Forgotten past

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/06/2006 (7145 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

EMERSON — Nearly every Canadian province and territory cherishes its Mountie heritage and shamelessly uses it to promote tourism. Nearly every one, that is, except Manitoba.

Emerson, a pretty, historic town near the U.S.-Canadian border, oozes Mountie history. But the force’s historic buildings nearby have nearly collapsed; their grounds need major improvements and the site is almost impossible to find because of inadequate signage.

“The situation is an absolute disgrace,” says Wayne Arseny, of Historic Emerson Tours, a former mayor and a member of the Manitoba Historical Society.

The North West Mounted Police, the father of today’s RCMP, assembled at Fort Dufferin on the Red River near Emerson before its first major mission — the “great trek” to present-day Alberta to bring order and peace to the West.

“With the exception of a small detachment which had been sent to Fort Ellice, the site designated as headquarters, the entire force (divisions A through F) was gathered together for the first and only time in its history,” says S.W. Horrall, an RCMP historian.

The force left Fort Dufferin (not a typical fort because it had no walls) on July 8, 1874. It was an impressive sight — 275 officers and men, 142 draught oxen, 93 head of cattle, 310 horses, 114 Red River carts, 73 wagons, two nine-pounder field guns, two mortars, mowing machines, portable forges and field kitchens.

The men were resplendent in their red tunics (a colour chosen to remind the First Nations people of British soldiers, not the hated American blue coats). Each division had distinctive horses ranging from dark bays and browns to chestnuts, greys, blacks and light bays.

Horrall comments: “When closed up to proper intervals, the formation was about a mile and a half in length. However, owing to the uneven pace of horses and oxen and the breaking of axles and wheels, it usually stretched across the prairie for four or five miles.”

The first day out the force only went one mile, a sign of things to come. In designing the force, Ottawa showed a complete lack of knowledge of western Canada — not the last time this was to happen in Canadian history.

The red coats were too hot for the 100-degree heat; the pillbox hats were too small. The horses were too light for prairie conditions and many of them got sick and died. The force’s guides didn’t know where they were much of the time — a dangerous situation when supplies of grass and water were critical. And a lot of the material the force brought with it was useless, including the balky field guns.

But the Mounties, after three months of strenuous effort, made it to near Lethbridge, Alta., but they couldn’t find their goal, Fort Whoop-up, a whisky-trading fort. Luckily, they did find a guide, the raffish Jerry Potts, who took them there. By the time they arrived, the whisky traders were long gone, but a caretaker invited them in for a meal.

Even so, “the March West,” writes Horrall, “became a source of pride, an example of duty and service upon which the Force’s future traditions would be founded.”

The Mounties chose Fort Dufferin as an assembly point because it had been used for the same purpose a few years earlier by the International Boundary Commission, set up to mark 1,384 kilometres of the Canada-U.S. border between Lake of the Woods and the Rockies. The primary point from which the survey began is located at Fort Dufferin.

In 1875, after the Mounties had left and the boundary commission had finished its work, Fort Dufferin became an immigration centre processing the first of thousands of immigrants who came through the U.S. and by steamer to Dufferin.

The histories of these three important groups has left our provincial government strangely unmoved. It should be noted, however, that Rivers West (the Red River Corridor Inc.) has put in some new information signs and is trying its best to bring Fort Dufferin’s history alive.

Fort Dufferin is not the only reason the province should take an interest in the region. Emerson, because of its key location on steamer and wagon routes, once had a population of 11,000 (compared to about 400 today). It might have been Manitoba’s capital except a Fenian raid from the U.S. convinced Sir John A. Macdonald it would be unwise to pick a town close to the border.

But there are some large, handsome, restored houses in Emerson and some important early public buildings left over from “the good old days.”

“Emerson is an example of the towns in Manitoba that have interesting histories that need to be better known,” says Jack Bumsted, a prolific historian and new president of The Manitoba Historical Society (of which I am a director).

As North Dakota has shown with its “legendary North Dakota” tourism campaign, you can make money promoting tourism. The campaign has been so successful, the state is now running TV ads in Manitoba urging us to go south to see history.

If you do and if you go through Emerson, you’ll be passing some of our own unsung heroes.

Tom Ford is managing editor of The Issues Network