History Nuggets
The Bergen Cut-Off
While crossing over the Kildonan Settlers Bridge in Winnipeg, if you look south, you catch a glimpse of a disused railway swing bridge perched on its pier in the middle of the Red River. At this point, many readers will be thinking “My sainted aunt! Writing an article about an abandoned bridge in Winnipeg! How…
READ MOREGreat North West Central Railway
The Government of Canada in the early 1880s put in place a policy of granting land subsidies to small railway companies in the hope that these companies would build rail lines into areas of the prairies distant from the Canadian Pacific main line and so open these areas to homesteaders. One of these so-called “colonization”…
READ MOREStraw Stack Pig Sty
Looking through photographs donated to the Manitoba Agricultural Museum, we became interested in a photograph of a straw stack. This photo appears to be fairly old, probably pre-First World War so it was taken at a time when photos were expensive which led to the question, why would the photographer have taken a photo of…
READ MOREJohn Deere in Pioneer Manitoba
The John Deere Company’s involvement with Manitoba agriculture began in April 1878 with an initial shipment of plows and other cultivation tools to Winnipeg. However, it is suspected that, previous to 1878, homesteaders in Manitoba had bought implements in the United States, including John Deere implements and brought the equipment to Canada. At the time,…
READ MOREThe Plank Drag
In the previous History Nugget on the practice of backsetting, which was sometimes carried out when breaking virgin sod, the use of a plank drag in subsequent field operations was mentioned. A plank drag was somewhat more complicated than merely dragging a plank across the field and so deserves some further explanation. Seeger Wheeler, who wrote…
READ MOREWinnipeg Light Agricultural Motor Contests (1908-1913)
Little known today either in Manitoba or outside the province, the Winnipeg Light Agricultural Motor Contests were on the cutting edge of the new technology of the tractor. In fact, the tractor was so new in 1908 that the word tractor had not even been invented. The Winnipeg contests were the first effort to scientifically…
READ MOREWaterloo Boy Model N Tractor
The Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company was the first company to manufacture and sell gasoline tractors. The company was formed in 1893 by John Froelich and a group of Iowa businessmen. Froelich built the first successful gasoline tractor in 1892 using a VanDuzen engine mounted on a chassis built by the Robinson Company. This tractor completed a 52-day…
READ MOREThe McMurachy Outfit
While digitizing photos in the Manitoba Agricultural Museum’s collections, we noticed that there was a caption on one of them. The lettering is in white and is against the background of a snow covered stubble field so it does not stand out but can be read as “Joseph McMurachy threshing his 800 acre crop with his…
READ MOREWhen the Week’s Work is Done
In the Black family photo collection at the Manitoba Agricultural Museum, there is an image of some Black family members gathered around a Ford Model T car, sitting on the running board or on the grass, relaxing and chatting. The week’s work is all done as most of the people in the photo are well…
READ MOREBrandon, Saskatchewan and Hudson’s Bay Railway
In addition to the Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian Northern Railway, which later became part of the Canadian National Railway, Brandon had a third railway, the optimistically named Brandon, Saskatchewan and Hudson’s Bay Railway (BSHB) which was a subsidiary of the Great Northern Railway. While the line got to Brandon, it never got to Saskatchewan,…
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