A history of Happyland - Part 1: The Glory Days (1906 to 1908)

 © 2026, Christian Cassidy

Entrance to Happyland (Martin Berman Postcard Collection)

On Saturday, I appeared in a CTV Winnipeg news story about the 120th anniversary of Happyland, which held its grand opening weekend May 24 - 26, 1906. Here is a deeper dive into the history of this "magnificent resort for fun and frolic" that struggled to survive for most of its existence. 

Part 1: The Glory Days (1906 to 1908)

Part II: New Ownership (1909) 

Part III: The final struggle (1910-1914)

McPhillips' Map of Winnipeg, 1910 (Manitoba Historical Maps)

Happyland was a 30-acre, seasonal amusement park and recreational ground located on the south side of Portage Avenue between modern-day Aubrey and Dominion streets. It stretched from Portage Avenue down to the Assiniboine River.

It may seem an odd place to put an amusement park, but at the time this was beyond the edge of the city's residential development on the south side or Portage Avenue. Up until 1906, what is now Vimy Ridge Park was a cricket ground, a nine-hole golf course became part of the Happyland site, and the huge Jubilee Nursery farm was west of that. 

Even in 1910, when the above map was published, streets around the park such as Lipton, Aubrey and Dominion, had very few houses on them. It was not until around 1912 that development began on a large scale. 

March 1, 1906, Winnipeg Tribune

Happyland was established by the Ingersoll Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which operated parks in cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., and Coney Island. (See a list here.) 

Officials from Ingersoll Co., including its chief designer Alfred Robinson, were in Winnipeg during the first week of May for a site visit. W. O. Edmunds, vice president, said the company was happy to invest in fast-growing Winnipeg, and the large site allowed the park to expand along with the city's population.

A local company called the American Park Company, made up of officials from Ingersoll and other local and American investors, was created to own and operate the venue. It appears that real estate man William M. Fisher, along with some smaller investors, owned the land on which the park sat.

May 23, 1906, Winnipeg Tribune showing site in mid-May

Local carpenter S. B. Ritchie was the main contractor for the site. His work included Dalnavert, the J. H. Ashdown Co. Warehouse, plus several schools and fire halls. His main legacy is likely as the designer of the residential section of Winnipeg Beach, from laying out the streets to building hundreds of cottages and other buildings.

Ritchie soon received his first batch of Happyland building permits from the city. They included a 100 x 250 foot auditorium, administration building, cafe, 'house of illusions', main entrance structure, old mill building, bandstand, grandstand, 3,000 feet of fencing, and a circus ring.

May 1, 1906, Winnipeg Tribune

Opening day, Thursday, May 24, 1906 (Martin Berman Postcard Collection)

Ritchie's men worked so quickly that the opening date was moved from June 1 to May 21, but a week of rain postponed it again to Thursday, May 24, just before the start of the Victoria Day Weekend.

Happyland's inaugural weekend was a great success. Some newspaper accounts, no doubt publishing figures provided by the park's publicist, claimed that 44,000 people came out for its first couple of days. This is unlikely as the park was only serviced by a single streetcar line along Portage Avenue.

An estimate in the Winnipeg Free Press put the number at 27,000, with 9,000 of those attending a pair of baseball games between the Winnipeg Maroons and Duluth of the Northern League.

Still, there is no doubt that thousands of people came to see the spectacle, causing huge lineups at times.

Opening week lineup, May 25, 1906, Winnipeg Tribune

Admission to Happyland cost ten cents and it offered patrons a wide variety of activities to take part in. 

There was, of course, the amusement park with its boardwalk, rides, booths, and other attractions. Most noticeable was the large Ferris wheel, the figure 8 roller coaster, and slip slide that was billed as the largest ever built in Canada. (Ingersoll was in the amusement ride construction business before it branched out into developing parks.)

The auditorium and a small theatre meant the site could host plays, concerts, vaudeville shows, dances, and roller skating.  The huge grounds and grandstand allowed travelling rodeos and circuses to set up shop. The picnic pavilion and grounds welcomed large groups, such as church congregations and annual employee get-togethers. The recreation grounds had a running track and a baseball diamond that was home to the Winnipeg Maroons of the Northern League.

Thanks to a robust lighting system, events could take place late into the night.

A team of security staff, park guides, and an on-duty nurse helped keep people safe.

July 20, 1906, Winnipeg Free Press

By all accounts, Happyland was a welcome addition to the city's entertainment scene with its fixed amenities and acts that rotated through each week to keep things fresh. It tried hard to appeal to people of all ages.

The park, of course, was seasonal. It usually opened for Victoria Day and closed after Labour Day. The baseball team kept its own schedule, and spectators could access the diamond in whatever month the team was playing.

August 6, 1908, Winnipeg Tribune

On the surface, things may have looked rosy, but behind the scenes, the park was in financial trouble. Not enough people came through the gates to pay the bills, including the $8,500 in rent it paid to Fisher, plus electricity, staff, entertainers, groundskeeping, and maintenance.

