Charleswood’s rich history recalled at Doors Open Winnipeg

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This article was published 01/06/2015 (3774 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A page of Winnipeg history hidden away in suburban Charleswood came to life Sunday during Doors Open Winnipeg, shining a light on how people commuted before there were so many bridges and roads.

Before the Perimeter Highway, a ferry crossing the Assiniboine River connected folks in St. Charles and Charleswood.

For kids like Bob LaFleche who had to cross the river to get to school by ferry, it was a real adventure

“It leaked!” recalled LaFleche, now, 76. During Doors Open Winnipeg on Sunday, he visited the ferry landing next to the house he grew up in. The free annual event featured more than 80 locations in the city this weekend, inviting visitors to look inside.

For LaFleche, it was the first time since living there that he got a peek inside Caron House. The historic brick home built in 1905 is one of the last remaining settlers’ farmhouses on the Assiniboine River in Winnipeg.

“It was great,” LaFleche said of growing up in the shaded 21/2-storey home with balconies facing the river in old Charleswood where he hunted rabbits.

He and his six brothers and sister took the ferry across the river to school in St. Charles every day until freeze-up. The ferry used the river’s current and cables to move it back and forth until the Perimeter Highway just west of there opened in 1959, said LaFleche, who had a photo of the ferry hauling his family’s 1953 Ford across the river.

Caron House, is being restored by the Charleswood Historical Society with the help of many donors. The brick house from the Eaton’s catalogue replaced a wooden, two-storey frame house built in 1880 by Charles Antoine Caron and his cousin George Caron. They moved from Quebec to farm two big lots stretching all the way from Charleswood to Oak Bluff. The men and their wives came by train through the U.S. with a boxcar of furniture and provisions and another with livestock, said Marc Caron, great grandson of Charles Caron.

They stayed in St. Charles until the Assiniboine River froze and they were able to cross to their home in Charleswood, said Caron who volunteered at Caron House Sunday telling the story of his ancestors’ arrival.

“I love the history,” he said.

For Caron, it’s a chance to revisit his roots and see inside the historic home built by his great-grandfather.

The brick house built in 1905 was sold in 1948 to LaFleche’s dad, then sold again in 1960. In 1978, it was sold to the city and a housing development was planned for the riverfront property. After vandals nearly wrecked the house, the Charleswood Historical Society fought to have it preserved.

It’s still a work in progress, with a tenant living in the house who is doing the renovations.

Most of the main floor was open to the public Sunday. The home is only open during Doors Open Winnipeg, said Caron.

“We’re hoping it’s open more often,” he said.

The home is located in Caron Park. The Charleswood Historical Society is raising money to put up plaques in the park at the ferry landing and marking the old overland routes used by Métis and settlers in the area — some with Red River Cart tracks so deep and worn nothing grows along them to this day, said the historical society’s Dan Furlan.

For more information see charleswoodhistoricalsociety.ca.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca