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.

Winnipeg photographer Israel Bennetto

© 2026, Christian Cassidy

I am working on a blog post about the 1880s house at 121 Kate Street. One of the residents I found there deserved a seperate blog post here!

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 married Anna Lauretta, and they had two young children, Litta and Israel Jr., when they moved to the house at 121 Kate Street in 1893. A third child, Marjory, was born in 1897.

Circa 1890s (EBay)

Bennetto's money was likely made in portrait photography. Surviving are images such as the above, a portrait of Mary Inkster, and images of  Winnipeg city council and its officials in 1888. 

When his studio moved to 436 Main Street around 1891, he also sold photography supplies and stock images of events and street scenes. This was a common practice for photographers as an additional income stream and a way to generate publicity for their services. For examples of his work, see here, here here, and here.

One of the most famous images attributed to Bennetto and Co. is this iconic portrait of Louis Riel that is still used today. It is unlikely that Bennetto took the photo himself, as the image is believed to be from the early 1870s and he was only born in 1860.

Perhaps, he purchased the rights to this image and others from an old-time photographer he came across? Another suggestion provided to me by a postcard collector is that he may have bought out an existing studio, and this was amongst its inventory.

Bennetto dabbled in property speculation, as many businessmen did back then. Likely finding it to be more lucrative than photography, he closed his studio in 1906 and spent most of his time in real estate.

It appears that in later years Bennetto subdivided parts of his Kate Street property and sold it off as residential lots. (See the 121 Kate blog post for more details.)

Assessment records show that all of the houses along the north side of Bannatyne between Kate and Juno streets, and a house next door to 120 Juno, were built in 1903. The large apartment at Bannatyne and Kate, famous for being on the cover of the Guess Who's So Long Bannatyne album cover, was built in 1910. 

The Bennettos moved from Kate Street in 1911. By this time, he had a new career, their two eldest children were in their twenties and Marjorie was 12.  They do not appear in Winnipeg street directories through the 19-teens. Perhaps Israel relocated further West to pursue his real estate ambitions.

Bennetto's new career did not keep him out of trouble. Plenty of money could be made in the land business  in the West during colonisation as new railway lines turned brush or farmland into town sites,  but there was also risk. Bennetto spent a lot of time in court being sued or suing others over land-relaed deals.

The Benettos were back in Winnipeg by 1920 and living at 100 Niagara Street. Marjorie got married later that year. 

Mrs. Bennetto died in June 12, 1929 at the Niagara Street home, aged 68. Israel died on June 4, 1946 at the Maple Leaf Apartments, 915 Corydon Ave, aged 86.

Glimpses of the old Winnipeg General Hospital

General Hospital on William, U of M Digital collections, H. Kalen fonds

I was at the HSC’s General Hospital section the other day. It's a place of fond memories for me as I spent many years there, starting in my mid-teens as a volunteer, then as an employee of the volunteer department's business wing.

Thanks to my job, I used to know the place like the back of my hand, so when I go back now it is strange to find buildings where exits or parking lots once were. Like layers of an onion, the hospital's oldest buildings go deeper into the core of the complex. 

The interior hallways of the main floor of the General Hospital's various buildings are now a single, generic “hospital hallway” décor and you can no longer tell when you are passing from one building to another. There use to be little hints like the age of office doors or a bit of molding at ceiling level.

I found two little spots on my walk around that show a glimpse into the General Hospital's past.

Through all of the renovations and additions, there is one little section of main floor hallway wall that has been left alone.

This is the elevator lobby for the Winnipeg General Hospital’s huge 1958 "north wing" addition along William Avenue (the photo at the top of this post.)

The Leo Mol bronze, described as a "contemporary representation of compassion", was donated by the White Cross Guild to commemorate the hospital's centennial in 1972 and unveiled in late December.

It contains a biblical phrase, “To heal the broken hearted – to set at liberty them that are bruised", followed by "Dedicated to all those who by their devoted labours and generosity have made it possible for this hospital to serve the community.”

It's unclear if the granite? marble? wall behind the artwork is original to the 1958 building or if it was added for the 1972 unveiling.

The following year, 1973, the General and its surrounding hospitals were amalgamated into the Health Sciences Centre.

Construction of East and West wings, 1913 (HSC Archives)

The other nice sight is a view of the ca. 1914 East Wing from Guildy's Cafe in the Thorlakson Building.

Thorlakson was constructed in the early 1980s facing Sherbrook Street and became the main entrance for the HSC complex. The space that is now Guildy’s Café used to be the HSC gift shop run by the Volunteer Department / White Cross Guild, (that's where its name comes from).

When the cafe was moved into the gift shop space, an inside seating area was created and part of the west wall was replaced with large windows. It provides a nice view from the cafe of the ca. 1914 East Wing  and a wee little courtyard with some benches.