It was particularly cool and wet in the summer of 1906, though the novelty of the park meant it had decent attendance numbers. With the same, or fewer, people expected in 1907, none of the year two investments were made to the park to expand its attractions or grounds.

It opened as usual in 1908, with no new venues or big shows. On August 6, the directors announced that the park would close immediately due to financial reasons. the property It defaulted to landowner William M. Fisher.

Winnipeg Beach ca. 1908 (Rob McInnis Postcard Collection)

What went wrong with Happyland? 

The American investors may not have counted on the fact that Winnipeg's amusement season was likely shorter compared to some of its U.S. parks. There was also lots of existing summer competition from sporting events, smaller private recreation parks like River Park and Elm Park, and trips to the beach or cottage by train.

The Winnipeg Tribune noted that the lack of new investment after opening day made the park stale. That investment, it said, was paid to the American owners as dividends, and  "A  good many of the local men suffered heavy losses through the closure. The Americans who formulated the company have come out with the long end of the stick."

August 18, 1908, Winnipeg Tribune

Fisher immediately put the park's contents up for auction to try to recover the value of some of the unpaid bills and, more likely, to clear the land to sell it off as individual suburban lots. Instead, a new  group of  investors called the Winnipeg Park Company stepped in and wanted to make another go of Happyland.

The new ownership group was a little mysterious. A list of investors was not released, and they left it to their lawyer to make the announcement of the purchase. The two names listed as officers of the company, P. H. Anderson, president, and O. C. S. Lavelle, secretary, do not appear in the Winnipeg street directory that year. Fisher continued to be the landlord.

The company appointed Frank Miller, who had been an assistant manager at Happyland, as its new manager. His first act was to allow the Maroons to continue to use the baseball diamond as their home field, but the park itself did not reopen in 1908.

As for future plans, the company lawyer said that the group was planning to make big investments in new amenities and other improvements to the site.

Winnipeg's long history with Daylight Saving Time

© 2026, Christian Cassidy

It appears that Daylight Saving Time (DST) may be a thing of the past for Winnipeggers in the near future. The city has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the time change going back 110 years. Here's a look at that history, which is an expansion of the research I did for this Winnipeg Free Press Review column. For a "Winnipeg DST history in brief" chart, see the bottom of this post.

'Tis never too late for delight, my dear, 

And the best of all ways 

To lengthen our days 

Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear!
Excerpt from "The Young May Moon", Thomas Moore, 1807 

Montreal Star, July 11,1908

The idea of getting the most daylight into our daytime hours is not new.

The ancient Romans used a version of daylight saving that saw the length of an hour shorten in the winter. In an essay published in le Journal de Paris in 1874, Benjamin Franklin calculated how many candles Parisians could save if they only woke up an hour earlier in the spring and summer months. New Zealand entomologist George Hudson tried to promote a two-hour summer time shift in his country in the 1890s. There were undoubtedly countless others who proposed the same thing in their own parts of the world.

The roots of Canada's journey to DST can be loosely traced back to British builder William Willet, who, in his 1907 pamphlet entitled The Waste of Daylight, outlined a staged approach of adding 20 minutes to the clock each week in the early spring to provide eighty minutes of daylight at the end of the work day. He brought his campaign not only to the public, but to governments big and small.

Willet's scheme, which became known as Daylight Saving Time (DST), was debated in the British House of Commons in 1908 and 1909, but the bill never made it to a third reading. 

The British debate was covered closely in Canadian newspapers. The article above appeared in the Montreal Star in July 1908 to illustrate how Britain's DST would work.

It is often claimed that the town of Port Arthur, followed days later by neighbouring Fort William, which are now known collectively as Thunder Bay, Ontario, became the first municipality in Canada, and maybe one of the few places in the world, to adopt DST starting on May 1, 1908.

Searching the archives of dozens of Canadian newspapers, little detailed reporting of the change can be found, (see above for a the lengthier reports and commentary.)  It appears that what the communities really did was permanently switch their time zone to the neighbouring Eastern Standard Time (EST). This likely had as much to standardize its shipping and train schedules with the rest of Ontario as its importance as a sea port and rail terminal grew. The added daylight in summer was just an additional benefit.

It should be noted that despite the amount of media coverage about Britain's Daylight Saving Bill, no newspaper mentions of the time zone switch in Port/Fort or Nelson, B.C. refer to them as adopting DST.

In March 1909, E. N. Lewis, Member of Parliament for Huron West (Ontario), introduced a Daylight Saving Bill in Canada's parliament that was based on the one still being debated in Britain. This private members' bill was read a second time, then referred to a special committee that would spend the next few weeks soliciting the opinions of municipal councils, school boards and other groups.

An informal survey of newspaper coverage of the bill seems to show a lot of support, at least in bigger cities. From Vancouver to Halifax, there were front page stories about boards of trade, athletic associations, national railways and other bodies coming out in favour of DST. Many newspapers had editorials that supported the likely benefits of an extra hour of sunlight in summer evenings.

