the move from Portage and Main

 

The nine-foot-tall bronze memorial known simply as First World War Soldier or the Bank of Montreal Monument is on the move after standing guard over Portage and Main for a century. It was unveiled in December 1923 to honour the men of the Bank of Montreal who died in battle.

It was announced in October 2024 that the memorial will be moved from Portage and Main to allow for the redevelopment of the intersection. It will not return there when the work is done as the Bank of Montreal sold its iconic Portage and Main banking hall to the Manitoba Metis Federation in 2020.

"Soldier" will instead be relocated to the Brookside Cemetery Field of Honour, one of Canada's oldest and largest military cemeteries. Brookside was declared a national historic site in 2023.

For more about the history of the monument, its artist, and its model, visit my Winnipeg Places blog post about it.

Farewell, Window on Air Canada Park

 

"Window on Air Canada Park", known informally as Window Park, Air Canada Park, or Pink Park, is no more! It is being demolished to make way for a new park that will open in 2025 which is the park's 40th anniversary.

It is too bad someone didn't ensure that the historic building fragments located at the park weren't demolished along with it.

If you follow my blogs, you'll know I am a realist. Not every building or building fragment can be preserved.

When the new plan was released for the park back in 2023, it was clear that the fragments would not be part of the new space. This gave the city time to inform heritage groups that they would be available, consider using them in another project, or even raffling them off while in situ with the funds maybe going to local heritage initiatives.

I doubt any of that was done before the decision to demolish and their destruction is symbolic of how this city sometimes treats its built heritage.

Related:
- For a history of the park, see my Winnipeg Downtown Places post
- See my Flickr photo album of the park.
- The redevelopment tender noting the "(m) Protection, disassembly, transportation, and re-installation of artworks currently erected in the park."

Media:
Winnipeg history among ruins of park demolition CBC Manitoba
City criticized after parts of historic buildings demolished Winnipeg Free Press

The transformation of Odeon / Triangle Park is complete!

© 2024, Christian Cassidy

I wrote in detail about the history of Odeon / Triangle Park in a blog post back in February 2023 and a column in July 2023 and noted that it was about to undergo a transformation from a traffic island to a curbside boulevard park. That work is now done!

The triangular piece of land at Smith Street and Notre Dame Avenue was part of the back end of the Grace Church property at Ellice Avenue and Notre Dame Street. The city had wanted it since the 1890s so that it could connect Smith and King streets to create another route from the retail district on Portage Avenue to the warehouse district (what we now call the Exchange District.) It wasn't until the church fell into financial trouble in the 1930s that it agreed to sell.

The city joined the two streets in 1936 and the traffic island was created. In the early 1970s and again in the early 1990s it was modified to give it more of a park-like setting.

The park space hasn't disappeared completely.

A piece of land even larger in size than the traffic island was moved over and merged with the sidewalk on the west side of Smith Street. The space, now sodded, contains some picnic benches and a temporary public art installation.

The only remnant left of the old park is a single elm tree that manged to make the transition.

This space has never had a formal name. In most newspaper references it was just called the triangular traffic island on Smith Street and on the odd occasion "Odeon Park" as the Walker Theatre was known as the Odeon Cinema from 1945 to 1990. Some city archives photos refer to it as "Triangle Park".

I am not a huge fan of naming things after people but some people love that sort of thing. Before a city councillor or True North (which operates the Burton Cummings Theatre) show up at a committee meeting to push through naming it for a politician or a hockey player, I think it would be appropriate, considering their theatre has lost their name, to call it Corliss and Henrietta Walker Park, or green, or boulevard, or whatever a curbside piece of lawn is called.

Corliss and Henrietta Walker were the husband and wife team who uprooted their U.S.-based theatre circuit and relocated its headquarters to Winnipeg and had this theatre built. Corliss got most of the accolades but the two were partners. He did the finances and she booked the talent, (including the famous Mock Parliament in 1914.)

The Walkers were a huge part of Winnipeg's cultural, social and business life during their era.

Related:
My Flickr album of Odeon / Triangle Park
Triangular park on Smith Street dates back nearly 90 years West End Dumplings
Odeon Park to lose 'island' status Free Press Community Review

My Winnipeg Free Press Community Review Columns

 
I have been writing a local history column called "What's in a Neighbourhood" in in the Free Press Community Review since July 2021. Here are links to my work. Also be sure to see my Real Estate News columns and Winnipeg Free Press columns!

Winnipeg's Civic Clock turns 50

Downtown's Port-a-Parks of the 1970s

Rainbow Stage's 70th Anniversary

Downtown Winnipeg's biggest fire

Charles Barber designed early Winnipeg's skyline

Winnipeg's inception a violent, messy affair

Downtown's Christmas lights date back nearly a century

Valour Road's forgotten hero

J P Robertson founded city's library system

Exhibit tells story of Manitoba's building blocks

Odeon Park to lose 'island' status

The demise of the Highland Park subdivision

WHAT'S IN A STREET NAME?

How Metro Route 90 became Lagimodiere Boulevard

The U of M's 'Avenue of Elms'

Winnipeg's short-lived numbered street system

Online archive offer glimpse of the past

A tale of two perimeter roads

Elmwood's annexation cost it many street names

Family waits 40 years to redress street name change

Did Winnipeg name any streets after Titanic victims?

