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.

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?

Behind the Photo: Winnipeg's giant sinkhole of 1925

© 2025, Christian Cassidy

Often I will see an old photo or ad and dig 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:

Winnipeg Free Press Evening Bulletin, April 3, 1925

This image appeared on the front page of the evening edition of the Winnipeg Free Press on April 3, 1925, claiming to show where a "milk wagon was engulfed by cave-in". Was this a century-old version of clickbait to get people to buy the paper and read the story? It wasn't!

The brief accompanying story noted that at around 6:30 on the morning of Friday, April 3, 1925, Albert Brewer was driving his two-horse Crescent Creamery rig down McGregor Avenue when it was swallowed up by a sink-hole at the intersection of Matheson Avenue. 

This photo, credited only to "our Free Press cameraman", shows Brewer standing next to the hole hours later with just the tip of his wagon visible.

Winnipeg Tribune, April 3, 1925

I checked the Winnipeg Tribune from the same day to see if I could compare the story to the Free Press version and there was a similar photo on its front page credited to "Foote and James" showing the sunken wagon. The story was also its main headline that day.

The Tribune story contained more detail and was likely more accurate than the Free Press version as its reporter spoke to Brewer, a dairy representative, and a city hall official. 

Brewer told the Tribune that he was travelling through the intersection of Mattheson and McGregor when "The wagon went down ker-plunk and pulled the horse after it... I thought I was on my way to China." He grabbed the bridle as he scrambled free and called for help. Several people came to assist him extricate it. 

A Crescent Creamery representative told the reporter that about $60 in cream and milk was destroyed and the total damage from the accident was about $100.

A city hall official blamed the sink-hole, estimated at around 12 feet deep, on a leaky storm sewer pipe. The city was in the midst of the spring melt and the storm sewer brought a lot of water into the intersection that eroded the ground around the fault.

Left: Crescent Creamery wagon from 1938 advertisement.
Right: Undated image of its wagon produced by the Lawrie Carriage Company
(from Archives of Manitoba via Virtual Heritage Winnipeg).

The sinking of the wagon must have been terrifying for both horse and driver. As can be seen in the images above, these were substantial vehicles. 

You might think that 1925 was late to have horse-drawn wagons on the streets of the city and you would be correct. Through the 1910s, motorized vehicles exploded in popularity and certainly after the First World War were the dominant form of commercial transport.

Older companies, though, had huge investments in their four-legged workers. Moving companies, department stores, breweries, and dairies had urban stables, rural stables with pastures, and a large roster of drivers, trainers and handlers on staff. For many, the transition from horse to fully motorized transport took years. 

Even after the transition, some companies still kept a small number of teams around even if just for PR or show purposes. A good example of this is Shea's Brewery which was famous for it award-winning Clydesdales. It wasn't until the 1930s when Shea, who was in failing health, sold them on to Anheuser-Busch to become the Budweiser Clydesdales. Eatons retired its last horses in 1951.

April 26, 1926, Winnipeg Tribune

Dairies were one of he last industries to get rid of the horse.

Crescent Creamery was established in 1906 on Lombard Avenue. It bought out Carson's Hygienic Dairy and in 1914 and moved its operations to Carson's Sherburn Street plant. By 1925, it had a large fleet of both motorized vehicles and horse-drawn wagons with the latte doing much of its residential milk deliveries.

Crescent used horses until at least 1949. In a 1953 Free Press story about the retirement of "Old Mack", a Fort Rouge-based dairy delivery horse, it was noted that there were still over 100 dairy horses working on city streets but their numbers were dwindling.

Where was the accident in relation to today's streetscape?

The 2009 Street View photo above shows the only commercial corner at the intersection of McGregor Street and Matheson Avenue. the others are residential. It is likely that this is the modern-day view with a similar looking house in the background indicated by the arrow.

For more "Behind the Photo" posts.

Four generations of Paul Kane

© 2024, Christian Cassidy

If you enjoy piecing together stories from Winnipeg's history, cemeteries are a great starting place.

I was walking past St. John's Cemetery in the North End a few days ago and saw this intriguing sight through the fence. Three generations of Paul Kane who died between 1922 and 1958 with similar headstones referencing an earlier Paul Kane.