The committee found this same level of support and approved it unanimously, but that was as far as it got before the parliamentary session ended.

Lewis reintroduced his bill at the next two sessions of parliament, in December 1909 and December 1910, but it wasn't picked up for further debate, which isn't unusual for a private members' bill. The Ottawa Citizen noted in an April 1911 editorial that "It is to be regretted that parliament has not found time to take up again the Daylight Saving bill this session." By this time, Lewis had moved on to other issues.

It's unclear why, given the apparent public support for the issue, the Canadian government didn't introduce a Daylight Saving Bill of its own. It may have been watching Britain where its bill never got a lot of traction in parliament, faced backlash from farmers and rural communities, and was never passed into law.

May 13, 1916, The Graphic, London, England

It wasn't until the First World War that DST became a top issue again. Discussions began in many jurisdictions in 1915 about adopting the scheme as a wartime measure to extend daylight hours to save fuel and electricity for the war effort and provide an extra hour of daylight in the evening for activities. 

Germany and Austria were the first countries to introduce it in from April 1916 until the end of September. This was followed in the coming days o weeks by France, Denmark and several other mainland European countries. It came into effect in the UK starting on May 21, 1916. (Sadly, William Willet died of influenza in March 1915 at the age of 58 and never saw his "daylight saving" in action.)

In Canada and the U.S., it wasn't implemented at the national level until 1918.

February 16, 1916, Winnipeg Tribune

The first mention of some form of Daylight Saving Time in Winnipeg came in May 1915, when Board of Control chair Robert Shore presented a motion to city council asking that city offices and employees be allowed to open and close an hour earlier to give employees the benefit of extra sunlight. Council did not pass the motion, but reached a compromise that allowed some civic offices to open and close a half hour earlier over the summer.

In February 1916, Controller Shore and Alderman John Queen introduced a motion to create a DST bylaw for the city. When it came to a vote on the floor of council, they were the only two in favour. Some opponents called DST "merely a fad".

Following city council's no vote, a growing number of local organisations were coming out in favour of DST. One of the first was the local branch of the Canadian Credit Men's Trust Association, which was made up of representatives from the city's trust and credit companies. Other groups, such as the Winnipeg Board of Trade, Boy Scouts Association, Manitoba Automobile Club, Retail Merchants Association, and the Rotary Club, also expressed support.  

A coalition of 42 of the city's most prominent firms, including Eatons, Monarch Lumber, Union Bank, and Western Canada Flour Mills, approached council to ask it to reconsider.

One group that had been an opponent of DST in any form was organised labour, but even they passed a motion in favour of trying it out at a meeting in late February 1916.

March 21, 1916, Winnipeg Tribune

With this growing support, Shore and Queen reintroduced their DST motion on the floor of city council on March 20, 1916, and this time it narrowly won by a vote of 8 to 7.

It should be noted that municipalities in Canada didn't have the power to impose a time change on anything other than their own employees and offices. It required other companies, such as banks, retailers, professional offices, theatres, sports venues, the privately-owned streetcar company, etc., to follow along out of good will or the pressure of not wanting to be out of step with competitors that had joined "city time" or "fast time" as it was sometimes called.

It was known at the time of the vote that not everyone could join the new time. The city's railways and commodity exchanges had to stick to standard time to be in line with their networks. It was also found that some provincial bodies, such as the law courts and land titles office, had "central standard time" written into their legislation and had to operate during those hours until this was changed by lawmakers.

Despite these anomalies, the clocks were moved ahead by one hour starting on Sunday ,April 22, 1916, until the last Saturday in September.

April 3, 1916, Winnipeg Tribune

Some of the suburbs immediately surrounding Winnipeg joined DST to save confusion, but with rural areas and centres like Brandon and Selkirk opting against DST, it essentially gave Winnipeg - excluding its rail stations and yards - a time zone of its own.

There was little written about how DST went during that first summer. Signs are that people just got on with things. Some sports leagues and athletic clubs announced how pleased with the extra daylight. Some complained about having the railways working on a different time than their customers, both passenger and freight.

The Voice, Winnipeg's daily labour paper that had thousands of railway employees amongst its readers, looked forward to the last week of DST in a September 15, 1916, editorial. It said "it became quite plain after a short time that the majority of the people were not pleased with the arrangement", pointing out the frustration of railway employees and some of their customers. It finished by stating that "The conclusion of the matter may well be that the daylight saving scheme would be excellent if it could be made Dominion-wide."

Even Alderman John Queen, who helped bring forward the motion for the DST bylaw to city council earlier in the year, had to admit defeat. He said that it made little sense to carry on with the scheme unless it was done province or Dominion-wide.

In February 1917, Queen introduced a motion to repeal the DST bylaw and city council voted 14 to 1 in favour.

March 9, 1918, Winnipeg Tribune

The city found itself back on Daylight Saving Time in 1918 and 1919 after the federal government introduced national DST through a hotly contested Daylight Saving Bill. It was approved by the Senate on April 11, 1918 and introduced across the country on Sunday, April 14. 

