© 2026, Christian Cassidy
Part IV: A Wartime Reprieve (1915-1920)
Happyland's 1910 season got off to a poor start.
Rumours swirled that the Chicago Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway was interested in purchasing the 30-acre site for its railway terminal and yards. It had already purchased some land north of Portage Avenue that adjoined it.
Adding fuel to the speculation was the March 1910 announcement that most of the park's buildings, rides, and even the thousands of planks that made up its wooden boardwalk were for sale. Venues like Winnipeg Beach and Elm Park bought many of them.
There wasn't a lot written about the demise of the amusement park side of Happyland. It's likely that the new ownership group that bought the business in 1909 pulled out, and it again reverted to landowner Fisher.
By this time, the buildings and rides were four years old and likely needed a lot of maintenance to keep them up and running. With little chance of a third group of owners coming forward, Fisher sold them for what he could before they became scrap.
The railway sale didn't materialise, and Happyland reopened in May 1910 as a sports and picnic ground. The site was poorly maintained, so the local soccer league and some other groups stopped using it part way through the season.
The 1911 season was also a dismal one for Happyland. There were some cricket practices in the spring, but the cricketers, soccer league, and Maroons baseball team played their regular season games at River Park in St. Vital.
Rumours continued to swirl about the possible sale of the land to the railway, or to the federal government as the home of a new armoury and military drill ground. (This was Minto Armoury, which was built just a few blocks away in 1914.)
The only newspaper mention of an event at Happyland was the Sells-Floto Circus that rented the grounds to hold shows on July 26 and 27.
In 1912, Happyland's sports grounds sputtered back into action by hosting some cricket matches and as one of the regular season diamonds in the city's commercial baseball league.
Two circuses used the grounds in June and August.
In 1913, the city's commercial baseball league continued to use the Happyland ball diamond. The Oklahoma Ranch Wild West Show performed at the grounds in mid-June, and Sells-Floto was back for two days in late July.
In the wee hours of July 30th, a huge thunderstorm spooked five of the Sells-Floto elephants. They ran around the grounds causing significant damage to the big top and manager's tent. Also heavily damaged was the dome, which the Tribune called the "last remaining vestige of the old Happyland Amusement Company's buildings."
The handlers managed to calm the elephants before they got beyond the fence and into what was now a growing residential neighbourhood.
The destruction of the dome was perhaps an omen for Happyland's next phase.
In April 1914, Fisher announced that Happyland was no more. He didn't sell it to a railway or to become an armoury. Instead, he was going to subdivide it and sell it as suburban lots.
This was the most lucrative option for Fisher, who was a real estate broker by profession. Since the park opened in May 1906, a suburban neighbourhood had grown up all around the park, which made the Happyland land very desirable. He estimated that the 250 or so lots that he could create might
Fisher couldn't cash in immediately, as the property had never been surveyed by the city to run streets, sewer, water, and power. He appeared at various committees of council throughout the year to ask if at least part of the land could be surveyed so that he could register some suburban lots and put them on the market.
The city's budget was already allocated for 1914, and the survey work would have to wait until spring 1915.
The value of building permits issued in Winnipeg in August 1914 plummeted to $343,000 compared to $1.77 million in August 1913. By October, only $100,000 worth of permits were issued compared to $1.32 million the previous October.
As it became apparent that the war could be lengthy and demand a lot from Canada, bank credit for home building and mortgages remained tight, and some construction materials were conserved for the war effort. Besides, the only type of housing there was demand for was apartment blocks, as thousands of young families would need to downsize when the "man of the house" went off to fight.
In a surprising twist, the war's impact on the housing plans for the Happyland site, made it bounce back as a space for entertainment and recreation.
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