Shanty Town (cont)

By the end of 1885, the odd shanty still remained in the area of the HBC Flats, but their extinction was imminent. Starting in 1886, the rail yards of the Northern Pacific and Manitoba Railroad, the Canadian Northern, the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad and the Canadian National Railway took over the Flats and largely eliminated the traces of the structures that had previously dotted the site. The Northern Pacific and Manitoba Railroad first built a temporary station on 20 acres of land the company owned at the Flats. In 1888, the Northern Pacific and Manitoba Railway (NP & MR) created a permanent station, offices, freight sheds, repair shops and an engine roundhouse, which formed the basis of the future Canadian National East Yards.

It took time for this redevelopment to overwhelm the location, so the HBC in April 1894 announced it was using a large portion of the Flats formerly occupied by squatters to build a regulation sports track and a “spacious” grandstand. The short-lived facility was the last presence of the HBC on the land east of Main Street called the Flats.

On the other hand, the CPR Shanty Town had a much longer life span. Shanties were still being built well into the 20th century in the area that was then variously referred to as the “Foreign Quarter,” “CPR Town” or “New Jerusalem.” Thousands of working poor lived in the North End, who were primarily immigrants labouring in the massive CPR yards and shops and at other industries that sprung up in the shadow of the railway tracks such as the Ogilvie Flour Mills and Vulcan Iron and Engineering Works.

James Shaver Woodsworth, the minister at the All People’s Mission on Maple Street and a future Labour and CCF MP, included in his book, Strangers Within Our Gates, or, Coming Canadians (1909), a report by an unnamed city worker. The report contained information about the living conditions of immigrants in Winnipeg’s North End.
“Jacob Lalucki is employed in the Canadian Pacific Railway shops. He is Ruthenian (Ukrainian), his wife Polish … They have two children. They live in one room, and have nine boarders, and his wife goes out washing.”

The report also contained stories of enterprising families, who managed to succeed under the most trying circumstances. What becomes evident through the report is that these individuals were willing to make sacrifices in order to eventually better their lot in life.

“Stanislau Yablonski is a teamster. He owns his own team, and his wife goes out cleaning. They own several lots. They lived in two rooms, and have five roomers. Their furniture consists of three beds, a table, two chairs, a stove and some boxes. The attic is full of pigeons.”

Yet other stories involved personal tragedies, such as: “Michael Franchicinski is a laborer, but has at present no work. He and his wife and five children live in two small rooms for which they pay $4.50 a month; this must come out of the summer earnings. They have great trouble and expense with one of the children. Little Pieter took sick when they were coming out here, and was sent back to Austria. The father hopes to save enough money to go for this little boy.”
Canadian immigration officials were uncompromising in their enforcement of government regulations that called for the deportation of any immigrant showing signs of illness. That a small boy should be separated from his family and sent thousands of kilometres away was apparently none of their concern.
Although the city worker’s report deals specifically with Eastern European immigrants, the majority of those living in the city’s North End were actually British.
While working-class Anglo-Saxons remained the prominent ethnic group, the North End by 1913 was an enclave for 87 per cent of the city’s Jews, 83 per cent of the
Slavs, 67 per cent of the Scandinavians and 22 per cent of the Germans.

The Grain Growers’ Guide of May 13, 1914, contains an article written by Allan B. Hobbs entitled, Actual Conditions in Winnipeg, dealing with the “appalling story of destitution and undeserved poverty …” The author told of a mother and seven children living in a room 12-by-14 feet that was rented for $15 a month. The father was forced to go out-of-town seeking work (as a severe recession gripped the city), leaving his family behind.

Despite their poverty, the mother took in a “poor young girl who had been turned out of her boarding house and had had nothing to eat for over two days.”
While visiting a home on Pritchard Avenue, Hobbs found “a family of eight young children, sick mother and out-of-work father …without food or money. Four children were suffering from mumps, two had just had them, and one little boy had a complication of three diseases. Milk was all these sick children could take, but the parents had not a cent a cent to buy it with. The last three months’ rent ($15 a month) had been paid by friends.”

In the North End, property developers bought up tracts of land and laid down a grid of narrow streets and lots in order to erect as much cheap housing as possible, either to be rented or sold on the market at a profit. As a result, the North End quickly became one of the most densely populated urban areas in Western Canada.

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