There was less debate about DST in Winnipeg this time around. National DST is what many critics of the 1916 experiment wanted, citizens were used to being asked to "do their part" for the war effort, and the U.S.A. introduced its own national DST on March 31st. 

Acting Prime Minister Sir George Foster told the Commons in April 1920 that national DST was a thing of the past and it "was entirely a matter for the towns and villages which wished to adopt it."  Some cities stayed with it. Winnipeg did not.

March 24, 1927, WInnipeg Tribune

November 3, 1927, WInnipeg Free Press

The next time DST was on the city's agenda was in March 1927, when a 7,000-name petition was presented to city council calling for it to be reinstated.

It was organised by the Amateur Athletic Union, and many of the signatures were from people who operated or played in various summer sports leagues eager for extra sunlight. Several businesses also signed on, indicating that it was good for their trade, or the welfare of their employees. 

City council received the petition, but councillors knew there was not enough time to debate such a contentious issue and have it in place by the time summer began. Instead, they instructed the city clerk to make it a referendum question in November's civic election. (Civic elections were held annually back then.)

The vote took place on November 25th, 1927, and citizens voted 18,047 for and 19,277 against. DST did not return to Winnipeg the following year. 

March 25, 1937, WInnipeg Tribune

A decade later, DST was back at city hall. This time it was the city's health committee that led the charge, as there was a growing belief that the extra hour of sunlight in the evening led to people getting more sunlight on their skin and taking part in more recreational activities - from organised sports to gardening.

The committee heard from many delegations on the matter, and the lineup of groups for and against was similar to 1916. 

The largest organised opponent was the Trades and Labour Council, which followed followed the lead of its approximately ten thousand railway employees who did not want to revisit the frustration of working out of step with the rest of the city.

In favour were the Retail Merchants Association, Kiwanis Club (which ran many local parks and playgrounds), and a coalition of the city's summer sports leagues and athletic clubs.

In late March, the health committee voted  3-2 in favour of its DST motion and sent it on to city council for final debate and a vote. Council voted 10 to 8 in favour of reintroducing DST from April 25, 1937, to the last Saturday in September.

Rather than go through a DST debate each spring, an amendment was made to the bylaw that the continuation of DST for 1938 and beyond would be decided in a referendum in the November 1937 civic election.

November 1937 pro-DST ads in the Winnipeg Tribune

The only organised media was a handful of newspaper ads placed by the Winnipeg Daylight Saving Association, an informal group of sport-related organisations mixed in with some service clubs and retailers mixed in.

At a mid-November meeting at the St. Regis Hotel, it was mentioned that an extra 12,000 games of golf were played at the Windsor and Kildonan golf courses that summer, much of which was attributed to daylight saving. When you took into account the city's many soccer pitches, lacrosse fields and corner playgrounds, organisers argued, you had a profound impact on the well-being of local citizens.

The group adopted the slogan "Sunshine and Health" for its ads.

The main dissenter was Ernest Brotman, a lawyer who tried to challenge the city's authority to create a DST bylaw in the courts on behalf of some railway employees. He lost.  (It doesn't appear this was an official union or Labour Council challenge, just Brotman himself.)  

November 25, 1937, Winnipeg Tribune

The Winnipeg Tribune weighed in with an editorial that noted "There is no clear line of public advantage one way or another" with DST and that people would vote based on personal circumstance. Mothers of young children (who had to put their kids to bed early) and railway men were against it. Those involved in sports or gardening were in favour. "The business community is, on the whole, apathetic. It does not seem to affect business one way or another."

The Free Press ran a similar editorial that stated “Everyone has just had first-hand knowledge of how it (DST) works, its advantages and disadvantages…. And since the coming vote will doubtless settle the matter in Winnipeg for years to come, it is desirable that the opinions of the people should be fully registered.”

Both daily papers stated that they felt that the benefits of DST outweighed the disadvantages, but could see the other side of the issue as well.

The civic election took place on November 26, 1937, and the vote was 24,771 in favour and 30,927 against. DST in Winnipeg was again put on the back burner.

February 9, 1942, Winnipeg Tribune

Another Word War meant a return to national daylight saving. This time, it was to be year-round and was introduced on Sunday, February 8, 1942, to be in line with a similar bill passed in the U.S.A.

As with the previous wartime DST, there was little debate or opposition to its introduction. Most took it in stride as another sacrifice that needed to be made on the home front.

Gallup poll results, September 22, 1945, Winnipeg Tribune

When national DST ended in September 1945, municipalities were again left to decide whether or not to continue with it for 1946 and beyond. By this point, public opinion had very much shifted to the side of DST. 

Gallup, the national polling organisation, began taking opinion polls on Canadians' attitudes towards DST in 1943 with the question: "Which of the following would you like to see done about Daylight Saving: (a) Stay of Daylight Saving Time the year ‘round, as present; (b) Have Daylight Saving Time in the summer only; or (c) go back to standard time the year round."

It found that during the war years, 72 percent of Canadians supported DST for all or part of the year. In September 1945, when respondents knew that national DST was ending, 62 percent were still in favour of keeping it for all or part of the year.

There was a sharp divide between the 60 percent of those in rural areas who wanted to stay on standard time year-round, compared to just 19 percent in urban areas. This is interesting as "urban legend" says DST was brought in because of "the farmers". In fact, they were mostly opposed to any form of DST and wanted the clocks left alone. It was urbanites who wanted it!

April 26, 1946, Winnipeg Tribune

A new year brought about a familiar debate about whether to remain on DST for 1946.

Some familiar faces came out in favour of the issue. The Board of Trade polled its members and found that of 600 respondents, nearly 90 percent supported DST, and most of them noted that a majority of their employees wanted it as well. Golfers at the city's golf course presented a 1,000- name petition in favour of it. Kinsmen also passed a motion supporting it.

Opposition to DST was muted, likely because so many major cities voted to remain on summertime DST, or "fast time" as it was nicknamed. These included: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, New York, and Chicago. This meant that folks working in the banking industry, commodity exchanges, and stock exchanges would be on DST at least for the summer.

Railways said that due to the patchwork of time zones across North America, they would stay on standard time but make accommodations in large centres that were on DST to have employees not working directly with trains to work on DST hours. This didn't please the Trades and Labour Council, which came out against the time change unless it was country-wide.

Many centres out west, like Vancouver, Calgary, Prince Albert, Saskatoon, and Regina, voted for DST. Brandon and Dauphin followed Winnipeg's lead, as did many of its suburbs, such as St. James, Charleswood, St. Boniface, Fort Garry, and Brooklands. Transcona, a railway town, voted to stay on standard time to be in line with the CPR's official time. 

Due to the rural/ urban split, smaller towns that served large farming populations, like Russell, voted to stay on standard time, despite a delegation of 35 "townies" appearing at town council asking for DST.

April 25, 1946, Winnipeg Tribune

It was again the health committee of city council that led the way on the issue when, at its meeting of April 24, 1946, Alderman Jack St. John put forth a motion for the city to go on DST from May 12 to October 13.

The committee voted 3 to 1 to approve the motion and send it to council for further debate. The only dissenter was Ernest Brotman, the lawyer who challenged the 1937 bylaw in court, who was now an alderman.

The health committee's motion was put before city council by Alderman Hilda Hesson at its Monday, May 6, 1946, meeting and it passed by a vote of 12 - 3. Voting for were aldermen Simonite, Hesson, Glassco, Harvey, Black, Hollinquist, Scott, St. John, Simpkin, Blumberg, Scraba and Stepnuk. Against were Brotman, Forkin and Penner.

By the time clocks went forward, the school board and streetcar company stated that they would be ready to go on fast time.

The most confusion was at the provincial level as, yet again, some bodies and agencies had central standard time written into their legislation. The province said it would meet and determine how to amend the legislation quickly.

November 16, 1946, Winnipeg Tribune

Many on city council were not looking forward to debating Daylight Saving Time every spring for the foreseeable future, so at its meeting of May 20, 1946, it passed a motion presented by Alderman John Blumberg to hold a referendum at the November 1946 civic election asking citizens to vote for or against seasonal DST on a permanent basis.

The most contentious issue was whether or not the referendum question should mention specific dates, or be left open for city council to adjust it in the future to be in line with other communities. The ad hoc system used in 1946 saw many municipalities going on and off DST different weeks. It was agreed to keep the dates open (see above for the text) and for the city to try to reach a consensus with nearby communities to share the same start and end dates.

The referendum was open to both landowners and non-landowners, and was held on Friday, November 22, 1946. There were 46,428 votes in favour, 20,190 against, and 4,622 rejected ballots. Why there were so many rejected ballots confused the pundits.

Winnipeggers spoke, and the city would continue on seasonal DST for 1947 and the foreseeable future.

April 25, 1963, Winnipeg Tribune

Fast forward fifteen years, and Winnipeg and some other urban centres in Manitoba were on DST, but the dates didn't match up.

Winnipeg, its surrounding suburbs, and Selkirk had DST from April 23 to October 27. Brandon was from June 1 to August 31. Portage la Prairie was from April 23 to the last Sunday in September. It's unclear why they couldn't agree on standard dates, but it may have been a way of trying to appease both urban dwellers and farmers by having DST in place for as short a period as possible.

In the February 1963 Speech from the Throne, Premier Duff Roblin announced that his government would implement province-wide DST to put everyone in the province on the same time throughout the year.

In a rare Saturday sitting on May 4, 1963, the legislature voted 36 to 15 in favour of the Official Time Act, which brought in province-wide DST from May 15 until the Sunday following the Labour Day weekend. In other words, it tried to compromise with a four-and-a-half week DST to try to appeal to both urban dwellers and farmers.

Debate in the house and public opinion created interesting compromises. Some who were against DST supported the move as at least everyone in the province would be on the same time. Some who were in favour of DST rejected it as the shorter time period put it out of synch with the six months of Standard Time followed to the east, which messed up train, television and radio schedules for six weeks.

The new time was so unpopular that in March 1965, the Roblin government amended the act that allowed Metro Winnipeg, the old City of Winnipeg and its surrounding municipalities, to choose six months of DST from April 24 to October 30, as it used to follow, and rural municipalities had the option of sticking with the old four and a half week period or the new six week period. It essentially legislated the province back to nearly the same situation it was in before the province got involved.

January 31, 1967, Winnipeg Tribune

In January 1967, even the Roblin government was frustrated with the patchwork of time zones and introduced amendments to the Official Time Act to put all of Manitoba on DST from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October. This length put it in line with major jurisdictions in North America.

Opposition was scattered, mostly letters to the editor from individuals, some rural school trustees and MLAs, and farmers' groups like the National Farmers Union.

A small group of rural MLAs tried to amend the legislation to shorten the DST period but were defeated by the government. Roblin said at the time, "It is quite evident that no matter what we do, we are not going to get an act which will please everyone."

April 29, 1967, Winnipeg Tribune

The new Official Time Act was passed into law, and on April 30, 1967, the entire province sprang ahead in unison until the last Sunday in October. This formula remained the same until the act was amended in July 1987 to start DST earlier on the first Sunday in April until the last Sunday in October.

In April 2026, Premier Wab Kinew told reporters that the practice of province-wide DST could be a thing of the past as early as 2027. Some covering the story assumed that meant no more DST anywhere in Manitoba forever. The past 110 years shows us that this may not be the case!

UPDATE: The Manitoba government launched an online survey to gauge the opinions of Manitobans about the future of province-wide PST On May 20, 2026.

Behind the Photo: The pigeon problem of 1946

  © 2026, Christian Cassidy

Often I will see an old photo or advertisment 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. For more Behind the Photo posts.

April 25, 1946, Winnipeg Tribune

1946 was a particularly bad year for pigeons in Winnipeg, and the health committee of city council was asked to investigate what could be done about them at its April meeting. This posed photo appeared on the front page of the Winnipeg Tribune on Thursday, April 25, 1946, to illustrate its coverage of the meeting.

Citizens were complaining about the flying rats (this author's interpretation) because they were making a mess, cooing people awake in the morning, and getting into buildings and homes through windows and vents, (as this was the pre-air conditioning era, so windows were left open a lot more). The warm, dry winter was ideal for the growth of the pigeon population.

“Aunt Sally” Warnock, secretary of the Winnipeg Humane Society, told the committee that the reason for so many people-friendly pigeons in the city was that the hobby of pigeon fancying was dropping out of favour and owners were just releasing their collections. She wanted pigeon keeping banned in city limits. Others pointed out that kept pigeons had a home to go to, and that it was stray pigeons that had to be looked after.

April 25, 1946, Winnipeg Tribune

The committee found that for over a decade, pigeon population control in Winnipeg was left to police who had the authority to shoot them at daybreak before pedestrians were out on the streets. Constable Carl Tangstad (pictured above) told the committee he alone shot nearly 500 in the previous two weeks. 

The discussion turned to bringing in hawks or falcons to try to control the population, but nobody on the committee knew if there were any falconers in the city. Warnock said that given the choice of having pigeons attacked by birds of prey or shooting them, the latter was more humane, but she felt trapping them and bringing them to Assiniboine Park could be a solution. 

The committee deliberated and sent a letter to the police chief asking that his department continue to shoot pigeons at dawn. He responded that his officers already shoot around 2,000 pigeons a year, and if the committee thought more than that needed to be culled, the city should look into hiring a pigeon catcher.

The discovery of how the city dealt with pigeons brought several letters to the editor opposing the practice, but for the remainder of 1946 at least, that's how it was done. 

December 8, 1946, Winnipeg Tribune

Coverage of the meeting brought out a split in the different "classes" of pigeons in the city.

Bill Ramedge, president of the North Winnipeg Pigeon Racing Club, told the Tribune in a follow-up story that "We would like to see the stray pigeons put out on the road." He compared racing pigeons to thoroughbred athletes, like horses, "but the common pigeons are just bums. They are crossbreds and everything else."  

If you want to get a sense of how serious the pigeon industry was back then, check out this 1952 edition of American Pigeon Journal. "Elite pigeon" folks were also proud of the fact that during the Second World War, the British Army Signal Corps used 17,000 carrier pigeons to carry information.

As the police were taking care of "wild" pigeons, the year ended with a couple of big events for their elite counterparts. 

The Racing Pigeon Club of Winnipeg held a show in December at the Belgian Club. The judge was J. C. Doolittle from California, who was considered one of the world's top experts in racing pigeons.

Later that month, the Pigeon Fanciers Association of Winnipeg held a show that brought in 350 entries from across Canada.

A look back at King's Park

My latest Winnipeg Places post takes a look back at King's Park in south Winnipeg!

Behind the Photo: Butcher's Turnout (July 1887)

 © 2026, 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. For more Behind the Photo posts.

City of Winnipeg Archives

The photo "Butcher's Turnout in market Square" was taken by pioneer photographer Israel Bennetto on July 15, 1887. A larger version can be found here in the City of Winnipeg Archives.

The image shows around 75 people, many on horseback, posing outside a building on a dirt road. We know that many of these people are butchers thanks to Bennetto's caption at the bottom of the image.

Israel Bennetto was born in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1860 and came to Winnipeg in 1880. He soon opened Bennetto and Co. photography studio on Main Street and was one of just four or five five photography firms listed in the street directories of the early 1880s.

Bennetto likely made his money in portrait photography, but sometimes took images of events or streetscences that could be cut down into postcards and sold at his studio.

You can read more about Bennetto in this post.

December 18, 1885, Manitoba Free Press

If you look at the window of the building the men are in front of it says Seymour House.

This was a large and popular hotel located north of City Hall overlooking the Market Building with an address of 37 Market Avenue West. It opened around 1884 and was owned by popular hotelier James Baird.

To give a better sense of its location, the top image was taken on Princess Street looking towards Main Street. On the left is Seymour House, and on the right is the north side of the Market Building and rear of City Hall.

The hotel didn't look like these images back in 1887. Like many pre-1900 hotels, like the Winnipeg and Woodbine, it started off small and grew over time with the city's fortunes.

A November 1890 Tribune story noted that, " ... Baird has begun the improvements to the Seymour House. The portion formerly used as an implement office and warehouse will be fitted up as a barber shop and sitting room. Next year, Mr. Baird will erect a three-storey brick addition to the hotel."

July 13, 1887, Manitoba Free Press

Why were these butchers gathering at Seymour House on July 15, 1887? 

To celebrate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, or 50 years on the throne, cities, towns, and villages across the Commonwealth held a day of celebrations, and Winnipeg was no different. The largest event was a "monster parade" that began at 1 pm at the CPR Station on Main Street and went to Broadway. 

The parade's grand marshal was Fire Chief William McDobbie, and his fire brigade was at the head of the line. They were followed by a marching band, the Winnipeg Rowing Club, fourteen horse teams from various transfer/moving companies, and then a "mounted corps of butchers".

After the butchers there were more bands, other industry groups and trade unions, and "civic groups", like the St. Andrew's Society.

July 14, 1887, Manitoba Free Press

A Winnipeg Free Press review of the parade noted that, “It was not quite such a monster affair as visitors from large cities might have looked for”, but that it represented the city well.

As for the butchers, the review said that there were about 60 men on horseback and more in a pair of covered wagons with the motto "We Kill to Live" on the sides. It quipped that the turnout wasn't representative of the industry, as there weren't that many butchers in the city. Cowboys and "employees in the various departments of the butchering business" are what swelled the numbers.

As Seymour House is half-way through the parade route, it is unclear if the butchers gathered at the hotel before the parade for lunch and no doubt a few beverages, or if this was post-parade.

Peel's Prairie Provinces

The Jubilee celebration gave Winnipeggers a civic holiday, and with July 15th being a Friday, it became a long weekend.

Other events were planned for the 15th and 16th, including a lacrosse tournament, an international regatta between the Winnipeg and Minnesota rowing clubs, and a 500-member choir Jubilee Concert at Grace Church.

Winnipeg hoped that the weekend would attract tourists from surrounding communities and even the U.S.A. It published a 23-page visitor's souvenir jubilee guide booklet for the occasion, which you can read in full here.

Bennetto's wonderful photograph is crisp and clear. He had a very patient group of butchers!

This is a photo you could spend a lot of time exploring to see the faces and fashions of 1887 working men. Here are just a few things I noticed:

Did Robert LeRoy Parker, a.k.a. Butch Cassidy, attend the event? That would be a great urban legend to start! According to this Cassidy timeline, he was in Colorado and travelling around with another man and a horse they entered in races to make money!

Curious onlookers from the hotel’s second storey wondering what all the fuss is about. They likely had no idea that they would be captured in the photo.

A selection of 1880s Winnipeg men. Ladies, who would you choose?

Heritage Winnipeg's 40th Annual Conservation Awards

 

I attended the 40th annual Heritage Winnipeg Preservation Awards on April 1, 2026 in the Crystal Ballroom of the Fort Garry Hotel. Many great people and buildings honoured. You can read about all of them in here at the Heritage Winnipeg website.

If there was a theme this year, it was "a labour of love", which came up in most of the acceptance speeches. None of these projects were particularly high profile, and in each case the owners could have found a cheaper option to do what they did. Instead, they all chose the long-term future of their buildings over short-term return on their repair dollars.

These are some of my additional notes about the awards. 

Residential Conservation Award: Roslyn Square (formerly Roslyn Court), 40 Osborne Street.

The Roslyn is owned by Globe Properties. Richard Morantz, CEO of Globe, said his father bought the building in 1969, and it has been the jewel in their portfolio ever since.

