Winnipeggers got away, to a place to play

Enlarge Image

h|

Enlarge Image

UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA PRESS The boardwalk at Winnipeg Beach, circa 1908.

In the first years of the 20th century, Winnipeg Beach was sometimes referred to as "Manitoba's Coney Island."

Interlake-born Dale Barbour's enjoyable academic history of Winnipeg Beach provides a graphic and quite thorough picture of the settlement on the shore of Lake Winnipeg, roughly 80 kilometres north of the city.

He describes the warts and all of a town organized largely around an amusement centre. And he shows a distinct feel for the place, which he used to visit once upon a time with his parents in the 1970s.

Barbour, who is completing a PhD at the University of Toronto, uses a combination of sources -- newspapers, photographs, interviews -- to develop his scholarly approach. He shows Winnipeg Beach to have some history as a playground for the young and undoubtedly some not so young, away from public scrutiny.

From another standpoint, however, Winnipeg Beach, started by the CPR at the beginning of the 1900s, developed into an ethnic extension of Winnipeg. Barbour points out that this phenomenon was reinforced by the exclusion of non-British peoples from the Victoria Beach area, where a rival beach community was started by the CNR.

The mixture of communities included quite separate sections of Anglo-Saxons, Ukrainians, Icelanders and Jews. Conflict was not uncommon, particularly in the early years, with troubles among youth groups.

Barbour describes, however, the carnival features of Winnipeg Beach. The boardwalk was an area where people mixed, on weekends, by the thousands.

The roller-coaster was an exciting option for the more adventurous. The bumper cars satisfied a tamer crowd and could be enjoyed by family groups.

Barbour reminds us that morals and manners changed considerably over the period he is covering in Winnipeg Beach.

Relations between women and men were much more "proper" when the century began than they were a generation later. In the earlier years, people were inclined to date, and men approached ladies more sensitively.

Not surprisingly, both the amusement area and the dance pavilion provided popular locations for courting. The more sexually active form of courtship of the 1950s and beyond marked the end of Winnipeg Beach "at least as a large-scale amusement area."

The Winnipeg Beach Hotel was a favourite haunt from 1928 to the early 1960s, at least for the men. Women were legally restricted from consuming alcohol in public during part of that period.

Travel to Winnipeg Beach could be an adventure of sorts in the early days. Trains were important, as the "Moonlight Specials," sometimes more than a couple a day, shuttled people from the city to the beaches.

Many travellers had to run to catch the "Daddy train" back to Winnipeg. Train stations retained a certain function even after automobiles entered the scene, as they continued to serve as meeting places.

Perhaps the most interesting case study Barbour uses to illustrate the kinds of changes occurring at Winnipeg Beach is the bathing suit.

A century ago men and women wore outfits that covered them almost from head to toe. Had the bikini been invented, it's hard to imagine what its function would have been.

Winnipeg writer and teacher Ron Kirbyson has a cottage at Victoria Beach.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 18, 2011 J8