The University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collection has established a new website to explain how these and other Western Canadian artists influenced artists throughout the country and around the world. The website will explain how Western Canadian artists have been instrumental in shaping Canada’s sterling reputation as a world leader and innovator in art and culture.

Prairie Prestige: How Western Canadian Artists Have Influenced Canadian Art features digitized archival material from the fonds of several prominent Western Canadian artists:

Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald, Bertram Brooker, George Swinton, Leo Mol, Arnold Bridgen, Elizabeth Maude MacVicar, Angus Shortt

In addition, the religious work of several Ukrainian-Canadian artists is also showcased.

Digitized photographs, correspondence, diaries, catalogues, sketches, drawings, and audio clips from the archival holding of these individuals demonstrate the demonstrate the quality of their work and their relevance to the national art scene.

Canadian art is a key component to the cultural mosaic in which we live and the archival records of the artists included in this website vividly emphasize this point. The records have been digitized from the holdings of the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections, the Winnipeg Art Gallery Archives, and the Ukranian Catholic Archeparchy of Winnipeg Archives.

Art librarian LivValmestad’s historical essay places these individuals within the context of the broader Canadian art community and explains the impact of these individuals on the development of art in Canada. Slavic librarian/archivist James Kominowski’s essay focuses on the unique contributions of a select few Ukranian-Canadian artists, primarily with respect to their religious art work.

The individuals included in this website are but a few of the more celebrated gifted artists in Western Canada. But there are many more artists that have yet to receive their due. The Prairie Prestige Wiki will allow users to contribute their own suggestions of Canadian artists who have had a dramatic effect on the Canadian art landscape and their reasons for suggesting these individuals. The wiki will hopefully lead to some lively discussions that might further illuminate the contributions of Canadian artists and perhaps initiate further research into the effects of some lesser known Canadian artists.

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The original homestead was adjacent to the farm of Jules Remmery, who was Joseph and Madeleine’s brother in law. They decided to move to Rosser because their brother in law offered half his dairy barn and it was close to the City of Winnipeh to ship the milk. They originally purchased 5 acres of prairie and 32 milk cows with proceeds from the sale of their grain farm machinery and horses.

In June, 1924 they built their first house. They lived in this house only four weeks when a fire was caused by a pot of jam which biuled over the stove. At the time, Madeleine and Joe were milking in the barn with two-month old Julian in his carriage. Albert, who was asleep in the house, had fortunately just learned to crawl out of his crib. Joe found him on the floor beside his crib and both escaped. Not one single item was saved.

The family moved into the second home in October of that year. The home consisted of three bedrooms, a large kitchen, and a full basement. Joe built the cupboards for the new house.

Albert and Julian walked to Ulster School which was only one tenth of a mile away. The teachers often used to board at Madeleine and Joe’s. Miss Beatrice Kenny boarded for four years and paid $12.00 per month. Joe and Madeleine were active in the school district. Joe was one of the three trustees along with Paul Grenkow and Charles VanSteelant. Madeleine was school secretary for six years.

In 1926, they built a temporary barn with a straw roof. The first permanent barn was built in 1928 and was 102 feet long. Another 80 feet were added in 1944. The barn is still being used today.

Lots of labour was required in the early days. Joe’s brother, John, and one hired hand plus an extra for haying helped to get the farm going. Initially, all the hay was made at the bog, 15 miles north of the farm, past Stony Mountain. The hay was put up in the bog and stacked. Over the winter they would go with the team of horses to pick up feed for the cattle. John would leave at 5:30 am and sometime return with no hay due to the fact he could not find the haystacks in a storm.

Milk from the dairy was shipped daily to Cresent Creamery in Winnipeg. Two teams of horses were used alternating on different days. The original cans were dropped off at the CPR Orpa siding just east of the farm. The train came every second day and would stop to pick up passengers at 10:00 am and would return 5:30 pm. If the missed the train back to Orpa, it was a long cold walk home in the dark.

The Gamby’s first truck was a Chevrolet half ton purchased in March, 1928. It was used to haul the milk to Winnipeg every day, and bring back a few bags of feed which cost only $9.00 per ton for the cows. Their first car was a Nash bought in 1930.

While the mode of transportation improved, the roads left a lot to be desired. Washouts were common on Highway No.7 and on Rosser Road. Joe was hired by the local councillor. Jack Stewart, to repair and grade the roads in various years throughout the 1930′s. Joe won a $10 gold piece for having the best graded mile on Highway No.7. The night the he won the gold piece, they held a banquet at the Fort Garry Hotel. He decided to go along with the crowd and smoke a cigar even though he didn’t smoke. He came home as white as a ghost. The gold coin was later spent on a “rainy day”.