The award was primarily for the preservation of the building’s 500 windows. It was all custom work, of course, as nothing was standard sized, and took two years.

If I heard correctly during the owner’s acceptance speech, the project cost over $1.5m, or about a third of the building's assessed value. The owner said this illustrated that to renovate a building like this using proper methods, it a long-term investment.

Residential Conservation Award: Ches-Way Apartments at 240 Chestnut Street

I've followed this history of this building since 2020 and had a tour of it when it was completed last year. It took about three years from the time the owners got possession to it reopening. This was due to the amount of work that had to be done inside the brick potion of the block, which was a gut job due to it sitting vacant with a hole in the roof for a couple of years.

The amount of time and money that went into such a small building was enormous. What saved it was that it was over engineered, so there were no foundation issues to deal with, and it found a champion. New owners who felt that the neighbourhood deserved to have the Ches-Way around for another century.

Commercial Conservation Award: Saddlery Building, 284 William Avenue

I scratched my head about when I saw the program and wondered what building this was. When I Googled the address, I realised that I wrote about its history back in 2021. I'll have to update that post now that it has been renovated!

The building was literally on its last legs when CentreVenture stepped in to broker a deal to save it. Many surprises greeted the architects, engineers and construction workers after work got underway, but they worked together to save the structure and ready it for another century of use. 

Commercial Conservation Award: Fort Garry Hotel, 222 Broadway

What can you say about the Fort Garry Hotel? It is Winnipeg's gold standard when it comes to heritage conservation by a private owner. This award was primarily for the painstaking restoration of the old Palm Room, now known as the Oval Room Brasserie.

Ida Albo and Rick Bell have been the managing partners of the hotel for 33 years. Albo she said what restored the hotel's fortunes was that all the money made by the hotel were plowed back into the building. The Laberge family of Quebec did not expect a return on the hotel, they just wanted not to lose money with it, and Albo and Bell even lived at the hotel for their first thirteen to save money.

One of the recipients, the master plasterer responsible for much of the plaster restoration, says most of his career has been spent at the Fort Garry, starting with a years long project to restore the Crystal Casino space on the 6th and 7th floors back to its former glory.

A great business study could be made by comparing the city's two "grand old dame" hotels. The Marlborough, which sits vacant and may be turned into lower income housing, and the Hotel Fort Garry, which made itself into city's premiere hotel.

The Manitoba Museum will censor its exhibits if you complain

As reported by CTV Winnipeg the other day, the Manitoba Museum was to host another “Yuri’s Night” at the Planetarium on April 6th. It’s billed as “part of a global celebration of humanity’s past, present and future in space”. Sort of like a Jane’s Walk for space nuts. Yuri, of course, is Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who was the first person in space on April 12, 1961 - almost 65 years to the day of the event.

A small group headed by two Ukrainian women was insulted by the Manitoba Museum hosting a Yuri’s Night event, as Russia is currently at war with Ukraine, and complained. What did the museum do? Rather than try to explain the context and intent of the event, they cancelled it. This, despite its canned Facebook apology to people who complained stating: "Yuri's Night was never intended to be focused on Yuri Gagarin himself. While he became the first human to orbit the Earth in 1961, the focus is intended to be on this beginning of humankind's exploration of space, which has led humans to walk on the Moon, build space stations, and yearn to explore our solar system. The exploration of space is just one manifestation of the human spirit of exploration; our need to know, to learn, to discover."

Some might think, well Russia is at war, so best not to teach people about Russians in history, and feel that the Museum took some principled stance, but that is not the case. In the very same week as the space history exhibit was to be shown, the Museum held a viewing party for the Artemis II launch. This is a mission crewed by some members of the American military and funded by a regime that has threatened to make Canada the 51st state. It has also inflicted great economic hardship on our country with its tariff policies.
Furthermore, it is a big funder of the Israeli military machine that has been destroying Palestine since 2023, and started a war with Iran, which has spun out of control and caused instability in the entire region. The resulting spike in oil prices will further hurt Canadians.
The fact that one event was cancelled and the other went ahead shows that this wasn't some sort of principled response by the Museum, it just couldn't stick to its guns that an event about the history of space exploration had to include Gagarin. It caved into tenuous complaints.

There are two concerns I have with how this all played out. The first is how relatively quickly and easily the Museum will alter or edit its programming based on what are pretty tenuous complaints. That cat is now out of the bag, and it will make the Museum a magnet for other groups looking to right wrongs or get back at other groups by having people or events edited out of exhibits. The second is that the cancelling of Yuri Gagarin's name from its space history programming made the news. What programming or exhibits past, present and future have already been altered due to complaints from other groups, where the complainants did not run to the media? In the days of online misinformation, organisations like the Museum are the places that need to stand up for history and defend factual information that they are presenting. For me, I will now always wonder when reading something by, or seeing something at, the Manitoba Museum, whether or not events, people, or information has been edited out to appease community complaints.