Unknown pleasures

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/11/2024 (386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Just when you thought you knew everything about Winnipeg, Darren Bernhardt has dove back into the archives and surfaced with another entertaining selection of historical “oddities” about the city and surrounding area. Now you too can know the relationship between Winnipeg and Bugs Bunny, or why you weigh less in Churchill.

Bernhardt is a CBC reporter with an interest in local history and offbeat stories. Prairie Oddities is the follow-up to his 2021 best-seller The Lesser Known, also published by local Great Plains Press. Comprised of 11 chapters, the histories in Prairie Oddities range from Punkinhead, the Eaton’s department store fuzzy-headed Christmas rival to Rudolph the reindeer, to the criminal adventures of Percy Moggey, the Houdini of prison breakouts who left candy in trees and has been called “Manitoba’s Jesse James.”

Spanning the book are sidebars illuminating “firsts” from 1807 to 2023. We find out about the first piano, fast-food restaurant, workers’ strike and thrift shop, as well as the first murder (occurring just months after the city was incorporated).

Prairie Oddities also provides fascinating glimpses of some of the diversity among the area’s population, including the arrival of first Icelanders in 1875, the first Black labour union in 1907; the first woman from the Prairies called to the Senate in 1960; and the election of the first openly gay mayor, Glen Murray, in 1998.

A couple quibbles among the impressive list of “firsts” Bernhardt provides: Wab Kinew is noted as the first Indigenous premier, but Kinew is actually the first First Nations (Anishinaabe, specifically) premier. The first Indigenous premier was John Norquay, a Métis man elected in 1878 and who held office for nine years, unfortunately not listed in Bernhardt’s records.

Another omission is that while William Reginald Gunn is accurately described as the first graduate from the University of Manitoba, it is overlooked that Gunn was also Métis.

Bernhardt not only brings to light little-known histories, but also tantalizes with a few visions of what might have been. Uncovered in the pages is a sketch of the Richardson building by Arthur A. Stoughton; had it been built according to this design, a more lavish flair would have decorated Portage and Main. Similarly, an early sketch of the Golden Boy, the statue on top of the Manitoba Legislature, is depicted with mythologically correct winged feet and helmet. A chapter about the Bergen Cutoff bridge near Kildonan Park is a frustrating look at thwarted possibilities for what a visionary described as having the potential to be “one of the most exciting places to go in Winnipeg.”

A chapter that deftly connects past to present describes the former Winnipeg Auditorium building which, since the early 1970s, has housed the Archives of Manitoba and the Hudson Bay Company Archives. Bernhardt notes the current archives building takes up an “entire downtown city block,” but is “generally overlooked by the public it is designed to serve.”

Constructed as a “make work” project during the Depression, the Winnipeg Auditorium contained art galleries, a museum, concert halls, exhibition galleries and even a roller rink. It hosted such events as a stop on former prime minister John Diefenbaker’s election campaign, cars shows and concerts by Johnny Cash, Duke Ellington and the Beach Boys. When the building was sold to the province in 1970, The Winnipeg Free Press lamented it becoming “a tomb for the provincial archives” compared to its previous incarnation as the civic hotspot for entertainment.

Bernhardt credits the source of his stories to the many archives and organizations with digital records available for online browsing, and to those archives with reference rooms open to the public, although the latter too often have lamentable hours and too few visitors. Perhaps grazing through the pages of these odd local histories will inspire curious readers to visit.

Regardless, all readers and armchair researchers will be rewarded with some delightful hours in this book amongst the pages filled with facts and photos gathered from a remarkable array of sources.

Mary Horodyski is an archivist, researcher and writer living in Winnipeg.

Darren Bernhardt will be at Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore (163 Lilac St.) on Friday at 6:30 p.m. to discuss Prairie Oddities.