As the farm prospered, the Gambys continued to purchase more land and more cows. Their first tractor was purchased in 1934, in Internation Harvester, boughth from Mr. Percy Beachell in Rosser.

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I had come out of the hospital at McCreary a few days earlier after giving birth of our youngest son, Dale, Mavis, our oldest, had come to Rosser earlier to start school. She stayed with her uncle and aunt, Fred and Olga Lange and started her first term with her cousins, Kathy and Martin.

We moved into a home owned by Mr. Fred Krym. It was beautiful living in the country. We had a huge garden and there was lots of room for the kids to play.

When the teacher at Meadows School left at Christmas-time the following year, I started teaching there. I was there for a year and a half- the last teacher at that school.

Mavis learned to bake at Rosser. On weekends she would bake cookies for our lunches for the following week.

Barry was big boy- always big for his age. We had a golden retriever dog. If Barry was going where he shouldn’t the dog would push him over and sit on him. Barry was about four at the time.

The winters we were in Rosser weren’t too bad- not too much snow. I remember talking to Fred Krym one day, commenting how we didn’t have the snow and the high drifts that he remembered when growing up. Shortly after that we had that March blizzard of 1966. There was a row of evergreens on the north side of the yard and after that storm, only about a foot of the tree tops were showing. Mavis, Barry and Dale really had fun playing on those snowbanks while they lasted.

At the end of April in 1967 we moved to Stonwall. The school at Meadows was closing and I was taking over one of the Grade Two rooms in Stonewall. The first Monday of May we had another snow storm. It was on my first day driving to Meadows from Stonewall and I wasn’t sure of the road. The visibility was bad. I took a wrong turn at Warren and ended up in a farmer’s yard north of Stonewall- a first trip I never forgot.

I continued teaching in Stonewall until my health failed in 1973 and have been unable to work since.

Mavis and Barry finished school in Stonewall. Mavis has herown accounting office in Winnipeg. She has been married since 1980 and has given me my two wonderful grandchildren. Her husband, Paul, was a long distance trucker. He is now working in the office at Arnold Brothers Transport.

Barry has done a number of things but has spent most of his time in the trucking industry. He is presently living in northern Alberta.

Dale took his high school education at Selkirk Comprehensive School where he took mechanics. He then went into the trucking field. He spent eight years as a long distance driver. He is now living in Winnipeg.

I am living in Lion’s Manor in Stonewall, where I moved at the end of December 1989. I am living here with my mother, Mrs. Jennie James of McCreary, Manitoba. She has lived with me since my father’s death in 1979.

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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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In turn, the fire chief suggested that the city solicitor prepare a different bylaw to deal with the shanties, “as I consider there is a great danger from a conflagration in certain quarters of the city on account of the near proximity of the shanties to large buildings, lumber yards, etc., and the careless manner in which fire is kept in and around them.”

There seems to have been a measure of public sympathy for the poverty-stricken occupants of shanties. James Wilkinson of Fort Rouge wrote a letter asking city council to deal leniently “with these poor people and to take into consideration the scarcity of work, the poor wages and the difficulty men have in obtaining their money from the contractors” (July 29, 1884, Winnipeg Sun).

C.J. Bridges, the land commissioner of the HBC, appeared before city council in September 1884 demanding the removal of the shanties from the Hudson’s Bay Company Flats (now The Forks).

Another letter from the law firm of Bain, Blanchard & Mulock threatened legal action if the city didn’t take steps to remove the shanties. The lawyers wrote that millions of board feet of lumber was endangered by the presence of nearby shanties.

On October 10, 1884, city council passed a regulation giving those who occupied shanties “located on streets, or other places where it was considered a nuisance” until May 1, 1885, to vacate. Council delayed the implementation of the bylaw as it didn’t want to evict the squatters during the depth of a harsh Manitoba winter. Council also felt the delay would allow shanty occupants sufficient time to find alternative accommodations.

The Winnipeg Sun reported on May 2, 1885, that the shanties covering “large portions of the Hudson’s Bay and Canadian Pacific Railway property, as well as Portage avenue, Notre Dame, Fonseca (in Point Douglas), and other streets” had yet to be removed.