Finding out who these Paul Kanes were revealed the interesting story of one of Canada's most famous 19th-century artists and how the large family collection of his works depicting Canada's West ended up in the hands of a Texas millionaire.

Here's a look back at four generations of Paul Kane.


Paul Kane I - The artist (1810 - 1871)

Undated portrait of Kane by F. A. Verner (Royal Ontario Museum)

The "original" Paul Kane came to Canada from County Cork, Ireland in 1819 with his family at the age of nine. He excelled at art and in 1845 came to the West to document the landscape and the daily lives of its Indigenous peoples.

Kane would make sketches on his travels and then return to Toronto to make some of them into oil paintings that he would exhibit and sell to finance his next trip. It is believed he created around 700 sketches and 100 oils in his lifetime.

Colonial life was a popular literary genre in Victorian England and Kane eventually published a diary of his travels with numerous sketches in The Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America from Canada to Vancouver's Island and Oregon through the Hudson's Bay Company's Territory and Back Again in London in 1859.

The book was republished in French in 1861 and in Danish two years later. The Radisson Society of Canada republished the book in English with a foreword by historian Lawrence J. Burpee in 1925.

Kane retired to his Toronto home with his wife Harriet in the 1860s and soon went blind. He died on February 20, 1871 at the age of 61. 

Mount Kane in the Rocky Mountains, and Kane Avenue in Winnipeg are named for him.


Paul Kane II - The son (1854 - 1922)

Winnipeg Free Press, Feb 1902 (top) and June 1910

Paul Kane II was born in Toronto in 1854, one of four children of Paul and Harriet Kane. He came to Rathwell, Manitoba in 1878 where he bought a farm and soon became a big player in the life of the small agricultural community.

Kane operated a corner store, built the community's first grain elevator in 1889, and opened a drug store in 1900. He eventually sold these ventures to get into the lumber business. In public life, Kane was secretary of the district's school division from 1889 to 1919, a justice of the peace, and was even said to have pulled teeth when called upon.

As for family, Kane married Abigail Uniacke soon after arriving in Manitoba and they had five children: Irene, Paul. William, Douglas, and Mary.

When Kane's mother died in Toronto in 1891, he inherited a collection of about 250 of his father's sketches as well as some correspondence and other memorabilia from his travels.

In the journal article Paul Kane Goes South: The Sale of the Family’s Collection of Field Sketches by I. S. MacLaren, Kane's daughter Irene said "I feel my father (Paul Kane II) was too young when his father died to have built up much appreciation of his father's talent." and that it was her mother took more of an interest in what they had received.

Fort Garry and St. Boniface, 1850s by Paul Kane (National Gallery of Canada)

There was a resurgence of in interest in Paul Kane when in April 1904 the Women's Canadian Historical Association hosted an exhibit of his oil paintings at a private gallery in Toronto. National wire stories about the exhibit, Kane's travels, and his art were picked up by several major newspapers across the country.

Some sources say that the collection included 100 oils which were purchased from the artist in the 1850s by Toronto M.P. Hon. Gorge W. Allan, likely making him the main patron of Kane's travels. The collection was sold on to Sir Edmund B. Osler in 1903 and a decade later he donated most of the works to the Royal Ontario Museum and about a dozen of them to the National Gallery of Canada.

January 5, 1907, Winnipeg Free Press

On Saturday, January 5, 1907, the Winnipeg Free Press ran a two-page feature about Paul Kane the artist that included several reproductions of sketches provided to the newspaper by Paul Kane II.

The text was a recap of Kane's travels from The Wanderings of an Artist... and was presented as a nostalgic look back at the Canadian West to a new, urban generation of Winnipeggers.

The Free Press story was carried by the Edmonton Bulletin and likely other Western newspapers.

March 18, 1922, Winnipeg Free Press

Paul Kane II was in failing health and sold off his lumber business around 1920 so that he and Abigail could retire to 893 Corydon Avenue in Winnipeg.

In March 1922, the Board of Trade hosted an expansive exhibit of Kane's sketches and other memorabilia in its exposition building on Main Street. The items were provided by Paul Kane II and it was said to be the first most of the works had ever been displayed in public.

