WINNIPEG 



6315 



WINNIPEG 



THE STORY OF WINNIPEG 



INNIPEG, a city in Manitoba, the 

 capital of the province and the county town of 

 Selkirk County. It is the largest city in the 

 Canadian West, and is the third city in Canada, 

 being exceeded in size only by Montreal and 

 Toronto. From a little trading post of 250 

 people in 1870, it grew in a brief period to one 

 of the great cities of America. In 1901 Winni- 

 peg had 42,340 inhabitants; in 1911 it had 136,- 

 035; and in 1916 it had 163,000. In population 

 it ranks approximately with Columbus and To- 

 ledo, Ohio, and Atlanta, Georgia. 



Winnipeg lies at the junction of the Red 

 River and its chief tributary, the Assiniboine. 

 It occupies a strategic position in Canada, 

 somewhat similar to that of Chicago in the 

 United States. From Lake Winnipeg on the 

 north to the international boundary on the 

 south is a distance of about 100 miles. Here, 

 through this narrow strip of the prairies must 

 pass all Canadian traffic between east and 

 west. Here, too, in olden days ran the trap- 

 pers' routes, and to-day the railways follow the 

 same course. Thus it happen- that Winnipeg, 

 about midway between Lake Winnipeg and the 

 boundary, is like the neck of a bottle. The 

 great Canadian transcontim ntal lines (the Ca- 

 nadian Pacific, the Canadian Northern and the 

 Grand Trunk Pacific) must pass through the 

 city. From the south, up the valley, come 

 the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific 

 railways. 



First, therefore, Winnipeg is a railroad cen- 

 '1 is a division point for all the great rail- 

 roads which enter it. The railway shops 

 in or near the city, are among its chief indus- 



trial establishments. As a railroad center Win- 

 nipeg inevitably became a great receiving and 

 distributing point. Grain and other products 

 of the West here meet the coal and manufac- 

 tures of the East. The wholesale trade of the 

 city in normal times is in excess of $200,000,000 

 a year. Winnipeg is perhaps the greatest grain 

 market in the world. It also has a large trade 

 in many products of the immediate vicinity of 

 the city, such as wool, flax, hides, glass sands 

 and brick clays. Its bank clearings average a 

 billion dollars a year. 



It was inevitable that Winnipeg should be- 

 come a manufacturing center. At first flour 

 and lumber mills were the only industrial 

 plants, and they are still the most important, 

 but there are now nearly 500 factories, produc- 

 ing almost every conceivable variety of manu- 

 factured goods. Slaughtering and packing meats 

 are large items, as are also structural steel 

 and boilers, traction engines and other farm 

 machinery, soap, breakfast foods, clothing. 

 tents, boxes, cement and butter The annual 

 output of manufactures is about $100,000,000. 

 Klrctnc power i- <1< nvt 1 from a 60,000-horse- 

 powcr municipal plant, as well as from a pri- 

 vate power plant. 



With tin* exception of a small section around 

 old Fort Gam-. Winnipeg is laid out on regu- 

 lar lines. Main Street, the chief business 

 thoroughfare, is the widest in Canada. The 

 Hudson's Bay Company building and tin- 

 Union Station of the Canadian Northern and 

 Grand Trunk Pacific railways is on Main 

 South, and the Canadian Pacific <lrp<>t 

 is on Main Street, North. On or near Main 