“Yesterday was the day set for evicting the squatters, and the Hudson’s Bay Company had prepared to take prompt action. It was, however, delayed, because the city solicitor was not ready to take steps for the removal of the shanties as instructed by the council, and the squatters will have another week or so to get ready to leave, by which time the city and Hudson’s Bay Company will take concerted action.”

The shanties were to be torn down, “as they are regarded as a disgrace and disfigurement to the city,” according to the Sun.

In late May 1885, the city street inspector notified all squatters that their shanties had to be removed. He told city aldermen that there was some grumbling, but most were prepared to comply, while those who refused were to have their premises torn down.

Several of the shanties belonged to volunteers serving with the Canadian Militia in the 1885 Northwest Rebellion led by Louis Riel. The aldermen informed the inspector no action was to be taken against these shanty dwellers until they returned to Winnipeg following their military service.

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I had come out of the hospital at McCreary a few days earlier after giving birth of our youngest son, Dale, Mavis, our oldest, had come to Rosser earlier to start school. She stayed with her uncle and aunt, Fred and Olga Lange and started her first term with her cousins, Kathy and Martin.

We moved into a home owned by Mr. Fred Krym. It was beautiful living in the country. We had a huge garden and there was lots of room for the kids to play.

When the teacher at Meadows School left at Christmas-time the following year, I started teaching there. I was there for a year and a half- the last teacher at that school.

Mavis learned to bake at Rosser. On weekends she would bake cookies for our lunches for the following week.

Barry was big boy- always big for his age. We had a golden retriever dog. If Barry was going where he shouldn’t the dog would push him over and sit on him. Barry was about four at the time.

The winters we were in Rosser weren’t too bad- not too much snow. I remember talking to Fred Krym one day, commenting how we didn’t have the snow and the high drifts that he remembered when growing up. Shortly after that we had that March blizzard of 1966. There was a row of evergreens on the north side of the yard and after that storm, only about a foot of the tree tops were showing. Mavis, Barry and Dale really had fun playing on those snowbanks while they lasted.

At the end of April in 1967 we moved to Stonwall. The school at Meadows was closing and I was taking over one of the Grade Two rooms in Stonewall. The first Monday of May we had another snow storm. It was on my first day driving to Meadows from Stonewall and I wasn’t sure of the road. The visibility was bad. I took a wrong turn at Warren and ended up in a farmer’s yard north of Stonewall- a first trip I never forgot.

I continued teaching in Stonewall until my health failed in 1973 and have been unable to work since.

Mavis and Barry finished school in Stonewall. Mavis has herown accounting office in Winnipeg. She has been married since 1980 and has given me my two wonderful grandchildren. Her husband, Paul, was a long distance trucker. He is now working in the office at Arnold Brothers Transport.

Barry has done a number of things but has spent most of his time in the trucking industry. He is presently living in northern Alberta.

Dale took his high school education at Selkirk Comprehensive School where he took mechanics. He then went into the trucking field. He spent eight years as a long distance driver. He is now living in Winnipeg

I am living in Lion’s Manor in Stonewall, where I moved at the end of December 1989. I am living here with my mother, Mrs. Jennie James of McCreary, Manitoba. She has lived with me since my father’s death in 1979

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On January 24, 1872, he married Cecilia Mary E. Parker at Hemmingford Quebec. She was born in December 4, 1844 at Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA. She died April 10, 1927.

Joseph Williams was a stonemason by trade. He owned and operated lime kilns in the Stonewall quarry in the late 1870’s and well in the 1880’s. He built a bridge and the roundhouse at Selkirk and the culverts for the railroad at La Riviere. Prior to this he built the Victoria bridge on the St. Lawrence River.

Joseph and Cecilia had four children: Harriet A.E., born January 11, 1873 at Hemmingford, Quebec. Addington H.G., born April 27, 1877—who died by accident at the Williams Quarry at Lilyfield on November 1, 1902; Reginald J.C. born on July 8, 1880 and Alfred N., my father, born on April 15, 1882. Both these boys were born at East Selkirk.

Alfred married Anne Riggall on June 7, 1907 at Lilyfield with the Reverend James Lawrence, Presbyterian minister of Lilyfield officiating. Anne was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Riggall, Sr. They had three children: Neville R., born January 12, 1908, died November 28, 1988; H.C. (Dolly), born at Williams Quarry on January 11, 1909. It was minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit the day Dolly was born—the coldest on record. A. James was born on September 8, 1916. The family was living at the Quarry at the time as Alfred was managing the operation there.