A Free Press art critic wrote: "The two hundred or more pictures made on the spot by Paul Kane will be a revelation to those who visit this exhibition as presenting one of the only two original pictorial records of the early days of this country."  (The other was well-known American artist George Catlin, who in 1830 began travelling the American Midwest, sometimes venturing into Western Canada, to draw and paint the scenery and Indigenous peoples of the region.)

A follow-up Free Press editorial column stressed that the Kane collection should be bought by the provincial library or the Winnipeg Foundation so that it could be part of the province's public record. This did not happen and Paul Kane II died three months after the exhibit closed.

This 1922 exhibition again put Kane and his work into the spotlight and every few years the Free Press or other papers across the country would write about him and publish images of his work. This renewed interest prompted the Radisson Society of Canada to republish Kane's 1859 book The Wanderings of an Artist in 1925.


Paul Kane III - The grandson (1889 - 1958)

When Paul Kane II died, the art collection was left to his wife and five children, including Paul Kane.

A lawyer by trade, Kane III was the long-time secretary of the Manitoba Electrical Association. He lived with his wife Evelyn and their two children, Harriet and Paul, in the 938 Corydon Avenue family home as his mother moved in with one of his sisters until she died in 1940.

In MacLaren's Paul Kane Goes South..., Kane III is described as a "prickly pear".  His sister Irene said of the collection that "... he (Paul)  just took over and we had no say".

MacLaren details how the federal government, first the National Archives then the National Gallery, reached out to Kane on several occasions after his father's death to inquire about obtaining some or all of the collection. In one communication, Kane said that he had already been offered $12,000 for the collection but was coy about allowing officials from either institution to examine, catalogue, and appraise the collection for themselves.  By the mid-1920s the communications ended.

September 24, 1926, Winnipeg Tribune

Kane then took on the Radisson Society for their 1925 republication of Wanderings of an Artist....

A column in the September 24, 1926 edition of the Winnipeg Tribune reported that Kane III released a long statement slamming J. W. Garvin who provided notes, and historian Lawrence J. Burpee who provided a new forward for the book.

The column states that Kane "... challenges messrs. Garvin and Burpee to battle because of what he calls misinformation to be found in this new edition". He was particularly harsh towards Burpee claiming that he "made a number of mistakes and has been careless and and contradictory in dealing with the life and work of the artist."

November 10, 1957,  Paris (Texas) News

Another slow round of communications resumed with the National Archives in the late 1920s. Kane informed the archives officials that he had an offer from the U.S. for $50,000 for the collection but they were still willing to assess the value for themselves. Negotiations to see the collection came to an end around 1935 after a letter was sent to the institution by another member of the Kane family stating that Paul did not have sole authority to dispose of the collection. Also,

In 1957, an ageing Paul Kane III finally sold his grandfather's collection to Texas millionaire Lutcher Stark and they are still part of the Stark Museum of Art collection. News stories from the time estimated the sale price to be $100,000.

MacLaren concluded in Paul Kane Goes South... that, "Though the sale netted Kane some money, it all but killed him", noting that even his daughter told her that "the saga of selling the collection ruined his personality and ended his life."

Paul Kane III died less than a year after selling the collection at his Corydon Avenue home on August 25, 1958.


Paul Kane IV - The great-grandson (1928-1954)

Paul Kane IV was a 25-year-old second year arts student at St. John's College when he was struck by a train on Sunday, August 15, 1924 along Waverley Street.

At around 9:30 p.m., the crew of a passenger train spotted Kane walking on the track with his back towards the train. The engineer blew the whistle several times but "the man paid no attention". His body was thrown 320 feet from the track. An ambulance was called but he was pronounced dead on arrival at General Hospital.

A later inquest exonerated the train's crew and ruled the death an accident.


