Archives all over the map with new exhibit

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This article was published 08/04/2024 (598 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new exhibit from Archives of Manitoba is perfectly mapped out.

About three dozen historic maps, some dating as far back as 1709, will be on display at 200 Vaughan St., Friday and Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Kathleen Epp, keeper of the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, said it’s a rare opportunity for the public.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” Epp said Monday. “Maps are fascinating documents, but a lot of them are just so big. Even here we don’t have the space normally to look at them side by side so this is also a treat for us.”

Epp said some of the earliest maps show what is now Western Canada, but they suddenly end before they get to the mountains in Alberta — and that proved problematic for at least two early explorers.

Ac Ko Mok Ki, a Blackfoot chief, made a drawing in the snow, showing directions on both sides of the Rocky Mountains. HBC cartographer Peter Fidler made a copy of it.

Epp said that copy was sent to England where a mapmaker used it to fill in the blanks on their maps in 1802.

“But (the mapmaker) didn’t understand it,” she said. “It was the Indigenous way of mapping.

“So when he saw a line, he thought it was the continental divide, but it wasn’t — it was the foothills. And that’s why, when Lewis and Clark used the map, they got lost.”

Epp said it is also interesting to see how the maps change as the years go by and how land was carved up for settlers.

“The history of mapping is also the history of colonialism,” she said. “It is all about land. They came, they carved it up and then came settlements.”

The archives will also display the Peguis-Selkirk Treaty of 1817, as well as the map that went with it.

“We have one copy of it and we have determined we have Selkirk’s copy,” Epp said.

In addition to the Hudson’s Bay Campany maps, there will be others on display. These include: a literary map of Winnipeg produced for the National Book Festival in the early 1980s showing locations written about in books, city maps of both Winnipeg and Brandon, and a map of the Winnipeg Electric Railway Company’s trolley system.

“We also have the largest map in the display — a Winnipeg map from 1905 measuring 150 cm by 183 cm (five by six feet),” she said.

“These are all places we know — we know the shape of the Assiniboine and Red. This will add layers to where we are.

“I hope people will be fascinated by it.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca