History comes alive in this series of short Radio Broadcasts.
David Neufeld and Betty Sawatsky have created a series of Radio Broadcasts that offer a look at local history from unique viewpoints. A complete list as presented on CJRB Radio is being developed along with additional resources. We are always adding new episodes.
** We are currently preparing the Audio Files for presentation here.
They are currently available on the CJRB Website..
The List in the order they were presented on Radio CJRB
1.Goodbye at Sourisford: Charlie West felt invisible at Sourisford, before others began to arrive.
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2. Bridge at Bunclody: Almost all trains, he said, went east and west, but this one was going north and south, making new connections and hopefully opening markets for us and our neighbours.
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3. Mrs. Weightman: From Scotland to Dand – a pioneer woman’s success story.
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4. Whitewater Lake: Change is the only constant when it come to this large shallow body of water.
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5. Blizzard at West Brenda: A young teacher and her students spent a long night in the schoolhouse. “The snow hit us with such force we were gasping. I couldn’t even see my hand, stretched out.”
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6. A Deal’s a Deal: How did the Treaties come about?
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7. The Purple Hill Beef Ring: “My father called a meeting and 20 families agreed to take turns offering the group one steer a year.”?
8. Prairie Riches / Photos by Hime: Observations by the first Prairie Photographer
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9. John Pritchard / Barely Alive: A Fur Trade Era survival story.
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10. The Sisters at Grande Clairiere /
Father Gaire a Catholic priest from France to establish a mission in Manitoba. He chose the site of a French speaking Metis community south of Oak Lake and was welcomed.
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11. Sam Long – Laundry Man / Many Chinese men came to Canada for railway building work, and many stayed on to do other things
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12. Billy’s Point / The Metogoshe Metis Community /
Billy Gosslin was a hunter and a trapper – and a Red River Metis. He had moved to Lake Metigoshe from North Dakota and settled on the west side of Turtle Mountain.
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13. Overlooking Fire / The complicated history of the prairie fire, and the changes brought by Euro-settlers.
Father Gaire a Catholic priest from France to establish a mission in Manitoba. He chose the site of a French speaking Metis community south of Oak Lake and was welcomed.
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14. What Happened to Manchester / Manchester wasn’t the first town to find out that the name they chose was already taken.
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15. The Legend of Wakopa / Bernard LaRiviere’s Stopping Place became southwestern Manitoba’s first “settler” village – and an important one at that.
Themes:
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16. Story in a Stone / he story of buffalo rubbing stones many of which are still identifiable on the prairie landscape.
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17. Master Newcomb / Each of the hundreds of homesteads registered in southwest Manitoba in the early 1880’s required a visit to the Land Tiltes Office near Deloraine.
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18. The Edwards Sisters / Prairie Entrepreneurs
The Edwards sisters graduated from Menota school with few available options. They could marry – or – get teacher training and then marry. But their true love was always with clothing.
19. Eaton’s Catalogue / Even The Schoolhouse Bell
We’ve been able to order everything from fashion to furnishings through the Eaton’s Catalogue – ever since it first came out in 1884, just when this part of the province was filling up with settlers.
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20. The Empress of Ireland (A Prairie Riverb
Folks in Coulter would ask what is our local blacksmith doing building a riverboat in the middle of the prairies?
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21. SittingEagle
A visit from Sitting Eagle, the grandson of H’damani, the leader of IR #60, was an event many a child would remember.
22. Deloraine’s Dr.Thornton / Doctor As Needed
Dr. Robert Thornton was there for the folks of the Deloraine area – wherever called, and, whatever the weather.
23. Mrs. Doctor Indeed
We women got together last year, 1910, to form the Deloraine Women’s Institute – and I’m its first president. I chuckled when the newspaper declared “Mrs. Robert J Thornton (Dr. Thornton’s wife) First WI president!”