More about Paul Kane the artist:

Articles and books:
- The Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America from Canada to Vancouver's Island and Oregon through the Hudson's Bay Company's Territory and Back Again by Paul Kane (1958)
- Paul Kane's Frontier, J. Russell Harper (1971)
- Paul Kane Goes South: The Sale of the Family’s Collection of Field Sketches by I. S. MacLaren (1997)

Websites:
- Paul Kane Life and Work Art Canada Institute
- Paul Kane collection National Gallery of Canada
- Paul Kane Collection Royal Ontario Museum
- Paul Kane Canadian Encyclopedia
- Paul Kane Albert H. Robson

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'

Behind the Photo: Cigar Stand

© 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:

The above image was posted in the Manitoba Postcard Collectors Forum on Facebook. It is part of the vast Rob McInnes postcard collection, (you can see some of it here), and is used in this post with his permission.

The image is by Maurice Lyall of the Lyall Commercial Photo Co. of Winnipeg and contains no mention of a year or the location of the news stand. A resourceful member of the forum traced one of the magazine covers back to February 1912. A note on the back of the card states "This is Fred & Len's stall. That is Fred behind the counter."

After some digging through street directories, I found that this is the Foster Bros. News and Cigar Stand inside the McLaren Hotel operated by Frederick W. and R. Leonard Foster.

1911 Census of Canada, Library and Archives Canada

The Fosters came to Canada from their native Sussex, England in 1893. The family consisted of Alfred, a builder, and his wife Annie, along with their children Frederick, Herbert, Sidney, Charles, Augustine, R. Leonard, and Adelaide.

In 1903, tragedy struck when Alfred died of a heart attack while working in Minnedosa. At the time, the children ranged in age from 16 to 26 and all lived together at the family home on Furby Street.

The family remained close-knit. The year after Alfred's death, Annie and the children moved to a house at 527 Pembina Highway then to Beresford Avenue. The 1916 census shows them, minus Sidney and Charles, living together at 693 Rosedale Avenue.

March 3, 196, The Voice

Fred and Len Foster followed in their father's footsteps and became carpenters and in the early 1900s both worked for the CPR.

How they transitioned from being carpenters to running a news stand at the McLaren Hotel is unclear. The 1912 street directory lists the two men with no occupations and in the 1913 directory, the data for which would have been complied in mid-1912, there they are as Foster Bros. News and Cigar Stand.

McLaren Hotel ca. 1911

The 150-room McLaren Hotel was opened in September 1911 by the McLaren Brothers. Aside from CPR's 300-room Royal Alexandra Hotel at Higgins Avenue, the McLaren was the largest hotel on the Main Street strip between Portage and Main and the CPR Depot.

Unlike the grander railway hotels, the other being the Grand Trunk's Hotel Fort Garry which would open in 1913, the McLaren was a middle-class hotel offering more affordable room rates and meal options.

Frederick married Amy Craddeck in December 1915 and by 1917 moved to 260 Mandeville Street in St. James.

Len took a different path and enlisted to fight in the war on September 2, 1914. He served as a private with the 10th Battalion Infantry and was killed in action on April 23, 1916 at the age of 29. He is buried at the Railway Dugouts Burial Ground in Belgium.

After Len's death, Charles took his place at the McLaren alongside Frederick.

The Fosters got out of the news stand business around 1926. Frederick, still living on Mandeville, went back to being a carpenter. Charles, who lived at 602 Jubilee did the same.

Frederick disappears from street drectories around 1945 and it is unclear what happened to him later in life. I could find no obituary for him and census records for that time are not yet accessible.

More Behind the Photo entries

Behind the Photo: Hargrave Street then and now

 © 2020, Christian Cassidy

This is a photo of Hargrave Street from St. Mary Avenue in April 1958 and in 1919. The original photo is by John Warkentin from his collection at York University Library and the modern day one is from Google Street View in 2019.

These were the dying days of what was once a thriving residential neighbourhood in the downtown.

A growing number of street cars lines extended residential development further away from the core and the creation of suburbs after the First World War provided affordable alternatives for families and young couples. The downtown's fine, old homes were subdivided into rooming or boarding houses and the neat little terraces were left to run down.

Detailed view of Warkentin photo

The buildings in Warkentin's photo, with the exception of The T. Eaton mail order catalogue warehouse - now City Place, would have been demolished within 15 years of this photo being taken at most.

The city allowed the bulldozers in to raze entire blocks of homes, apartments, businesses, schools and playgrounds in the 1960s and early 1970s, with the hopes of attracting modern downtown development with cheap, vacant land. Out of that came some high rise apartments, the Holiday Plaza / Holiday Inn development, a new Convention Centre, a new central library, etc., though much of it remained remained undeveloped and are surface parking lots to this day.

This image from the T. Eaton Company's Contact magazine in 1905 shows across the street from Warkentin's image in 1905. The terraced housing in the foreground is identified as O'Brien's Terrace and is probably very similar to what the terrace captured by Warkentin looked like. I could not find a name for the terrace in his image.

For more Behind the Photo blog entries.

Behind The Photo: Ethyl Doyle's mug shot (1904)

© 2020, Christian Cassidy

Previously, I wrote about Bloody Jack Krawchenko after seeing his wanted poster at the Winnipeg Police Museum during Doors Open. The museum also has a selection of  “mug shots” on display and I was attracted to the card for this fashionable looking lady in her fur coat and jaunty chapeau.

The image is of Miss Ethel Doyle, alias Ethel Clayton, and was taken after her arrest in April 1904 for “keeping a bawdy house”. The 24-year-old, originally from Owen Sound, Ontario, is described as stout, with a fair complexion, brown hair and brown eyes.

January 11, 1904, Manitoba Free Press

This was Doyle's second arrest in 1904. The first came on January 9 at a brothel or bawdy house on Thomas Street, now Minto Street. It was day after Thomas Street was dropped as a "segregated vice zone" by police. (More about that in my next post !)

To give a sense of how large the Thomas Street operation was, twelve "keepers", seventy-two "female inmates" and four "male inmates" arrested that night. One of the women was Ethel Doyle. She isn't mentioned specifically in newspaper articles from the raid, so it is not clear if wshe was an inmate or keeper.

The next day, Magistrate Thomas Mayne Daly fined the keepers $40 plus costs and inmates $20 plus costs. He reminded them all that Thomas Street was now off limits as a vice zone and warned the women not to come before him again.

April 7, 1904, Winnipeg Tribune

Around midnight on April 6, 1904, police raided a house in the 400 block of Pacific Avenue after a public tip. They arrested Doyle and another woman who were working there.

Doyle was charged with "keeping a bawdy house" and the other woman with working in a bawdy house. They once again came before Magistrate Daly and this time there was no fine option. The two were sentenced to jail for three and two months, respectively.

It was considered a very harsh sentence, one that was needed, said Daly, to be an example to others.

In the April raid police also found two men in the house. One was described as being “hauled from behind a bedstead where he was in scanty attire.” While the man was dressing, a cab pulled up with three more men who came into the parlour. The names of the five, “some who occupy prominent positions in the city”, were taken but the names are not released and it is unclear if they were also fined.

What became of Ethel Doyle is unclear.

Some in Doyle's profession would have changed aliases and continued working, though in this period after the end of the Thomas Street segregated vice era and the start of the Point Douglas one in 1909, the sentences seemed particularly harsh and it might not have been worth sticking around.

Another option, especially for those without ties to the city, simply moved further West to set up shop in newer towns. In some cases, their departure was induced by magistrates who offered to reduce or eliminate fines or jail sentences in exchange for a promise to leave.

1905 Henderson Directory of Winnipeg

Looking at the 1905  Henderson Directory, which would have been complied in late 1904 after Doyle's release, there is a listing for an Ethel Clayton, Doyle's alias. This name did not appear in the previous year's directory.

This Ethel Doyle is curiously listed as having both rooms 3 and 5 of the Johns Block, a 20-unit, working-class residential building at 314 1/2 McDermot Avenue near Main Street.   

In the following year's directory, Clayton is listed as being in just room 2 and there is an occupation noted that may explain why she would have had two rooms: dressmaker. This could be a coincidence and Miss Clayton the dressmaker had a separate residential suite and work studio in 1905, or it could have been our own fashionable Miss Doyle was using a cover to resume her trade. There's no way to know for certain.

Ethel Doyle last appears in the Henderson Directory of 1907, still as a dressmaker at room 2 of the Johns Block. A search of newspapers, census records and marriage certificates from the era give no clues as to what might have become of her.

Whatever happened, hopefully Doyle lived a long and happy life.

Related:
Winnipeg Police Museum
More "Behind the Photo" entries