There is no better way to see Canada than on foot. And there is no better way to appreciate what you are looking at than with a walking tour.
Each walking tour describes historical and architectural landmarks and provides pictures to help out when those pesky street addresses are missing. Every tour also includes a quick primer on identifying architectural styles seen on Canadian streets.
Manitoba was at the heart of the vast possessions of the Hudson's Bay Company that was called Rupert's Land, named for German Prince Rupert who was an angel investor in the fur trading enterprise. The land was ceded to Canada in 1869. During the many decades of North American fur trade many British and French Canadian adventurers married First Nations women on the frontier. Their offspring who came to span the cultural divide were known as the Métis and their land claims spurred the Parliament to make Manitoba the first addition to the newly formed Canadian Federation the following year. The original province was a fraction of today's Manitoba - so small it was known as the "postage stamp province."
More than three in five Manitobans reside in and around Winnipeg that lies almost at the geographic center of North America. The city at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers was Canada's gateway to the West through the 19th century and its emergence as a major transportation centre in the latter half of the 19th century was based on wheat. The first wheat on the western prairies had been harvested under the auspices of Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, who received a land grant from the Hudson' Bay Company of 116,000 square miles in 1811. Selkirk engineered the founding of the Red River Settlement as a permanent agricultural base.
There is no native variety of wheat in Canada but when Red Fife wheat was introduced to Manitoba in 1868 it became the dominant cultivar and "Queen of every harvest." The first shipment from Winnipeg was sent in 1877 and four years later the Canadian Pacific Railway arrived sparking a wave of immigration and building in Winnipeg that continued full bore until the the opening of the Panama Canal lessened the importance of the transcontinental railroad for shipping goods and Winnipeg settled into its role as the financial, manufacturing and cultural nucleus of central Canada. Winnipeg was the third largest city in Canada until the rise of Vancouver in the 1960s. In 1971 the City of Winnipeg Act created the current city by unifying eleven surrounding municipalities with the Old City of Winnipeg.
Winnipeg has been an enthusiastic player in urban renewal, scrapping such treasures as its Victorian City Hall and the Eaton's department store that helped trigger the shift in importance from Main Street to Portage Street. But many heritage structures still remain, especially in the Exchange District, a National Historic Site stuffed with the city's earliest skyscrapers, banking temples and landmark grain warehouses and that is where our walking tour will begin...
Each walking tour describes historical and architectural landmarks and provides pictures to help out when those pesky street addresses are missing. Every tour also includes a quick primer on identifying architectural styles seen on Canadian streets.
Manitoba was at the heart of the vast possessions of the Hudson's Bay Company that was called Rupert's Land, named for German Prince Rupert who was an angel investor in the fur trading enterprise. The land was ceded to Canada in 1869. During the many decades of North American fur trade many British and French Canadian adventurers married First Nations women on the frontier. Their offspring who came to span the cultural divide were known as the Métis and their land claims spurred the Parliament to make Manitoba the first addition to the newly formed Canadian Federation the following year. The original province was a fraction of today's Manitoba - so small it was known as the "postage stamp province."
More than three in five Manitobans reside in and around Winnipeg that lies almost at the geographic center of North America. The city at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers was Canada's gateway to the West through the 19th century and its emergence as a major transportation centre in the latter half of the 19th century was based on wheat. The first wheat on the western prairies had been harvested under the auspices of Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, who received a land grant from the Hudson' Bay Company of 116,000 square miles in 1811. Selkirk engineered the founding of the Red River Settlement as a permanent agricultural base.
There is no native variety of wheat in Canada but when Red Fife wheat was introduced to Manitoba in 1868 it became the dominant cultivar and "Queen of every harvest." The first shipment from Winnipeg was sent in 1877 and four years later the Canadian Pacific Railway arrived sparking a wave of immigration and building in Winnipeg that continued full bore until the the opening of the Panama Canal lessened the importance of the transcontinental railroad for shipping goods and Winnipeg settled into its role as the financial, manufacturing and cultural nucleus of central Canada. Winnipeg was the third largest city in Canada until the rise of Vancouver in the 1960s. In 1971 the City of Winnipeg Act created the current city by unifying eleven surrounding municipalities with the Old City of Winnipeg.
Winnipeg has been an enthusiastic player in urban renewal, scrapping such treasures as its Victorian City Hall and the Eaton's department store that helped trigger the shift in importance from Main Street to Portage Street. But many heritage structures still remain, especially in the Exchange District, a National Historic Site stuffed with the city's earliest skyscrapers, banking temples and landmark grain warehouses and that is where our walking tour will begin...