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24. Farmer Mary at Dand / A different sort of pioneer story
Themes:
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25. Sankey Explores the World
Sankey’s first sea voyage was to China and Australia, at age 16. He later joined the crew of the Cutty Sark, a clipper famous for tales of munity and murder!
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26. Sankey At Waskada
After seeing the world as a sailor, Charles Sankey settled down in Waskada – where he made a real impact.ankey’s first sea voyage was to China and Australia, at age 16. He later joined the crew of the Cutty Sark, a clipper famous for tales of munity and murder!
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27. True Education / Verona School
Like many a one room school, it went from being the “centre of this community” to being merely a “Historic Site.”
28. Fiesta Sisters / The Beynons
Raised and educated near Hartney, Lillian Beynon became the Assistant Editor of the Winnipeg Free Press Eeekly – with her own column. Francis was the Editor of the women’s page of the Grain Growers Guide.
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29. Walter Thomas – Before Dinner
Sometimes survival is about, choices.
30. Walter Thomas – After Dinner
After a freak accident, some good fortune and a bit of kitchen table surgery saved his life.
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31. Ready to Dig at GainsboroughCreek
People farmed in Southwest Manitoba many centuroes ago. They farmed the same fields beside Gainsborough Creek for over 200 years – growing corn, squash and beans.
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32. The Nakota
The Nakota were frequently allies with explorers and fur traders. They enjoyed the benefits they got from trading but they were vulnerable to deceases Europeans brought.
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33. The Rats Of Cranmer
The collapse of an elevator in Cranmer could have been dangerous, but there was some warning
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34. Miss Pauline Johnson
The celebrated poet toured extensively across Canada. She even came to Napinka, where she made quite an impression.
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35. The Dakota
In the 1870’s a delegation of Dakota-Sioux led by Chief H’damani sought a reserve on Turtle Mountain. They had lived there in peace since 1862.
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36. Ninety – Acre Island (On Max Lake)
Max Lake was a recreational site, sawmill site… and for some, a home.
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37. George Morton / The Cheese King
The name of the Municipality of Boissevain pays tribute to George Morton. He came to Turtle Mountain area in 1878 – and immediately saw the potential for large-scale cheese production – and other things.
Themes:
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38. Mennonites
In 1924 a Mennonite family arrived in Whitewater to join other who had decided to start a new life in Canada.
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39: Turtle Mountain Reserve #60
The smallest Indian Reserve in Manitoba seemed to be doing well until the powers that be decided it should be “surrendered”.
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40: Mouse Valley
River valleys offer shelter, water, and wood to settler, hunter and traveller alike. The Souris River has been all that and more to the people of our region – for a long time.
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41: Alma Dale / The Chain Lakes Friends
Friends got the name “Quakers” because of the way folks shake when profoundly moved by the Spirit. Mrs. Alma Dale from Ontario came to the Chain Lakes area as a Minister iand made quite an impact.
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42: Hutterites
“We’re Anabaptists, which means we’re Christians but aren’t Catholic or Protestant.”
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43: Buffalo Hunting / Buffalo Summer Hunt
Imagine, riding, full gallop within a tornado of stampeding buffalo, your knees steering your horse, filling your musket on the run, your mouth full of shot and your horn swith gunpowder, firing, reloading and firing again, perhaps 20 times in one run. It’s a highly skilled, daring and disciplined affair.
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44: Winter Hunt
Hunting buffalo at Turlte Mountain in the winter presents some challenges.
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45: Mountainside
Mountainside is one of several stops on the Lyleton branch. That railway is fondly remembered as the lifeline of small communities.
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#46: The Doctrine of Discovery
How did Europeans get the land from Indigenous Nations? There was one official religion in Europe at that time, so that church had a lot of power. Its leader proclaimed the “Doctrine of Discovery” giving European Christian nations the right to claim virtually all of North America.
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#47: My Jim Dandy
Jim first moved to Pierson from Ontario with his birth family in 1891. Six years later, at the age of 31, he built and operated Pierson’s first.
