Like their counterparts in other North American cities, Winnipeggers were fascinated with the growth of their community. The number of residents the city had at any particular time was considered to be of paramount importance, especially in comparing Winnipeg’s advancement with that of other cities. Almost as important in a community whose civic leaders and eminent citizens were exclusively Anglo-Saxon and Protestant—at least until the 1950s—was the ethnic and religious composition of the population. For although Winnipeggers were firm believers in the virtues of immigration, most did not easily reconcile themselves to the resultant polyglot population. The pride that came with the sharp rise in population was diminished by the knowledge that much of this growth was caused by so-called ‘foreign” elements. It has only been in recent years that Winnipeggers have seen the strong cosmopolitan makeup of their city as a major advantage; a point of view that was adopted only after considerable years of outright discrimination against “foreigners.”
During the first quarter century of its history as an incorporated city when Winnipeg was growing from a small cluster of wooden stored and homes housing eighteen hundred citizens to a major Canadian city of forty thousand people, three significant population trends were established. First, with the exception of a sharp increase in population in the early 1880s following the arrival of the CPR , growth was steady and unspectacular before 1990. Second virtually all the growth achieved during this early period resulted from the influx of immigrants: natural increase was limited by a shortage of women and high infant mortality rate and the expansion of the city’s boundaries in 1875 and 1882 added relatively few citizens. Third, the early flow of immigrants into Winnipeg had its origin in two main sources: Great Britain and Ontario. This last was the most significant, and early established the essentially Anglo-Canadian nature of the city.
The rate of population growth in Winnipeg was from the outset far greater than the population growth rate of Manitoba and the western provinces. At an early date Winnipeg became and thereafter long remained the largest urban centre in all of western Canada. Furthermore, by 1911 Winnipeg had become the third largest city in Canada, a position it held until the 1920s when it was bypassed by Vancouver.
Before 1880, the population of the city of Winnipeg increased fairly slowly from about two thousand in 1874 to just over six thousand six years later, This was followed by a short burst of growth in the early eighties when the population climbed to over twenty thousand by 1886. By this time, however, the boom had already collapsed and for the balance of the decade growth was moderate. It was not until the late 1890s that all the conditions necessary for rapid population growth were present and a sustained boom could take place.
The slow rate of population growth in Winnipeg during this period did not go unnoticed, particularly by city council and the Board of Trade.
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