The problem with Cecil Rhodes

Arlington Street's great lengths

When Portage Avenue was known as Queen Street

Main Street could have been Victoria Street

The origins of Winnipeg's Metro Route system

The women in Winnipeg's Street names

The wartime origins of some Winnipeg street names

Downtown's one-way street system turns 65

Make sure your beer's delivered to the right address - July 5, 2021

Behind the Photo: Old city hall's goat skelton

 © 2024, Christian Cassidy

Often I will see an old photo or ad and spend some time digging into its back story. Sometimes I find a great story, sometimes not. Either way, I learn a few things about the city's history. Here's my latest attempt:

March 21, 1936, Winnipeg Free Press

While researching my latest Free Press Community Review column on the history of Winnipeg's civic clocks, I came across a creepy story about the presence of a long-dead goat in the clock tower of the old 'gingerbread' city hall. Where did it come from and how did it get up there? Here's a look back at mentions of the goat over the decades.

The first mention I can find of the goat skeleton comes in the March 21, 1936 edition of the Winnipeg Free Press. Photographer and columnist Nicholas Morant led some of his Free Press colleagues up the tower to show them the “mysterious city hall goat”.  It is likely him who took the photo shown above. 

Morant asked around at city hall about the origins of what he presumed was a mountain goat and found that it “definitely has been there for more than 15 years” and was possibly the remains of a stuffed exhibit from a "natural history society" operating in city hall around 1900. (This was likely the Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba, forerunner to the Manitoba Historical Society, that had a reading room and display area at city hall until they were asked to move the Carnegie Library when it opened in 1905.)

U of M Digital Collections, Winnipeg Tribune Photograph Index

Dead or alive, getting the goat into the tower would have been a challenge.

Piecing together the makeup of the tower using various newspaper articles finds that it could be accessed from the top of floor of city hall using a narrow staircase.

The tower itself had three floors. The first two had a large room in the centre, presumably for storage, that could be closed off with a door. Leading up from the second floor was a curved staircase or ladder that went to the top level where the bell and clock works were. There were 67 stairs in total from the top of city hall to the top of the tower.

According to Morant, the goat's remains were in the tower's second floor storage room.

July 14, 1934, Winnipeg Tribune

The next mention of the goat skeleton comes courtesy of Winnipeg Tribune municipal editor A. V. Thomas in a July 1934 story celebrating the 50th anniversary of the laying of the building's cornerstone.

Thomas wrote glowingly of the building but said of the goat: "... it is enough to make anyone pause and shudder to come suddenly across a skeleton lying amid the dust and dirt. What's more, the head has been severed and lies a few feet away." (The head was likely moved during that Free Press visit of 1932.)

Thomas was told a similar story that it was thought to have been part of a museum display at city hall. he added, "Whether the stuffing shifted with age or whether the goat degenerated from another causes, it was deemed advisable to put it away. Just how it got into the upper precincts of the city hall is a mystery." 

The skeleton had never been removed, Thomas was told, because of the difficulty of get something that large down the narrow staircase.

October 9, 1948. Windsor Star

The goat's presence would be recounted in a story about city hall every few years.

A September 1948 Free Press article described how local jeweller William T. "Bill" Muirhead had been the unofficial caretaker of the clock for over 20 years and had made the journey to visit it hundreds of times.

It noted that one of the things he has to pass is the goat: "It must have been a massive creature in life and just how it came to its death chamber remains a mystery of the city hall. No one goes near the skeleton for the floor is shakey and the room is locked."

The wire story was picked up by at least one other Canadian newspaper, prompting the above headline in the Windsor Star.

Looking east from clock tower, September 1900. (City of Winnipeg Archives)

The legend of the goat grew in the late 1950s.

According to an unnamed Free Press reporter writing a retrospective of the building in April 1960, Mayor George Sharpe started his "famous clock tower tours" in 1954 by taking "... guileless visitors up the winding wooden starts to the very top of the clock tower."

Points of interest along the way were "crude drawings on the walls" and the goat, noting that "the goat's skeleton, still a mystery, lies on the floor area declared unsafe so it cannot be retrieved."

May 17, 1957, Winnipeg Free Press

Mayor Stephen Juba continued the tours when he took over as mayor in 1957, though the purpose of his visits was not to show off its history or views. He had long pushed for a new city hall building for Winnipeg and took reporters and other officials up to show the poor condition of the tower. (Since the early 1950s there was talk of removing the tower portion the building due to its sagging fllors and numerous large cracks.)

One Free Press reporter who went on a May 1957 tour noted, "among the sights of the tour were the mouldering bones ... of a goat's body left there years ago by pranksters." This first mention of "pranksters", Juba's take on how the bones got there, would be repeated in Free Press stories for years to come.

Demolition in 1961, U of M Digital Collections, Winnipeg Tribune Photograph Index

The old city hall was demolished starting in April 1962.

Al Barnes of the Free Press wrote a feature called "The Saga of Old City Hall" after it came down. He wrote that the story behind the the bones was never fully and that "Winnipeg is probably the only metropolis in the world whose city hall literally had a skeleton in its closet."

More about the tower from my blogs:
Selkirk Avenue's Bell Tower - West End Dumplings
Winnipeg's Civic Clock - Winnipeg Places

More "Behind the Photo'

A history of Stratford Hall

 
Stratford Hall in 2022 (Google Street View)

It has been a strange week for Stratford Hall on College Avenue. Last week, tenants were told that the building was being immediately shut down and were refunded the remainder of July's rent. Their units were cleared of furniture and personal belongings and the building locked. After an outcry from governments, Indigenous organizations, and mental health and homelessness advocates, there was an about-face and the building reopened a week later.

Here is a look back at the building's history at my Winnipeg Places blog.