Themes:
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#48 War Training
The Commonwealth Air Training Field near Hartney was an important part of the WW2 war effort.
(Listen)
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#49 Objecting to War
The Mennonite religion teaches that we must not do violence to others; that it’s wrong to fight in wars; which makes it easy to think they we’re soft on Hitler. But in reality they reject any authority that uses violence.
Themes:
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#50 Jimmy Jock
Most Westman pioneers arrived from the east, Ontario mostly. James (Jimmy) Jock went to BC first then travelled east again. He is the first resident of Minto cemetery.
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#51 War Bride
As a young English woman during WWII, Vera Booker’s parents forbade her to do anything with the Canadian soldiers stationed nearby. She didn’t listen. That’s how she ended up in Waskada!
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#52 Mountain Mill
Those sod houses prairie settlers built seem quaint from a distance. They served their purpose but settlers near Turtle Mountain had a supply of wood close at hand and it wasn’t long before The Max Lake sawmill was serving the community.
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#53 Mission School
The Christian Endeavor Society operated a school on Turtle Mountain Reserve for a short while in the mid 1890’s.
Themes:
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#54 Rest Rooms Designed by Women
The Women’s Institute set out to improve life for rural women. Establishing Rest Rooms for women and children was a high priority. We owe them thanks.
Themes:
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#55 Mining the Mountain
The Salter and Henderson mines , near Goodlands, became the most successful in Manitoba. They were separated by a barbed-wire fence. .
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#56 Gone to the Dogs / Dog Training in Broomhill
Each summer whole families, mainly from the southern United States, showed up in Broomhill. The local terain and climate was ideal for training hunting dogs.
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#57 The Drowsy Cow
Railway accidents were common and sometimes dangerous. Sometimes livestock was involved.
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#58 Elephants at Melita
It was around 1950. A Circus had visited Melita and was was heading to its next stop,when one of the trucks got stuck on a muddy road. Fortunately there were elephants to help out.
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#59 Belgian Horses / Belgian Immigration in the Deloraine area.
The Government of Canada was advertising land. And new beginnings were what Belgian farmers needed. The open prairie sparkled in our minds as we prepared to come. Good thing we didn’t know how rustic it’d be. And how we’d miss our big black horses.
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#60 Paint by Roller – Norman Breakey of Pierson.
Long after leaving his home town of Pierson, Mr. Breakey made a really usefull invention.
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#61 Concrete Block Construction / Home Blocks
What made this grand home affordable back in 1904, was that the Palmer block maker allowed the owner-builder to make blocks on-site with local gravel!
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#62 Smallpox
In 1492 smallpox became endemic on the Euro-Asian and African continents. Residents there carried the disease but were immune to its effects. Noth American were not.
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#63 The First Telephone in Boissevain
It took till 1904, before the Boissevain office connected this region to the phone grid. Still, that’s not shabby, considering work crews depended on horse power.
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#64 Fort Desjarlais- 1858
The fort was 200 feet long and 150 feet deep with one long log building and several smaller ones, surrounded by a stockade of oak posts – immense in comparison to other Souris River posts!
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#65 Horses
We horses have special relationships with our humans. We understand moods and we anticipate what’s needed. The Nakota called us the Horse Nation, with our own culture.
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#66 Elevator Brat
Dad runs the elevator. His office is where Coatstone’s farmers get together, and drink a lot of coffee
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#67 The Hathaway Thresher
I’m the only one of its kind. The world’s first working rotary thresher. What’s a thresher? Today I’d be called a combine. I was built in the 1930’s by a local inventor who was a genius when it came to machining.
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#68 The Melita Bank Robbery – 1923
Yup! Robbing the Union Bank of Canada in the town of Melita went fairly well, only one injury to the fella who stuck his FOOT in where it didn’t belong!
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#69 The Snow Plane
Us home-made snow planes were made from parts that were available. But, by the 1950’s the roads were built higher, snow plows were more efficient and used more often… some say we were invented ten years too late.
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#70 The Red River Cart
I knew there had to be a better way to cross the prairie; to get us through marshes, mud, creeks and rivers. Canoes just don’t get us everywhere we need. So, my men and I built a 2-wheeled wooden cart.
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#71 The Arrowsmith Map
200 years ago fur traders didn’t have satellite images to get a bird’s eye view needed to draw accurate maps
#72 Amos Blacksmith Shop
We do a lot less shoeing of horses and much more making and repairing parts for machinery. You see, we can’t wait for parts to be sent out. Farmers need to get back out there. And quickly! The machines are simple enough. So we just make parts.
#73 Country Schools 1885-1965 Brenda/Waskada
Early settlers were practical about the location of their school. An effort was made to ensure the school was more or less central to the children. If the surveyed site didn’t suit the population, the school was moved so as to make it as easy as possible for as many students as possible. Some schools were moved a number of times.
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#74 Dr. Bird 1913. Boissevain
Dr Frederick Valentine Bird arrived in Boissevain in 1913 on the early morning train. Penniless. Having never been to our town. One of Dr Bird’s mentors at Medical school suggested Boissevain would be a good place to practice. Within four months he was making a modest living, so settled into serving our community for the next 62 years.
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#75 The Yard Light
It’s 1949. Electricity is brand new to us. Cities and larger towns got electricity at least 40 years ago. Now that we have it, boy is life ever changing.
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#76 A Bleak Winter on the Prairies 1877 – 1880
Through the entire winter, of 1877-78, across the Canadian and US Prairies, there was virtually no snow. Not only was it a black winter, it was also very warm. It remains the warmest winter on record. The roads were reportedly a mess from rain. And sleighs were no use at all.
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#77 Dakota Farmers
For over ten years, Dakota farmers in Manitoba had managed their own financial affairs and had been independent of government assistance. But through the early 1890s they were restricted to non-mechanized machinery, their finances were controlled and they were not allowed to sell their products off-reserve.
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#78 Land Survey – Manitoba 1872
In order for the farms to be relatively equal, they decided to survey the entire, vast landscape into square miles, using compasses, metal chains, and a lot of lonely men with camping gear.
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#79 Hartney Beginnings
My wife Sarah Jane and our family arrived two years ago. Our success started when we imported a carload of Red Fife wheat from Minnesota. After keeping enough for our own crops, we sold the rest to our neighbours
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#80 Laura and Connie Riddell 1922 Pierson
Everybody, wherever we live, knows Connie. Partly because of his job. He was the first station master in Pierson. From Pierson we moved to Hartney for seven years to live the station master life there, and then to Deloraine for nine years.
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#81 Grand Coteau
For now, at least, the Battle of the Grand Coteau, established the Metis as a fully formed Nation. Capable of determining its own destiny; fighting its own battles.
Themes:
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#82 Wales Connection
How fascinating it is that an unknown father could cause such a burning curiosity in his son, that at 85 years old, that son would visit the place where his father worked, an ocean, a continent and a lifetime away!
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#83 The Settlement of Lake Metigoshe
he farming settlers of Deloraine on the Manitoba side, and Bottineau on the North Dakota side, eventually did see the promise of a great recreational hotspot.
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#84 Weasel, Horse or Beater?
A few years. After the war, the McFaddens surprised us. They bought a surplus army vehicle, called a Weasel. Rigged it up to pull their covered sleigh.
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#85 Women’s Hockey
Hockey was deemed a manly sport with women unfit for such rigours. Trouble was, men wanted women to skate so they could glide arm in arm on ponds and along rivers. With the essential skill of skating taken care of, they picked up sticks, shot pucks and kept their game focused on speed and skill.
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#86 The Boundary Trail
The survey was completed in the summer of 1874. Near the end of that year the North-West Mounted Police used the trail to establish and represent Canada’s desire for control over both the land and people of the North-West.
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#87 Soddy Home
Soddy’s are sturdy. They’ll stand against fierce northwesterly winds, and they’re warm in the winter. Cool in the summer, we’re told.