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When the rail line was finally completed, horses were used to pull the loaded flat cars from the quarry.

With the ever-growing popularity of cement, the demand for limestone gradually diminished to almost nothing, leaving its operation unprofitable. The quarry finally closed down around 1912.

Much of the machinery was there until World War II when it was removed for scrap to help the war effort. The buildings remained standing until the Winnipeg Supply Co. moved in several years later to re-open the pit and set up a gravel crusher.

In a copy of minutes of a meeting of the Williams Quarry Directions on February 27, 1906 there is a motion to approach the telephone company to have a phone line installed and that is why the Lilyfield district is on the Winnipeg exchange.

In the early 1920’s Grace Lanceley, the youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Rigall, her husband Charles and daughter Margaret lived at the quarry for awhile. I, Jim Williams, visited with Aunt Grace and Uncle Charley for a week or so when I was six or seven years old.

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Surveyor’s Handbook 535 notes: “A rocky or stony ridge transverses this township from the North to South. It is shown on the plan in section 27 and 34. I have no doubt of its being the same formation as the in township 12 – section 21 and 28 – and extends south to the Assiniboine River near St. James Church. Land to the west of the ridge is high and more gravelly; to the east, lower and more alluvial. Stone is quarried on the SW corner and brought to Winnipeg, Manitoba for building, it is a grayish limestone.”

A glimpse into some early government decision-making was reported by the Manitoba Free Press on January 11, 1873. “Persons settled on Stony Mountain will not be sustained in holding homesteads. The authorities hold that the Mountain, being a limestone quarry, comes under the head of mineral lands and is therefore reserved from settlement.” According to the report, that area was to be surveyed into small 5 to 20-acreage lots and sold “by public competition.” On February 1st the federal government decided to put the Stony Mountain Quarries on the public market by public sale in 10 acre lots at the upset price of $1.00 per acre. The early settlers are of 1870 – James Isbister and Neil and Duncan Livingstone – thus lost the acreage they had filed on.

On August 3, 1869, the Manitoba Free Press reported that, “it was proposed to gravel the streets of Winnipeg. Mr Nimmons of Little Stony Mountain can supply gravel. ” In 1877 the newspaper reported that Mr. Nimmons had offered to build a tramway to Winnipeg for delivery of his gravel. On January 25, 1881, again from Free Press: “Mr. Nimmons sold his farm at Little Stony Mountain, 320 acres for $56,000. It lies three miles from city limits, including 40 acres of stone quarry, 20 acres of sand and gravel. W. Brydon and Peter Robinson, purchasers.” Speculation is that the business did not survive the collapse of the Winnipeg boom in 1886 because it was then referred to as the Egan Pit. Egan was contractor of the first stretch of the Winnipeg and Hudson Bay Railroad in 1886, which was called “Sutherland’s Forty”. His family still owned the property in 1898 when the City of Winnipeg built its railway across to get to the city quarry.

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To maintain this industry during its 7 years of operation at Little Stony Mountain were many employees, 164 recorded in November of 1904. Together with their families most of them lived in and around the site of the quarries. According to the memory of J.L. Mac William, there was located in this village 2 blacksmith shops, a post office, a store operated by Mr. L.P. Brault, a dance hall believed to be among the first halls built north of Winnipeg. Miss Ford’s boarding house, a number of dwellings, a pool hall and bootlegger! The number of school age children proved to be too many for nearby Little Mountain School to handle, so the overflow, at the suggestion of Mr. W. MacWilliam, was taught in the dance hall in the quarry village. Classes were held on the stage of the hall. James MacWilliam attended here, coming from his family farm about one mile north. He recalled that there were about 25 children enrolled.

A spur line railroad track to haul the store was constructed, running from near the present Moore siding, northeast adjacent to the road allowance past Little Mountain School on ¾ of a mile to the quarry. In the spring, the stony bed of this track, long since lifted can be clearly seen across the summer fallow fields.

Now, on the hill between the 2 remaining excavations, no sign remains of this unincorporated village which had its own mayor where a busy industry had been and where many rollicking good times were spent in old dance hall, by the residents of the village and the district.

The excavation north of the road allowance is owned party by the RM Rosser. The excavation south of the road allowance, known as the Egan Pit, recently became the property of the Metro Winnipeg. During the depression of the 1930’s the Municipal. The work was divided among the residents of the area, to give employment.

-Reprinted from Rosser Ripples

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