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#88 Melita Opera Houses
Now in 1913, our new opera house surpasses them all! It has a large stage and a sloped floor. Robert has furnished it with opera chairs, enough for 400 people! It’s amazing!
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#89 The North West Resistance 1885
… when rumours started about an armed insurrection to the northwest, it was difficult to gain helpful perspective.
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#90 The Peace Garden
A horticulturalist, Dr Henry Moore from Ontario, was looking for a place to build a Garden of Peace to celebrate the world’s longest undefended border.
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#91 A Railway Rendezvous
Who would have guessed that these two men from Manitoba, both lovers of history and artifacts, would meet at a tractor show in Minnesota and share stories of bygone days in the little towns of La Riviere, Killarney and Wakopa – some 50 years later!
#92 McKays of Sioux Valley Dakota Nation
As the McKay family tells the story, Wakpa and his brother saw Custer’s magnificent horse and realized the man behind it must be Custer.
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#93 The Yellow Quill Trail
Settlers leaving Fort Garry with hopes of settling along the Assiniboine, or in the Brandon Hills, or further to the southwest along the Souris, or around Turtle Mountain – they all travelled the Yellow Quill Trail.
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#94 A Grounded Farmer
Farmers were fed up. Banding together, they started their own elevator companies, in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
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#95 Scots in a New Land
For Nettie Marshall, her first glimpse of the western Prairies was through cowboy movies at the theatre in Scotland, which cost only 3 cents.
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#96 Snail Mail to Killarney
I’m Charles Bate. On April 1st, 1883, I opened the first post office here in the Killarney district – in my house on the farm, of all places! On the north shore of Erin Lake – what you call Killarney Lake.
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#97 A Railway Builder’s Challenge
Unfortunately, for the railway builders, between Heaslip and Bunclody there are two small streams running into the Souris from the west. They’re small streams now, but back in the day when Lake Souris was rapidly draining, the water had cut deep ravines as they approached the river.
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#98 Prairie Fire
Late afternoon yesterday, Mama saw the cloud of smoke. To the west. Beyond the neighbours. End of September! It’s hot. And so very dry. Even the creek behind the barn.
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#99 Harvest Gang Water Boy
LThere was lots to do while the shocks dried. We were expecting about twenty men to arrive with the threshing machine. Needing places to sleep, wash up and, most important, lots of food.
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#100 Disturbance in the Classroom
I studied my students with intensity, their young faces strained as they looked up at me. Clenched teeth tried to hide tiny smirks, while others just stared at me with dancing eyes.
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#101 School in the 1880’s
Student attendance ranged from as low as ten students to as many as 45, all interspersed in eight grades and every child needed their share of instruction, as prescribed by the Province’s Program of Studies.
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#102 Grazing the Mountain
In the early 1900s, there was lots of pasture on Turtle Mountain. Wildfires had kept trees from taking over. Les’ father got permission from the Turtle Mountain Forest Reserve to run cattle there.
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#103 The Country School
… it was the hub of the community, where Sunday morning services were held before the building of that community’s church. It was where baby showers were held, Christmas concerts and spring concerts were performed, and community reunions, school picnics, and anniversaries were celebrated.
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#104 Burial Mounds
a new generation of archaeologists began investigating, this time, employing greater care. One was Dr Leigh Syms, who pieced together a theory on the people who built the mounds.
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#105 Napinka School
The first school in the Napinka area was started in 1894, in a farmhouse about one mile east of town where our very first teacher, Miss Ida Crowell, taught her students, as well as farmers, during the winter months.
However, the school that we are in right now was completed in 1901 and is one of the most unique schools in Manitoba! And what makes it unique, you ask?
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#106 Bill Moncur
This is about a quiet farmer named Bill Moncur who befriended a man named Sitting Eagle. Bill, with his wife Hattie and four children, lived five miles, or 8 kms, north of Boissevain.
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